Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)

Ius canonicum

EXEGESIS ON MOW PROPRIO SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM BY BENEDICT XVI 135

to be a single common rite. However, as a new reform cannot be decided in an office, but requires a process of growth and refinement, the Pope (Benedict XVI) points out that for the time being, and most importantly, both forms of the Roman Rite can and should mutually enrich each other”.

And straight afterwards he concludes with these excellent words: “Those who, on the contrary, reject the proposal of a new liturgical movement and see the motu proprio as a step backwards in regards to Vatican II, probably understand the post-conciliar liturgical reform as a point of arrival which should be defended at all costs, according to the rigid conservatism of many of those who favour progressiveness”.28

Joseph Ratzinger’s personal viewpoint is not very far from these judgements, for in his letter to Hans Lothar-Barth, mentioned above, he had already said: “In the long run, the Roman Church should come back to having one sole Roman Rite”. And he had similarly expressed himself in an interview in 2001, when he said: “I am obviously in favour of Vatican II, which has brought us so many good things. But to think that it is insurmountable and reject any thought about what we should recall from the history of the Church, is a sectarianism which I do not accept”.29 And after that he concluded: “I think it is a present-day task for the new generation to reform the reform, not with revolutions - I am a reformer, not a revolutionary - but by changing what should be changed. To assert that any reform is impossible seems to me to be an absurd dogmatism”.

Alberto Soria Jiménez, OSB Abadía de la Santa Cruz Valle de los Caldos alberto.soria@valledeloscaidos.es

28 Koch, K., Dalia liturgia antica un ponte ecumenico, in L ’Osservatore Romano (May 15,h 20II) 7.

29 Cf. Fernández Rodríguez, P., Formáción litúrgica en la escuela de Benedicto XVI, in Liturgia y Espiritualidad 41 (2010) 405^106, in which it picks up on the interview with the Cardinal, carried out by Kubler, M. for La Croix, published on December 28,h2001 with the title Les dangers qui menacent la liturgie aujourd'hui. See also P-M. GY, “L’Esprit de la liturgie du Cardinal Ratzinger est-il fidéle au Concile, ou en reaction contre?”, La Maison-Dieu 229 (2002) 171-178.