A multifaceted affirmation of Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy

The relation between ontology and history, writes Joseph Ratzinger, is “the fundamental crisis of our age.”¹ It is the pressing question of contemporary theology, a question that Ratzinger repeatedly queries. In dense prose he argues that since creatureliness has its origin in creative freedom, i.e., God, “it includes, therefore, in a positive way, the temporality of being as the mode of its self-fulfillment, history as substantiality, not mere accidentally, but in such a way that time has its unity in the Creator Spiritus and, because it is sequential, is still a continuity of being by way of succession.”²

The human creature has a nature, but it is a nature that he fulfills on his pilgrimage through time. In Jesus Christ, God has time for us, and he draws us into the dynamics of relation: the Church is dynamic and so too is her liturgy. The motivating and driving force of liturgy—the other meaning of dynamics—is the Holy Spirit. Yet, the unchanging ground of liturgy, the Holy Spirit, works within history, continually bringing, as Fr. D. Vincent Twomey puts it, “order out of the chaos.” Liturgy involves fidelity and fecundity. It is with these two senses of ‘dynamics’—the driving force and the pattern of historical growth (the ontological and the historical)—that Twomey sets out his interpretation of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy.

Twomey studied under Ratzinger in Regensburg in the 1970s, and, like his Doktorvater, is a truth seeker and thereby a bridge builder.³ The Dynamics of Liturgy is not a polemic for or against either the Tridentine Mass or the Novus Ordo. He does not polarize, nor does he remain naively uncritical:

Lest anyone be led astray by nostalgia for the pre-Vatican II liturgy, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger reminded the participants at the Fontgombault Liturgical Conference in July 2001 how much the traditional liturgy before the council was in urgent need of reform. That, to put it mildly, the reform was not exactly what the council had intended is what motivated Ratzinger to devote so much time to promoting what has been called the “reform of the reform”. In the meantime, this so-called Benedictine Reform seems to have lost some of its initial steam. But it is unstoppable, since it is so desperately needed.⁴

Twomey takes seriously the vital importance of liturgy. The epigraph to the Introduction, a quotation from Ratzinger’s A New Song for the Lord, appropriately sets the stage: “Liturgy involves our understanding of God and the world and our relationship to Christ, the Church, and ourselves. How we attend to liturgy determines the fate of the faith and the Church.”⁵ Originally essays, each chapter implicitly unpacks one or more element of this opening epigraph, exploring the relation between ritual and God, the world, Christ, the Church, and our own self-understanding.

It is worth noting that while inspired by Ratzinger’s theology, Twomey does not simply repeat or synthesize Ratzinger’s thought. He brings to bear on the matter his own experience as a theologian and as a missionary, a sort of personal, phenomenological, and theological affirmation of Ratzinger’s theology of liturgy.

“Liturgy,” writes Twomey in chapter 1, “is the communal nature of worship: the habitat of the sacraments, the oxygen they need to breathe. Liturgy is something living, a communal expression of our human response to Christ’s offer of grace that we call sacrament.”⁶ Liturgy is the world of sacrament; therefore, to understand liturgy we must understand sacrament. Liturgy without a sacramental understanding is at best beautiful entertainment and at worst slavish pharisaic extrinsicism. In Ratzinger’s theology, the world of sacrament is intrinsically connected to (1) the inner relation between the Old Testament and the New Testament concerning worship, i.e., typology; (2) the cosmic character of the liturgy; and (3) world religions. Thereby, liturgy has a history, an ontology, and an anthropology.

Inspired by the liturgical movement of the early twentieth century, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council hoped to implement this deep sacramental and liturgical understanding. What then went wrong, asks Twomey, a question that he repeatedly returns to and analyzes from a variety of angles. In the first chapter he answers with one word: creativity. Liturgical creativity overshadowed the awareness of rite as a prescribed liturgical form. According to Ratzinger “liturgy can only be liturgy to the extent that it is beyond the manipulation of those who celebrate it.”⁷ Liturgy is not made; liturgy is received. At the same time, liturgy is dynamic. It grows out of the experience of the Church as she moves through history, and thus “this Missal can no more be mummified than the Church herself.”⁸

What then is the Vatican II notion of participatio actuosa? At the deepest level, active participation is an inner process. It is more than mere external action (kneeling, standing, sitting, responding, etc.). It is Marian participation, not modern participation; active reception, not active recreation. Liturgy mediates an encounter with God himself, the mystery of mysteries—God cannot be circumscribed. Liturgical participation should reflect this mystery as should liturgy itself. Liturgy is not the place for banal enlightenment rationalism. Our eyes should be blinded by the smoke of incense, not by the fuzz of felt banners.

The Mass is rooted in creation. Felt banners belittle the cosmic nature of the Mass (chapter 2). God created us for relationship, for love, in which the apex is worship: we are called to be cosmic priests! With a cosmic sense of liturgy, we encounter the “awe-fulness” of worship; we are brought out of ourselves to participate in the rhythm of the cosmos.

Unfortunately, the Novus Ordo, as typically celebrated, does not give due attention to this cosmic element. Twomey gives two examples of this reduction. First, the orientation of the priest in the celebration of the Mass turned from the cosmic to the communal, ad orientum to versus populum (not a prescription of Vatican II). With the priest celebrating ad orientum the whole body of believers is oriented to the rhythm of creation, expectantly looking East together where the Lord will return in glory.

Second, “angels tend to be almost forgotten in the revised liturgy.”⁹ Not only are angels minimally invoked in the Novus Ordo, but they are also minimally represented by statues or paintings in post-Vatican II churches. Cardinal Schönborn, also a former student of Ratzinger’s, helpfully highlights the cosmic importance of angels:

Communion with the angels in prayer and love maintains our awareness that creation is not restricted to the earth. Without the knowledge our faith gives us of the angels, the invisible dimension of creation is in danger of fading from our minds, and with that will fade the complementarity of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and the bodily, of nature and grace, which embraces the whole scope of creation.¹⁰

The middle chapters of The Dynamics of Liturgy bring to the fore the importance of beauty. Twomey calls for an end to what Bishop Barron refers to as “beige Catholicism.” “Beauty and truth,” Twomey articulates, “are intrinsically related; not only can the denial of the one lead to the denial of the other, but the absence of either undermines our very humanity.”¹¹ We need to exorcise the iconoclasm of modernity. Beauty, in all its forms, should be present in our churches and in our Masses. Church architecture should be an image of heaven, evoking wonder. Sacred music should lift our hearts in awe and reverence, but, Ratzinger points out, it “must be humble, for its aim is not applause but ‘edification.’”¹² The Church is not a town meeting hall but a sacred place of human-divine encounter.

While the Tridentine Mass may be excessively moralistic and legalistic, similarly individualism, in the guise of creativity, highjacked the reform of the liturgy. According to chapter 5, a proper sense of liturgy requires a proper sense of ritual. Informed by ethnology, Twomey writes, “communal rituals are responses to primordial experiences that touch, not some aspect of our lives, but our basic humanity in its totality. The rituals open us up to what transcends our mundane existence and, in so doing, create a bond among the participants in the rites that makes life worth living at a personal and a communal level.”¹³ Rituals bring about communal oneness. What the Eucharist does at the level of sacramental mystery—form the body of Christ—is an extension of the natural pattern of human rites. Grace perfects nature!

The concluding chapter is rich and full of wisdom. Near the end, Twomey explicitly engages with Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which permitted the general use of the Extraordinary form. This is fitting because, in a way, the entire book reads like a dialogue between Summorum Pontificum and Pope Francis’ Traditionis Custodes, albeit Twomey wrote the book prior to Francis’ Motu Proprio. Twomey highlights that Benedict XVI’s intention was for a mutual enrichment between the two rites, something that would bring about liturgical unity. As two usages of one rite, Benedict XVI stated that “these two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi (rule of faith).”¹⁴

However, the dialogue between the Novus Ordo and the Extraordinary form, which Twomey admits is a far richer ritual (albeit, with its own inbuilt weaknesses), has led to division not unity. With great acumen he notes, “if the liturgy no longer serves the mission of the Church to gather together all things in Christ (cf. Ephesians 1:10), if it is a source of division, then something serious, indeed, is wrong, and the most perfectly conducted Extraordinary Form cannot compensate for the danger it poses to the Church’s mission.”¹⁵

Twomey is hopeful about the future of the liturgy, but the way forward is not entrenchment in an ossified past. Liturgy lives in history and thus dynamism is innate. The Novus Ordo has the potential for genuine rich ritual expression. By celebrating the Mass in accord with Sacrosanctum Concilium and orienting it with the cosmos—ad orientum—the Novus Ordo takes on a liturgical gravitas. I can attest to this; my parish priest abides by the prescriptions of Sacrosanctum Concilium, and he incorporates the cosmic into the Novus Ordo, all of which fosters a solemn and profound liturgy. Yet, Twomey pushes for more. The beauty of the Novus Ordo is inchoate; the depths have not been plumbed; the reform of the reform needs to continue. Perhaps, he insightfully suggests, one organic source of inspiration and guidance toward this end could be the Anglican Ordinariate (another of Benedict XVI’s initiatives).

The Dynamics of Liturgy is an important and insightful book, not just for Ratzinger scholars but for those who care about the mission of the Church to transform the whole world into a liturgy of adoration. It is fitting to conclude with Twomey’s own words, a hope-filled evangelistic call for the dynamics of liturgy:

Ours is a time of opportunity and, as ever, a time of hope. The Divine Liturgy is at the heart of the Church and her mission to save mankind, a mankind that is in the process of forgetting God and, so, descending into chaos and nihilism. The liturgy must be so formed and celebrated to enable contemporary man to experience God in a world that is becoming increasingly secular (and that not only in Europe or America). Since the dynamics of rituals are part of our DNA as human beings, our capacity for ritual is never entirely destroyed. That is a source of genuine hope, both for the Church and for the liturgy, once we face up to the inherent weaknesses of both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. But improving the rituals of the liturgy will take time and discernment, provided they are allowed to develop organically.¹⁶

The Dynamics of Liturgy: Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology of Liturgy: An Interpretation
by D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.
Ignatius Press, 2022
Paperback, 187 pages

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