"The Pope's Authority is Bound to the Tradition"

[Aug. 8, 2023] Just a friendly reminder that the idea of the pope's boundedness to Sacred Tradition is not some invention of Trad Catholic bloggers. Going back 23 years to the publication of Joseph Ratzinger's pivotal work The Spirit of the Liturgy, we find the following:

With his Petrine authority, the pope more and more clearly took over responsibility for liturgical legislation, thus providing a juridical authority for the continuing formation of the liturgy. The more vigorously the primacy was displayed, the more the question came up about the extent and limits of his authority, which, of course, as such had never been considered. After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also applies to the liturgy. It is not "manufactured" by the authorities. Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity....[I]t would lead to the breaking up of the foundations of Christian identity if the fundamental intuitions of the East, which are the fundamental intuitions of the early Church, were abandoned. The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition. Still less is any kind of general "freedom" of manufacture, degenerating into spontaneous improvisation, compatible with the essence of faith and liturgy. The greatness of the liturgy depends—we shall have to repeat this frequently—on its unspontaneity (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, 2000, pp. 165-166).

Raztinger says the idea that the pope can do anything in liturgical matters, even "on the mandate of an ecumenical council," is merely an "impression," which the Cardinal goes to explain is erroneous.

He says it is incorrect to view the pope as an "absolute monarch" who can do whatever he wishes with the Church's liturgical patrimony. "The authority of the pope is not unlimited." He is, in fact, bound in his authority as a trustee or "guarantor" to the Word of God. The received Tradition constitutes the boundary of his power, "and this also applies to the liturgy." 

Ratzinger teaches that the pope must respect the "integrity and identity" of the liturgy, of which he is a "humble servant" of its lawful development. The idea that the liturgy can simply be manufactured is a sign of its degeneration, in no way "compatible with the essence of faith and the liturgy."

You can disagree with Cardinal Ratzinger here, as of course this is merely his opinion as a private theologian. But you cannot assert that these arguments are mere Traddy talking points concocted by bloggers to justify disobedience. The pope's boundedness to tradition, that the pope is not an absolute monarch with unlimited powers, that the liturgical tradition must be respected by the pope, etc. were all points recognized as fundamental by the man who was the chief doctrinal authority in the Church for deacdes under St. John Paul II, who is widely recognized as one of the modern Church's greatest liturgical thinkers, and who enshrined these ideas in the teaching of his pontificate. We are not quasi-schismatics for insisting on the very points that Ratzinger held as central to authentic liturgical renewal.

It's sad this has to be stressed, but the quality of discourse on such matters is at an all-time low with a garbage dump of nonsense being posted on this subject almost daily.