Benedict the Outlier?

Was Pope Benedict XVI an “outlier”?

That is the view of Mike Lewis on the liturgical views of Pope Benedict XVI. Writing at “Where Peter Is,” Lewis casts Ratzinger–before, during, and after his pontificate–as an “outlier” in the post-Vatican II liturgical project. According to Lewis, Montini faithfully implemented Vatican II’s liturgical reform vision, Luciani welcomed it, Wojtyła continued it, and Bergoglio and Prevost defend it.

Ratzinger is the one allegedly out of step in the liturgical dance. I don’t share that take.

For one, I think several threads are tangled up here. Without attributing a motive to Lewis, I think there is a larger drive of historical revisionism under the surface behind this debate. Various circles that want to pretend that Vatican II launched reforms (not just liturgical) which Paul VI–if sometimes with doubts–implemented, but that the reforming spirit of the Council was waylaid for three-some decades while the Church wandered in the desert during the John Paul II/Benedict XVI era, only to have the “true” spirit of Conciliar reform recovered under the leadership of Pope Francis.

Proponents of the liturgical status quo are a subset of that larger “reform” crowd, often with their own agenda. Much of which seems to be seeing bogeymen of SSPX-ism in any questioning of what is called “Vatican II liturgy reform” 60 years out.

As for the subset of liturgical reform, I want to draw out several distinct themes.

First, not everything done in the name of the Council ipso facto means that those things reflect the will of the Council. Much has been done in the Council’s name and, often, even more tenuously, in the name of the “spirit of Vatican II,” whose link to the Council requires suspension of disbelief.

Take some issues that have become lightning rods, such as altar rails. Let’s be honest. There is nothing in Sacrosanctum Concilium prescribing altar rail removal. I cannot imagine the average bishop who voted for the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (such as my then-bishop in Trenton, the relatively traditional George W. Ahr) understanding his “placet” meant churches across the world should proceed to wreckovate their sanctuaries, resulting in the sanctuary bleeding into the rest of the church. It’s perhaps why sanctuaries of German cathedrals are put at the disposal of chicken jugglers while Home Depot parking lots become inviolate “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens.

I know there are liturgists who advocated for it in the name of “full and conscious participation of the faithful” participating in “celebrating” the Eucharist. And I know they were able to write the implementing documents that, in many cases, did not prescribe but suggested that possible outcome. Nevertheless, liturgical vandals quickly befell churches, “renewing” them in the name of an interpretation of what the Council required.

Yes, it is arguably an interpretation. And, six decades after the Council, asking whether interpretations of the Council have stood the test of time is not a betrayal of the Council, much less a schismatic act that threatens ecclesiastical “unity.”

The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, about the ongoing back-and-forth about the placement of the tabernacle. Behind that issue lies another question arguably none of the Council Fathers thought they were ratifying: that focus on the Eucharist as “source and summit” of the Christian life would be taken to mean that the reserved sacrament, the tabernacle, and Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass would acquire at least de facto subordinate places in typical post-Conciliar Catholicism, ostensibly as something their decisions mandated.

Compound this with suspicions about what people’s intentions might be, and one arrives at a kind of toxic liturgical “unity.” Consider, for example, the Bishop of Charlotte telling priests in 2025 not to use pre-1969 prayers when putting on vestments (the current Missal provides no vesting prayers), because it might be assumed to be a throwback to former liturgical forms. Is it better for priests not to pray as they prepare to celebrate Mass and to treat vesting as a purely utilitarian function for donning anachronistic clothing, ecclesiastical cosplay? Is the current banter that characterizes many a sacristy a more fitting pre-Mass atmosphere?

All this leads us back to the question of interpretation. Sixty years–three generations after Vatican II—is an appropriate interval by which to make an honest, nonpolemical assessment of the successes and failures of post-Conciliar implementation. That discussion seems to be the sort of thing that faithful Catholics–those who advocate for current models and those who question them–should be able to have synodally and otherwise.

It is perhaps the interpretation question where Benedict XVI was really the “outlier.”

Pope Paul VI implemented the Council. Lewis pooh-poohs the question of whether Montini truly grasped everything he was “reforming” and whether Annibale Bugnini was not necessarily playing both sides against the middle to get his preferred outcomes. Lewis invokes topline phenomena (“more Scripture, use of the vernacular … and active participation of the faithful”) to argue that John Paul I was totally in line with current trajectories, when the truth is we know almost nothing of where Luciani would have led the Church. Lewis further insists John Paul II was “unambiguous” in his support of new liturgical trends. And he portrays Francis as the one who saved the Church from liturgical regression, a path he sees Leo continuing without engaging “the views of those who reject the reform.”

But Benedict, he claims, is the odd man out.

I suggest a different reading of history. Paul VI was too close to events to see the full impact of what he approved. Where John Paul I would have gone is conjecture, not history.

John Paul II, who authored a book (Sources of Renewal) and held regular meetings in the Archdiocese of Kraków on conciliar implementation, also came from a country where many of the liturgical abuses already commonplace in the West were unknown. I suspect he may have discounted some of those reports; I can say from personal experience that, when I would relate to colleagues at the Catholic University of Lublin what was going on liturgically in some corners of the United States, they thought I was exaggerating. There is no doubt, however, that he sought to roll back what he saw as abuses, including the indiscriminate use of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, something most bishops failed to back up.

Francis, on the other hand, was probably accustomed to freewheeling liturgy in the Society of Jesus and in Latin America, which was in the throes of liberation theology. So Francis was, I think, generally more indulgent of that than of the “rigid” types of which he so disapproved. I cannot predict at this point where Pope Leo is going on liturgy.

In that group, Ratzinger stands out. He returned from the Council to see what its improvisational implementation looked like in Germany, especially in the academic milieu in which he lived. Wojtyła’s Church in Poland may have kept the lid on experimental liturgy, but Ratzinger’s in Germany certainly did not—and has not. The German Synodal Church is just its logical outgrowth.

For that reason, and as a theologian committed to the Church, Ratzinger did not feel obliged to toe the “company line” about everything being sunshine and roses. He recognized the wheat and the weeds.

He properly raised the question, for example, about liturgical translations that ignored the typical editions in favor of the translators’ preferences (and, sometimes, utter creativity). He did not hesitate to invoke the “experience” which is in such contemporary vogue to suggest that some “reform of the reform” was in order. As one familiar with the thought of the great liturgical theologian Romano Guardini–one of the guiding lights of liturgical reform–Ratzinger did not pretend that the perspective of time raised questions about particular things or their consequences done ostensibly in the name of the Council.

If that made him an “outlier,” then what Lewis wants is a publicist, not a theological thinker.

I say these things in part because I feel a certain kinship to Ratzinger. I would certainly not put myself in his league, but I do share his perspective–one sometimes upsetting to both extremes–that the Novus Ordo was a proper reform that, on balance, has been beneficial for the Church but which, at the same time, is imperfect and, after sixty years, can be honestly assessed for its deficiencies as well as its strengths.

That is not a comfortable position for some because it refuses unambiguously to take polemical sides (which should not be a posture in the Church). I recognize that this discussion is burdened by the Lefebvrist rejection of the post-conciliar reforms. But, of course, not every critic of those reforms or their details is a Lefebvrist. Neither is attachment to the Extraordinary Form (which does not include me) a closet subterfuge for Écône and the SSPX.

Ratzinger recognized that and was willing to talk about it. If that makes him an “outlier” in some way, it seems more encompassing than the new “inclusivity”.

Finally, isn’t it interesting that, amidst all the synodal talk of the past year–including talk that openly questioned received and established doctrine–that liturgical questions have been curiously bracketed out?