Faith & Spirit Quote by Joseph Ratzinger

Ratzinger’s move here is to quietly demote us. In an age that treats participation as a kind of spiritual cardio - the more you do, the more authentic it is - he insists the liturgy’s decisive “action” isn’t ours at all. The quotation marks around “action” are doing work: he’s taking aim at a modern, performance-shaped instinct that measures worship by visible busyness, emotional immediacy, or congregational creativity. For Ratzinger, that’s a category error. The liturgy isn’t a community project with religious décor; it’s the place where Christians submit to an initiative that precedes them.

The intent is theological but also cultural. Coming out of the post-Vatican II turbulence, Ratzinger spent decades watching Catholics argue over language, music, posture, and “active participation,” sometimes as if the point were to make the service feel contemporary and self-expressive. He doesn’t deny participation; he redefines it. You participate most by consenting to be acted upon - by letting God’s saving work, not your personality, set the terms.

The subtext is a warning about clerical and congregational ego alike. If God is the principal actor, the priest can’t be an emcee and the assembly can’t be an audience demanding a better show. The “new and distinctive” claim is rhetorical pressure: Christianity is not primarily moral uplift or communal bonding; it’s a claim about God intervening in history and, in the liturgy, making that intervention present. Ratzinger is staking worship on divine agency, not religious mood management.