Reddit reviews Theological Highlights of Vatican II
We found 2 Reddit comments about Theological Highlights of Vatican II. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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>The liturgy of the Mass is set in stone, it does not change.
Some Catholic authorities -- and quite traditional ones, at that -- believe not only that the Mass can change and has changed, but that in the centuries leading up to Vatican II, it had changed for the worse.
Before he was Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger had a few things to say about the liturgy from Trent on up to the eve of the Second Vatican Council:
> The fate of the liturgy in the West was now in the hands of a strictly centralized and purely bureaucratic authority. This authority completely lacked historical perspective; it viewed the liturgy solely in terms of ceremonial rubrics, treating it as a kind of problem of proper court etiquette for sacred matters. This resulted in the complete archaizing of the liturgy, which now passed the stage of living history, became embalmed in the status quo and was ultimately doomed to internal decay. The liturgy had become a rigid, fixed and firstly encrusted system... We can see this if we remember that none of the saints of the Catholic Reformation drew their spirituality from the liturgy.
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> With the end of the baroque period, the…endeavors of the Sacred Congregation of Rites to preserve old forms had obviously resulted in the total impoverishment of the liturgy. If the Church’s worship was once again to become worship of God in the fullest sense—i.e., for all the faithful—then it had to get away from fixed forms. The wall of Latinity had to be breached if liturgy were again to function either as proclamation or as invitation to prayer… behind the protective skin of Latin lay hidden something that even the surgery performed at Trent had failed to remove. The simplicity of the liturgy was still overgrown with superfluous accretions of purely historical value….the task only half finished at Trent had to be tackled afresh and brought to a more dynamic completion.
-from Ratzinger's Theological Highlights of Vatican II pp. 130-133 (emphasis mine)
Benedict XVI is the best non-traditionalist in my opinion. He has clear reasoning and no plain agenda. I mean he was clearly one of the progressives at the council and later was labeled a staunch conservative (haha). He has a lot of lectures and talks and writings out there. I also read this book which was good.
https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Highlights-Vatican-II-Benedict/dp/080914610X