Please join us at Saint Francis de Sales in Benedict, Maryland, as we pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Benedict XVI

Carafalque erected in our church today in memory of Pope Benedict XVI.

Funeral prayers for a pope and offered today for Pope Benedict. Requiescat in pace.

Ratzinger: "Novus Ordo Does NOT Correspond To Vatican II"

Below are some quotes of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on Vatican II and the liturgy.

"I can say with certainty, based on my knowledge of the conciliar debates and my repeated reading of the speeches made by the Council Fathers, that [the new Missal] does not correspond to the intentions of the Second Vatican Council." - Father Joseph Ratzinger, 1976 (Letter to Wolfgang Waldstein).

"In part it is simply a fact that the Council was pushed aside. It had said that the language of the Latin Rite was to remain Latin, although suitable scope might be given to the vernacular. Today we might ask: Is there a Latin Rite at all anymore?" – Cardinal Ratzinger, 1986 (The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy)

"The liturgical reform, in its concrete execution, has moved further and further away from this origin [= the Liturgical Movement]. The result has not been reinvigoration but devastation." Ratzinger, 1990 (Theologisches).

"A sizable party of Catholic liturgists seems to have practically arrived at the conclusion that Luther, rather than Trent, was substantially right in the sixteenth century debate […]. It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood." Ratzinger, 2003 (Address in: Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy).

"In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful." Benedict XVI, (Letter to Bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum, 2007).