Dom Alcuin Reid skriver om pave Benedikts arbeid for å reformere/ forbedre liturgien, og begynner med et sitat fra Ratzinger selv:
… The inexhaustible reality of the Catholic liturgy has accompanied me though all phases of life, and so I shall have to speak of it time and time again.”
Benedict XVI was thus formed by the classical liturgical movement. This, and his conviction that some things went very wrong with the movement after the Council – in 2004 he wrote: “Anyone like myself, who was moved by this perception in the time of the liturgical movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for” – is key to understanding what has become known since his 2005 election as “the liturgical reform of Benedict XVI”.
Why the liturgy? Because Pope Benedict knows that “the Church stands [or] falls with the liturgy” and that “the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church whatever”. His profound concern is that the Church worships Almighty God correctly, and thereby be fully connected to the indispensible source which sustains and empowers Christian life, witness and mission. If the liturgy is impoverished or off-track our ability to live the Catholic faith and to evangelise suffers. This conviction motivated his writing on the liturgy as cardinal – a body of work which will form students for generations. It also explains the liturgical reforms of his pontificate.
Om den tradisjonelle messen skriver han:
There was much noise before and after his historic 2007 ruling that the older liturgical rites were henceforth to be available without restriction. Yet in the midst of the cacophony the Supreme Pontiff took the trouble to write at length to the world’s bishops and explain his act. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful,” he taught – a truth that is having an ongoing impact.
Og om å feire messen for/mot Gud:
At the heart of his reform is Pope Benedict’s conviction that Catholic liturgy “is not about us, but about God”. This explains the crucifix at the centre of the altar. It is why he publically celebrated the modern Mass facing East in the Sistine and other papal chapels. There never was a need to put a table altar in front of the altar in the Sistine Chapel (or elsewhere), but it took a pope with liturgical vision quietly to remind us of this.