Her fortsetter biskop Slatterys foredrag om liturgien, som begynte her. Her skriver han om sine personlige opplevelser av liturgiforandringene fra 60tallet, og om kardinal Ratzingers betydning for arbeide med å restaurere det tapte:
From the time I was ordained in 1966, I have felt in my heart that the liturgy, as we know it today, does not reflect adequately the teachings of Vatican II. The effects of that inadequate reflection can be seen now, 40 years later, in the challenges we face in every field from catechesis to ecclesiology.
In trying to articulate the sense of loss and dislocation that accompanied the abrupt liturgical break that took place in our liturgical celebrations in the ’60s, I am drawn to Josef Cardinal Ratzinger’s analysis of the situation. Cardinal Ratzinger, now His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, described the principle that legitimized this break in our liturgical tradition as a hermeneunic, or a perspective, of discontinuity.
Those who accept this – and their number is still legion – show an overriding dislike of anything that may have come down to us from past generations. Accepted by liturgists and seminary professors, and unfortunately fostered by priests, pastors and bishops, this hermeunic required a complete severing of anything that was not modern or which might be incapable of being recreated in a modern idiom. This was so, even should it require the Church to surrender Her ancient liturgical patrimony and much of Her theological vocabulary. Thus sacred vessels and vestments were discarded with revolutionary fervor, replaced with new and often shoddy designs. Ancient gestures like genuflections and ritual prayers like the grace before and after meals became a source of derision and the occasion of mockery.
Though these gestures and prayers had offered generations of Catholics a concrete way to express their faith, the hermeneutic of discontinuity demanded their removal and the marginalization of those who held to the ancient way of doing things. In one area of concern after another, the rich patrimony of the past was discarded, not because it was incapable of expressing or articulating the Church’s teaching, but simply because it was “not new.” It had to come tumbling down so that we could remake it, re-create it in a fresh, modern idiom.