Pope Benedict XVI Archives - Page 2 of 97

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope cracked down on Latin Mass to halt ideological ‘restorationism’

May 10, 2023

Pope Francis has said he launched the latest crackdown against access to the Traditional Latin Mass because the Old Rite was being misused “in an ideological way”. The Pontiff told a group of fellow Jesuits that he authorised the “rescript” that led to the cancellation of Old Rite Masses in churches throughout the world because

‘Careless words cost lives’ – reflections on recent statements from the Pontifical Academy for Life

April 25, 2023

A number of news outlets have picked up the story that Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has appeared to lend his support the legal toleration of assisted suicide. The story is based on a speech he gave during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. In a later clarification, the Archbishop stated that he “reaffirms his

It would have been better if Summorum Pontificum had been left alone

March 28, 2023

On February 21, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, headed by prefect Cardinal Arthur Roche, issued a rescript, empowering Cardinal Roche with absolute and arbitrary power to grant or deny exceptions to Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio letter, Traditionis Custodes, which severely restricts celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).

Roche implements further Vatican crackdown on the Traditional Latin Mass: but why?

February 23, 2023

The dust is beginning to settle on the rescript of the motu proprio Traditiones Custodes which was issued in Rome on the afternoon of Shrove Tuesday, after Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, was received in audience by the Holy Father. Diocesan bishops will no longer be given the agency and final authority over whether new parishes within their dioceses should be permitted to host celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).

Bishop Barron: The teachings of the Church Fathers are our ‘spiritual weapons’ – it is madness to throw them away

February 08, 2023

(Photograph: Catholic Herald columnist Katherine Bennett helped organise Bishop Barron’s UK tour) I have been watching Bishop Barron online for over a decade. I became a member of his enormously popular “Word on Fire” apostolate, and I spent much of last year helping Brenden Thompson of Catholic Voices organise his upcoming visit to the UK. I,

Heart speaks to heart: Benedict XVI’s theological debt to Newman

February 01, 2023

By his own admission, the high point of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI was his beatification of St John Henry Newman in Cofton Park, Birmingham, in September 2010. Throughout his adult life Benedict so admired Newman’s “theology of conscience” that he became perhaps the world’s greatest exponent of Newman’s teachings in this field. He

In the presence of the Angels: Benedict XVI’s theology of Church music

February 01, 2023

Liturgy is central to the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI – and music was central to his vision of liturgical renewal. In an address to the eighth International Church Music Congress, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said: “The liturgy is supposed to be opus Dei, God’s work, in which he Himself acts first, and we become the redeemed

Benedict XVI’s care for catechism and catechists

February 01, 2023

Benedict XVI’s Catechism of the Catholic Church is a unique gift, says Caroline Farey