SPIRITED THINKING SINCE 1888
Benedict XVI
Journey from top dog to faithful hound
October 21, 2021
Piers Paul Read reviews Benedict XVI: A Life Volume II: 
Professor and Prefect to Pope and 
Pope Emeritus 1966-the Present 
by Peter Seewald
On the unity of the Church in our times
July 25, 2021
In a homily preached on 18 July 2021 at the Monastère Saint-Benoît, liturgical scholar Dom Alcuin Reid offers both a reflection on the place of the traditional Latin Mass in the unity of the Church, and a description of how his monastery will respond to Francis’s Traditionis Custodes. He asked us to highlight his call
What Benedict XVI thought about liturgical change
July 22, 2021
A week after Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, liturgical scholar Dom Alcuin Reid predicts what he will do about the liturgy. A monk of the Monastere Saint-Benoit in Frejus-Toulon, France, his book The Organic Development of the Liturgy carried a preface by then-cardinal Ratzinger. His 2007 article Summorum Pontificum a restoration after a gross impoverishment
Cardinal Müller critiques Pope Francis’ ‘harsh’ response to extraordinary form, compared to German Synodal Way
July 20, 2021
By Courtney Mares. Rome, Italy, Jul 19, 2021 / 16:00 pm. The former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has critiqued Pope Francis’ recent restrictions on extraordinary form Masses as “harsh” compared to his modest response to the “massive attacks on the unity of the Church” posed by the Synodal Way
Summorum Pontificum a restoration after a gross impoverishment
July 18, 2021
Though it has just been rejected by his successor, Benedict XVI’s motu propio Summorum Pontificum made many people happy when he issued it in 2007. Liturgical scholar Alcuin Reid celebrated the statement as a needed application of the real intentions of the Second Vatican Council. He had reason to say this. A monk of the
Twelve quick thoughts on Pope Francis dropping his long-expected bomb on the traditional latin Mass
July 16, 2021
1) In his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis says St. John Paul II’s indults were only meant to heal the breach with Archbishop Lefebvre, not to have the traditional latin Mass as a continuing reality in the Church (my paraphrase). He quotes Pope Benedict XVI on “allowing” the TLM, which seems to buttress the point
The battle of the papal biographers
March 01, 2021
As Pope Francis sends the religous book market into overdrive, Serenhedd James investigates the new blockbuster battleground
RIP Paolo Gabriele: the Butler who did it
March 01, 2021
The one-time butler to Benedict XVI, Paolo Gabriele, died on 22 November after a long illness. Prompting tabloid cries of “the butler did it”, he was the man at the heart of the Vatileaks scandal in 2012. Over the course of a year, Gabriele leaked hundreds of pontifical documents detailing corruption and mismanagement of Vatican
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