Pope Leo XIV is set to personally present this year’s Ratzinger Prize to a theologian who previously argued that Catholics attached to the traditional Latin Mass should reconsider that position and return to the Novus Ordo Missae.
Vatican News reported Tuesday that Dr. John C. Cavadini, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, was selected by the Scientific Committee of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation to receive the prize. The award is named for Pope Benedict XVI.
According to the report, Pope Leo has approved the selection and is scheduled to present the award to Cavadini at the Apostolic Palace on December 19.
A Prize Named for Benedict, Given Amid a Liturgical Dispute
Cavadini is known for his work on the Church Fathers and St. Augustine. But the award is drawing attention because of his role in a 2022 series published by Church Life Journal, where he joined Mary Healy and Thomas Weinandy in challenging Catholics devoted to the older liturgical form.
“We hold that it is time for those who have become part of the Tridentine liturgical movement to reconsider their position,” the authors wrote, according to LifeSiteNews.
They argued that, “for the well-being of the Body of Christ,” Catholics in the Tridentine movement should “return to the Church’s ordinary liturgical form,” citing the interest of “unity.”
The authors also contended that the traditional Latin Mass does not fully express what they described as the baptismal priesthood of the laity.
“What was and still is absent in the Tridentine Mass is the full expression of the baptismal priesthood and its corresponding liturgical interaction with the ordained priesthood,” they wrote.
They added that the older rite “risks accentuating the ordained priesthood while undervaluing the priesthood of the faithful,” and framed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council as a retrieval of the common priesthood grounded in Christ’s priesthood.
Contrast With Summorum Pontificum
The controversy surrounding the award centers in part on Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which stated that the older form of the Roman rite had never been abolished. LifeSiteNews characterized Cavadini’s position as contrary to that document.
Benedict wrote in connection with the older liturgy, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us, too.”
LifeSiteNews reported that several commentators on X criticized the award as a “disgrace” to Benedict XVI’s memory.
Cavadini Responds to the Award
Responding to the news, Cavadini described his theological vocation in terms of service to the Church and the academy.
“I have sought to live out my vocation as a theologian following the model of Origen of Alexandria – a third-century theologian who repeatedly declared his desire to be a vir ecclesiasticus, a man of the Church,” Cavadini said.
“At Notre Dame, I have been able to live my vocation as both a man of the Church and a man of the academy,” he added. “I am particularly grateful for this award because it recognizes these two aspects of my vocation as a theologian.”
