The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the end of 2022 saw the demise of the last of the influential periti: those theologians who advised, and in many cases ghost-authored, the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Joseph Ratzinger was amongst the greatest Catholic conciliar theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – alongside de Lubac, Rahner, and Daniélou, to name a few. Ratzinger’s oeuvre is so extensive that it cannot be confined to liturgical theology, but what becomes clear from Twomey’s survey is that, for Ratzinger, liturgy is at the ‘heart of theology’Footnote ¹; that he ‘would touch on the liturgy when treating other subjects’.Footnote ² As Twomey makes clear in this volume, Ratzinger ‘has much [..] to contribute to the recovery of the authentic dynamics of Divine Worship […] which profoundly affects the lives of priests and faithful alike beyond the confines of academia’.Footnote ³ And so, in presenting The Dynamics of Liturgy, Vincent Twomey offers a composite examination of the late Pope’s liturgical theology to a wide readership, via his own lens as a missionary priest. Twomey is well qualified to do so, having been one of Ratzinger’s doctoral students and then, from the 1970s, part of the Ratzinger circle.

Twomey focuses five chapters on the most prominent aspects of Ratzinger’s liturgical writings; specifically, the cosmic dimension to the Liturgy, art and architecture, sacred music, and ritual. He includes a rather distracting excursus between chapters five and six, which focuses on Querida Amazonia: Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation on a possible Amazonian rite. The sixth chapter takes a forward-looking approach to a possible ‘New Liturgy for a New Epoch’, and, although Twomey had completed his text before the promulgation of Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes, this final chapter may still add some balanced nuance to the fractious discussions of liturgical forms in the Catholic world. An appendix on sacred chant and a postscript bring the volume to an eventual conclusion. Overall, the broad themes that Twomey covers are the cosmic and eschatological dimensions of liturgy, the interplay between tradition and innovation, the theological underpinnings of sacred time and space, and the role of the liturgy in the life of the Church and the individual believer. Twomey deftly synthesizes these themes, drawing extensively on a wide range and in-depth knowledge of Ratzinger’s writings and speeches.

The Introduction takes us back to the eve of the Second Vatican Council and reminds us of the importance of aggiornamento, as defined by Ratzinger in a paper intended for a meeting of European cardinals in Genoa. In this paper, Ratzinger’s major concern is the heathenism of Europe at the time, and the Church’s declining influence over human society and ethics as the twentieth century hurtled by. We are reminded of Ratzinger’s conviction that a Council seemed necessary to scrutinize the contemporary intellectual world in the light of the Gospel, so that the Church could, in turn, confidently speak its enduring claim on humanity to the people of the world – and not in ‘antiquated forms’.Footnote ⁴

It is helpful to have exposited again, at the end of the Introduction, the fissure between the deliberations and syntheses of the Second Vatican Council, and the presentation of these deliberations by the world’s media; something new and heretofore unfamiliar for those involved in the conciliar world. In short, Twomey once again brings to the fore how the spirit of the council somehow developed a life of its own, leading to changes and innovations that were not documented or intended. By way of reflection, he refers to a very important Christmas Address which Pope Benedict XVI gave to his cardinals in 2005, when Benedict re-asserted the great challenge which the operation of the Council exposed: producing a synthesis faithful both to the nature of the Church and to the dynamic which reformation inevitably unleashes. This, of course, presented itself most obviously in liturgical forms, which – much to the chagrin of Ratzinger (and, indeed, Twomey) – became open to subjective creative performance post-Council. It seems overly simplistic, however, to suggest that the reason for the (adverse) effects of the Second Vatican Council lay in the power of the media and the careless whims of global episcopacy. But this is what Twomey, and indeed Ratzinger, wish to claim. Many might argue conversely that the dynamic of the Second Vatican Council did indeed, as intended, ‘impart an ever-increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful’.Footnote ⁵

Two of Twomey’s chapters are dedicated to Ratzinger’s vision of the Liturgy. This is rooted in the history of the Old and New Testaments, but also necessarily gazes forward towards the eschaton, where we are led away from the comfortable and the mundane towards the future heavenly city. It is in these chapters that we are afforded a glimpse of Ratzinger’s sacramental theology, and of his emphasis on the cosmic nature of the Liturgy. For Ratzinger, Cosmic Liturgy means relating the present moment in our worship to the roots of why humanity was created (for worship); to sacrificial Jewish Temple worship (now transformed in Christ); to the physical matter of the species on the altar (created by human effort); and to the sphere of the invisible created order (angels and saints).

It is then that we are drawn into three chapters of what might, at first glance, appear less theological and more like functional liturgical study: art and architecture, music, and ritual. But not so. Twomey helpfully illustrates Ratzinger’s careful and thoughtful treatises on these subjects with his own experiences and reflections. And whilst certain unresolved questions are laid bare in these chapters – namely, what constitutes an appropriate liturgical space, apposite sacred music, or a true Christian anthropology of ritual – this is done with patience and fairness. Twomey is not one for polemic here, even if there is a wistful tone to his reflections on Ratzinger’s work.

The final chapter attempts to add a hopeful note to battle-worn debate. Perhaps a future Church characterised by a careful reform of the Reform? A new epoch where the Extraordinary Form and Ordinary Form can exist in parallel, as it seemed the late Pope Emeritus intended? This is what Twomey seems to propose, and he does so with a careful, measured tone – offering an example to many more acerbic discussions in other fora. Twomey refers to Ratzinger’s excellent work Faith and the Future, in which Ratzinger assures his readers that the future of the Church lies with those who are rooted deeply in faith, and not easily swayed by current trends. This is comfortingly reminiscent of Henri de Lubac, who wrote in his Paradoxes: ‘The one who wants to adapt himself too much risks letting himself be dragged along’.

Twomey has done the Church and, indeed, the liturgical world a great service by presenting the extensive fruits of Ratzinger’s liturgical theology with such brevity and sensitivity. Twomey’s own voice is, of course, very present, but, equally, he is never overbearing. It is often as if we are eavesdropping into a seminar between the two men (not surprising, given their actual relationship). We are none the worse off for such an approach. The extensive footnotes can be at times distracting, and endnotes may have been a better approach in a volume of this size. The Excursus, the Appendix, and the Postscript leave the reader wondering if we will ever finish, but, in a way, their inclusion is unavoidable. These are minor gripes with what is, overall, a very worthwhile synthesis of one of the seminal theologians of our time.