Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will be remembered in Church history for his
work to recover the beauty of traditional liturgy, according to Bishop
James D. Conley.
The head of the Lincoln, Neb. Diocese, who has been reading Benedict's
writings on liturgy for decades, said these works “will remain a great
contribution to liturgical theology for years to come.”
“His great legacy,” Bishop Conley told CNA Feb. 27, “will be the re-discovery of the beauty of the traditional liturgy.”
Benedict awakened a “new way” of looking at the ordinary form of the
Mass – the liturgy which came after the 1960s Second Vatican Council –
“with a greater attempt to be more attentive to the rubrics.”
In the former pontiff's view, Mass should be celebrated with beauty,
dignity, and in continuity with the tradition of the Church, Bishop
Conley noted.
Benedict's liturgical legacy also includes his “blessing” of those “who
have a great attachment to the old Mass” and who are in union with the
Holy See, the bishop said.
In 2007, Pope Benedict released a directive titled “Summorum
pontificum,” which in a “watershed moment,” gave every priest permission
to say Mass using the 1962, or pre-Vatican II Missal.
“He made it one of his priorities to...introduce the 'hermeneutic of
continuity', trying to show that the pre-conciliar liturgy of the 1962
Missal is the same liturgy as the Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI,” the
bishop explained.
Pope Benedict “allowed the traditions to harmonize...so the
cross-pollination could take place; so the very best of the reforms of
the post-conciliar liturgy could be enhanced and influenced, by an open,
unbiased acceptance of the Mass that preceded it.”
Bishop Conley believes that Pope Benedict has allowed the pre-conciliar
liturgy to flourish alongside of the post-conciliar liturgy “in a hope
that some of the transcendence, the beauty, the tradition, the Latin”
will permeate the new liturgy.
The Pope's own manner of celebrating Mass, including subtle “symbolic
gestures” have “sent a message” and have had “a catechetical value” for
both priests and faithful, said Bishop Conley.
These gestures include distributing Communion to the faithful kneeling;
beautiful vestments and those which had fallen into disuse; ensuring a
cross and candles are on the altar; and celebrating facing the same
direction as the faithful, all elements of a “reform of the reform of
the liturgy.”
“He even created a new way of looking at the two traditions,” reflected
Bishop Conley, “the extraordinary form and the ordinary form.” Pope
Benedict coined these terms in “Summorum pontificum,” to refer to pre
and post Vatican liturgies respectively.
“They're two parts of the same form, and of the same Roman rite: that's
what he really wanted to emphasize by that change in language.”
Transcendence and beauty
Pope Benedict has long been “trying to recover that sense of transcendence and beauty of the liturgy,” reflected the bishop.
Part of this effort was his involvement in the translation of the third
edition of the Roman Missal. Bishop Conley noted the former Roman
pontiff's concern that the Latin prayers be translated both accurately
and “also with a sense of beauty in the language.”
The bishop also noted Pope Benedict's creation in November of a
“Pontifical Academy for Latin.” He sees this as tied to the Pontiff's
desire to increase the use of Latin in the Church's life, including in
her liturgy.
Bishop Conley also noted how Pope Benedict's vision was shaped by the
Liturgical Movement of the early 20th century, an effort that called for
a reform of the Church's worship, led largely by Benedictines.
“He knew the great players of the Liturgical Movement back before the Council,” the bishop said.
One of his major writings on the liturgy was his 2000 work “The Spirit
of the Liturgy.” That publication hearkened back to a book of the same
name by Father Romano Guardini, known as one of those “great players.”
In “The Spirit of the Liturgy,” Benedict – as a theologian writing
before his rise to the papacy – encouraged a “New Liturgical Movement”
that would recall the best elements of the first Liturgical Movement.
Benedict's concern with beauty and liturgy is not one of mere
aesthetics, Bishop Conley noted, but flows from a recognition that
liturgical prayer is the “source and summit” of the Christian life, as
the Second Vatican Council taught.
“A lot of people are talking about the impact that he's had on the
Church, and you certainly have to say that the liturgy is going to be
one; primarily because he took such a personal interest in it and he
believed that...everything flows from prayer,” said Bishop Conley.
“That's what he said when he announced his resignation, that he made
this decision after deep prayer. And now he's going to a life of deep
meditation and contemplation, and all that centers on the Eucharist, and
the liturgical worship of the Church, which he very much has a profound
love for.”
A continuing influence
Doctor Horst Buchholz, director of music at the St. Louis archdiocese,
told CNA Feb. 25 that Pope Benedict has offered such a wealth of
teaching on the liturgy that his influence has yet to come to full
fruition.
“There has been no Pope since Pius X, or even before, with such a
fervent love for liturgy and Sacred Music like Benedict XVI…We still
have to accept, digest, and adapt many of Benedict's thoughts and
directives on liturgy and Sacred Music,” he said.
Buchholz commended Pope Benedict's example of including the use of the
Gradual at his recent Masses in St. Peter's Basilica. The Gradual is an
ancient form of singing the psalm between the readings that may replace
the responsorial psalm.
“The Gradual is rarely, rarely ever sung, so that is a very good sign,
that people are even aware that there is an option like that,” largely
through the example of the Pope's Masses.
Illustration, not imposition
Jeffrey Tucker, publications director for the Church Music Association
of America, agreed that Pope Benedict has led by example in liturgy.
“I knew he would show us the beauty of the Roman rite in a way people
hadn't seen it before, and inspire people through example,” he said to
CNA Feb. 20.
Tucker called Pope Benedict a liberal, “in the best sense of that term.”
The Roman Pontiff provided “a kind of license” for the pre-conciliar
liturgy, he said, and integrated “the reformed Mass into the tradition
of the Roman rite more generally.”
“The reforms at St. Peter's Masses and (papal) liturgy generally have
been astonishing, extraordinary, especially from a musical standpoint,”
Tucker said.
He pointed particularly to the use of the Introit, the official text
from the psalms meant to be sung at the beginning of Mass, at every
large Mass said at St. Peter's recently.
“He's worked to make the Roman rite more true to itself, which is very
encouraging for those of us at the grass roots level, because now we can
point to papal liturgies as a useful example of what we're seeking to
accomplish in our own parish lives.”
Tucker praised the fact that while Pope Benedict did make minor changes
in liturgical laws, he recognized that “beauty itself, once it's
liberated, compels belief in a sense.” He described the Pope as working
not through imposition, but with “inspiration, illustration, example –
putting beauty on display and creating a kind of global hunger for
solemnity and seriousness, and ritual.
Charles Cole, director of the schola at the London Oratory, told Vatican
Radio Feb. 24 that “under the pontificate of Benedict XVI there has
been a particular focus on the relationship of the liturgy and music and
this remarkable heritage and its grown to ever greater prominence.”
In 2007 Pope Benedict wrote an apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist,
“Sacramentum Caritatis,” cementing some of his teachings on the liturgy
into the Magisterium.
Writing for The Catholic Herald, Dom Alcuin Reid, a Benedictine monk,
said that “his conviction expressed therein, that 'everything related to
the Eucharist should be marked by beauty,' was reflected in papal
liturgies. These became master classes on how to celebrate the modern
liturgy in continuity with tradition, where the best of the old and of
the new serve to raise our minds and hearts to God.”
Bishop Conley concluded with CNA by remembering the Pope's constant example of reverence and beauty in celebrating the liturgy.
“When I first came to Rome in 1989 as a priest-student, on Thursday
mornings he would celebrate Mass in a chapel of the proto-martyrs inside
the Vatican.”
“It would be a Latin Novus Ordo mass, always Novus Ordo, but always
celebrated very reverently and with a great sense of transcendence. So
not only by his writings, but by the way he celebrated Mass, he was
teaching.”