“To us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6): The Importance of the Infancy of Christ

Note: This is a slightly adjusted version of a talk given by the author in December 2023.

The Incarnation of Christ is, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.” (CCC 483). At Mass, we proclaim our belief in it in the Nicene Creed: “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” [1] So much can be said about this unique and singular event in history, but here we will be examining two questions in particular. Why did our Lord come as an infant child? And why is this important for us? 

“That is the Catholic Church!”: Cardinal Ratzinger’s Reaction to Private Masses at Fontgombault

In his recently published book Le grand bonheur (Fayard, 2020), Nicolas Diat relates a singular—and now, in light of the tragic suppression of private Masses in St. Peter’s, highly topical—anecdote about the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s reaction to witnessing the early morning private Masses simultaneously celebrated by some twenty monks at various side altars at Fontgombault Abbey in 2001. Diat had related the same story in an earlier book entitled L’homme qui ne voulait pas être pape (Albin Michel, 2014).

On July 22nd to 24th, 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger attended an international liturgical conference at Fontgombault Abbey where he delivered a lecture and gave a further impromptu lecture when he was asked to provide closing remarks on the Monday evening of July 24th. The next morning as the cardinal is preparing to depart back to Rome Diat relates the following story, as recounted to him by the then Abbot of Fontgombault, Dom Forgeot:

Resistance is never futile: An interview with Christian Marquant, founder of Paix Liturgique

We are pleased to present the text of an interview we recently conducted with Monsieur Christian Marquant of Paix Liturgique (“Liturgical Peace”). He belongs to the generation of extraordinary people who, as young men, acted decisively when their elders shrank from doing so: they resisted the imposition of liturgical novelty upon the people of God. Here, for the first time online, Christian recounts his adventures and misadventures from the mid-1960s to the present—above all, the establishment and work of Paix Liturgique, a multilingual, data-driven enterprise for the restoration of the usus antiquior all around the world. We are grateful for the many historic photos Mr. Marquant shared with us, most of which appear here for the first time. Dr. John Pepino kindly translated the interview from French into English.

 

Christian Marquant, Summorum Pontificum Conference, October 2020, Rome

The “Long March” of Paix Liturgique

Rorate Caeli: Dear Christian, you are the man who orchestrates Oremus-Paix Liturgique. Could you tell us about this movements and its activities?

 

Christian Marquant: It would hard to tell you what we are today without telling you at least some of our history as Catholic activists. It all began in the mid-1960s.

RORATE EXCLUSIVE—New biography describes great influence of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger in Vatican II

Rorate is pleased to publish the following article by Dr. Maike Hickson, in which she summarizes the information on (then Father and peritus) Joseph Ratzinger’s involvement in the Council as detailed in Seewald’s magisterial biography, the first volume of which will be released in English on December 15. While some of these facts are already well-known, they have never been presented with as much detail and coherence as Seewald offers. Hickson worked from both the original German edition and the forthcoming English translation. In publishing this critique, we acknowledge at the same time how indebted we are to Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for taking crucial and countercultural steps on behalf of the restoration of the authentic Roman liturgy.

The Great Influence of Joseph Ratzinger in the Revolutionary Upheaval of the Second Vatican Council

Dr. Maike Hickson

Peter Seewald’s authoritative biography, Benedict XVI: A Life—already published in German in its entirety, and due to be published in English in two volumes, with the first volume released on December 15 from Bloomsbury—describes in detail the important role then-Professor Joseph Ratzinger played before and during the Second Vatican Council. His influence helped to bring about a revolutionary change of the Council’s direction, tone, and topics. For example, he was able to change the Church’s presentation of the concept of the sources of Revelation, he helped suppress an independent schema on Our Lady, he opposed an “anti-Modernist spirit,” and he was in favor of using the vernacular languages during Holy Mass. As Seewald himself stated in a recent interview: Ratzinger helped the “advance of Modernism in the Church,” and “was always a progressive theologian.”