By James E. Biechler

“You ARCC types are always picking on Cardinal Ratzinger.  I cannot understand why you seem to attach so much importance to this man.  I realize he has an important Vatican office but, after all, who listens that much to the Vatican these days?  Ratzinger is just one of a billion Catholics.  Why not let the poor guy alone?”
F.M.E., Merion Station, PA

Your question reveals a lovely Christian attitude—more Christian, in my view, than much of what comes from the Vatican.  And it is precisely that fact which goes to the heart of our difficulties with Cardinal Ratzinger.  Although ARCC’s specific focus is the rights of Catholics in the church, that very objective requires us to have an eye on the broader issues of reform, especially the reforms issuing from the Second Vatican Council.  It is our view that a good number of highly placed church officials have adopted positions and policies which are antithetical to these reforms.

As you know, the church teaches that the highest doctrinal authority in the church is a general council headed by the pope.  The highest Catholic doctrinal authority of the 20th century was the Second Vatican Council.  Today, Cardinal Ratzinger leads the field of those who have taken positions contrary to those of the council.  This makes him the leader of dissent in the church today.

Most reform-minded Catholics know that the cardinal is not on their side.  He resists the collegiality of bishops, opposes any authority for national conferences of bishops, and opposes any theologian who seems to deviate from the curial party line.  But I would suggest that his position can better be summed up under the classical rubric of “lex orandi, lex credendi” or, “worship/prayer determines belief.”  Foremost among the anti-Vatican II positions Ratzinger has espoused is his stated opposition to the council’s liturgical reforms.  The first official decree of Vatican II was its teaching on the liturgy.  That decree legitimated a wide range of reforms all designed to make the Eucharist a more meaningful sacrament by enabling the People of God to participate in their own language and as a unified community.  Cardinal Ratzinger is among those who reject these reforms.  America magazine reported that Ratzinger recently celebrated Mass in the Tridentine rite.  In his 1997 autobiography he wrote that Pope Paul VI’s Mass reforms provoked “extremely serious damage” to the church and marked “a break in the history of the liturgy, the consequences of which could only be tragic.”  In April 1993 he told an Italian magazine that he favored returning the altar to its pre-Vatican II position with the priest having his back to the congregation.  ARCC agrees with Archbishop Rembert Weakland who recently expressed that “what totally derailed the liturgical renewal...was the decision of Pope John Paul II...to grant in 1984 the indult that allowed the Tridentine usage to flourish again” [America, June 7, 1997, p. 14].  Weakland further suggested that with this decision “not only was the liturgical renewal of the council called into question; the impression was created that, with sufficient protest, the whole of Vatican council II could be reversed” [p. 15].  

The decision to revert to the Tridentine rite was made with with the support of Ratzinger’s office.  Anyone who knows anything about Catholic liturgy knows that the Tridentine rite enshrines profoundly triumphalist and clericalist attitudes, arguably antithetical to the Eucharist as communion.  The Tridentine rite leaves the lay person as mere non-participating spectator.  This reinforces the clericalist, hierarchical notion of church which the Vatican curia, both pre- and post-conciliar, espouses.  The liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council were based upon years of study by scholars and liturgists.  These reforms were not innovations.  They took the history of the church seriously and from that study of history they attempted to recapture the active participation of the laity which the earlier church enjoyed.  Vatican curial officials do not desire an active, participative laity.  Vatican II’s liturgical reforms must, therefore, be denigrated. 

It may be difficult for ordinary Catholics to understand the profound historical turn which Vatican II represents.  Pope John XXIII was an historian.  He took seriously the modern insight that human institutions are the product of human choices, that human beings are responsible for the social world they have created.  He realized that the church, too, is an historical institution, very much the product of human choices and human limitations.  Vatican II, once and for all, tells us that the church is our responsibility and when it condemns Galileo and Hans Küng we, too, are implicated.

Please don’t think that because the cardinal is our church’s leading dissenter he is somehow unCatholic or disloyal.  This may sound contradictory at first, but we know that throughout history, popes and general councils are on record as disagreeing with previously established doctrinal positions.  So when a high-ranking curial cardinal today expresses views diverging from those of his authoritative predecessors he is not necessarily being disloyal.  He is simply the leader of all those who are opposed to fundamental reforms of the Second Vatican Council, especially those involving lay participation and true communion.?
 

Dr. Biechler, an emeritus professor of religion, is a member of ARCC's board of directors. He also holds a licentiate in canon law and is a longtime member of the Canon Law Society of America. 

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