Pope Benedict XVI: Defender of Tradition
Pope Benedict XVI on the Novus Ordo Mass -
“What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it - as in a manufacturing process - with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.” [1]
“I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is, to a large extent, due to the disintegration of the liturgy.” [2]
Pope Benedict XVI on Ad Orientem -
“ The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is locked into itself. The common turning toward the East was not a “celebration toward the wall”; it did not mean that the priest “had his back to the people”: the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian Liturgy the congregation looked together “toward the Lord”. ” [3]
“a common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of accidentals, but of essentials. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord.” [4]
Pope Benedict XVI on Communion received on the tongue and while kneeling -
Pope Benedict XVI reintroduced the exclusive administration of Holy Communion on the tongue and kneeling at Papal Masses. [5]
Pope Benedict XVI strongly supported the Tridentine Mass -
Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, which allowed all Catholic priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass. Pope Benedict XVI regularly celebrated Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal during his pontificate. [6]
Pope Benedict XVI condemned the idea that the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church -
Pope Benedict XVI, in an address to representatives of civil society, praised St. Thomas More as a “great English scholar and statesman," and added that St. Thomas More “chose to serve God first.” Benedict XVI continued, stating that the dilemma More faced touches on the “perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God.” Benedict XVI later gave one example of this issue: “the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world,” and that "just as every economic decision has a moral consequence, so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore.” Benedict XVI then lodged the central question, “where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?” He subsequently answered, “The Catholic tradition.” [7]
“The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.” [8]
Galileo was sentenced to house arrest where he remained until his death in 1642.
Pope Benedict XVI on integralism -
“The greatness of soul of the human vocation reaches beyond the individual aspect of human existence and cannot be squashed back into the merely private sphere. A society that turns what is specifically human into something purely private and defines itself in terms of a complete secularity (which moreover inevitably becomes a pseudo-religion and a new all-embracing system that enslaves people)— this kind of society will of its nature be sorrowful, a place of despair: it rests on a diminution of human dignity. A society whose public order is consistently determined by agnosticism is not a society that has become free but a society that has despaired, marked by the sorrow of man who is fleeing from God and in contradiction with himself. A Church that did not have the courage to underline the public status of its image of man would no longer be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set on a hill.” [9]
"a tolerance that no longer distinguishes between good and evil would become chaotic and self-destructive" [10]
“They [homosexual persons] can be legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct. This is sometimes not only licit but obligatory. This would obtain moreover not only in the case of culpable behavior but even in the case of actions of the physically or mentally ill. Thus it is accepted that the state may restrict the exercise of rights, for example, in the case of contagious or mentally ill persons, in order to protect the common good.” [11]
Pope Benedict XVI’s condemnation of liberalism -
“The family was and is the school of faith, the training-ground for human and civil values, the hearth in which human life is born and is generously and responsibly welcomed. Undoubtedly, it is currently suffering a degree of adversity caused by secularism and by ethical relativism, by movements of population internally and externally, by poverty, by social instability and by civil legislation opposed to marriage which, by supporting contraception and abortion, is threatening the future of peoples.” [12]
“Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error comes true. … We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.” [13]
Pope Benedict XVI on the false religions -
“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” [14]
Buddhism is an “autoerotic spirituality”, a false belief system that offers “transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations.” Hinduism, he said, offers “false hope,” in that it guarantees “purification” based on a “morally cruel” concept of reincarnation resembling “a continuous circle of hell.” He predicted that Buddhism would become one of the main enemies of the Catholic Church. [15]
Pope Benedict XVI approved a document released in 2007 which stated that other Christian communities are either defective or not churches and that Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation. [16]
The Catholic Church “has the fullness of the means of salvation.” The document continued, stating that “Christ 'established here on earth' only one church.” The other Protestant communities “cannot be called 'churches'” because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles -- and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid. It also adds that these Protestant communities do not have “the valid celebration of the eucharist.” It stated that the Orthodox churches although not in “communion with the Catholic Church,” are indeed “churches” because they have apostolic succession. It continued, adding that since they do not recognize the primacy of the pope -- a “wound” that harmed them, they are defective.
Pope Benedict XVI stated that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded the Mosaic covenant – the covenant made exclusively with the Jewish people.
“the Sinai [Mosaic] Covenant is indeed superseded.” [17]
Sources
[1] Gamber, Klaus. The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background
[2] Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977
[3] Spirit of Liturgy, ch. 3
[4] Spirit of Liturgy, ch. 3
[5] Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Solemnity of the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ - Mass and Eucharistic Procession
[6] Catholic World News News Feature, July 16, 2007
[7] Pope Benedict XVI's address to representatives of civil society, 17 September 2010
[8] “The Crisis of Faith in Science”, from A Turning Point for Europe? The Church and Modernity in the Europe of Upheavals
[9] Benedict XVI. The Yes of Jesus Christ. p. 76.
[10] General Audience of 25 June 2008
[11] Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposal on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons
[12] Address to the Inaugural Session of the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean (13 May 2007)
[13] Homily Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice, in the Vatican Basilica (2005)
[14] Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections (12 September 2006)
[15] L'Express magazine (April, 2005)
[16] Commentary, Notitiae 43 (2007)
[17] Ratzinger, Joseph. Many Religions - One Covenant. p. 70.
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