Dette sa Ratzinger om liturgien i 1988
«Vi må tilbake til det hellige i liturgien. Liturgien er ikke noe festlig; vi møtes ikke for å ha det hyggelig sammen. Det er ikke interessant at presten har strevd for å finne på noe nytt og overraskende i messen.» Dette sa kardinal Ratzinger i et foredrag til de chilenske biskopene i 1988, der hovedtemaet egentlig var Lefebvres splittelse.
While there are many motives that might have led a great number of people to seek a refuge in the traditional liturgy, the chief one is that they find the dignity of the sacred preserved there….
I confine myself to coming straight to this conclusion: we ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties.
The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the living God but the priest or the liturgical director.
Hele Ratzingers tale kan leses her (pdf), og jeg har tatt med flere ting fra den som handler om liturgien – og om sannhetsspørsmålet, og den rette forståelsen av vatikankonsilet: …