Monsignor Georg Ratzinger Has Died

Corpus Christi Watershed · July 1, 2020

HE Pope’s brother died today, which—for the Extraordinary Form calendar—is the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. (This feast seems to have been eliminated in the Ordinary Form calendar.)

You can also watch Part 2.

When Monsignor Georg Ratzinger retired (circa 1994), his brother—Cardinal Ratzinger—gave an interesting address in Regensburg:

* PDF Download • ADDRESS BY CARDINAL RATZINGER
—Taken from the CMAA website.

The man who would later become Pope Benedict XVI defends splitting the Sanctus and Benedictus in the Ordinary Form. This address was translated by Father Robert Skeris (from German into English) in the 1995 edition of the Sacred Music Journal.

Additionally:

While not directly related to the death of Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, if you click here you can see a rare photograph of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Follow the Discussion on Facebook

PDF Download • Vespers for the Dead

Mr. Albert Bloomfield kindly sent me “Vespers for the Dead”—which does not fulfill a priest’s obligation to pray the Divine Office, yet is often prayed when a loved one dies. Here is formatting A, and here it is again with formatting B.

—Jeff Ostrowski

20 October 2020 • “What we can’t share”

Almighty God has given to us the example of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday. Of course, along with those eight martyrs we honor their associates, e.g Father François Bressani. I can’t share with you the torments Father Bressani underwent at the hands of Iroquois: it is too brutal. It would tear your heart out. But I will share what Bressani’s Superior said, after receiving a letter from him: “The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger left on his right hand, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds—which are still open—from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth.” If you have the stomach for it, read what Father Bressani (d. 1672) underwent for Jesus Christ. Let his example help us never fall into sins of impurity, avarice, ingratitude, or envy.

—Jeff Ostrowski

13 October 2020 • Chopin talks Bach

My “pianist pedigree” goes from my teacher through Wiktor Łabuński through Felix Blumenfeld, who studied with Anton Rubinstein. I always considered myself part of the “Bach-Mozart-Chopin school” as opposed to the “Handel-Beethoven-Liszt school.” (Needless to say, there’s great overlap between these schools.) Before giving a concert, Frédéric Chopin would always shut himself up in a room and play through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The year Chopin died, he spent considerable time with the painter, Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863), who recounts hearing Chopin launch into a monologue on the transcendence of J.S. Bach, insisting that “the fugue is like pure logic in music,” and that “to know fugue deeply is to be acquainted with the element of all reason and all consistency in music.”

—Jeff Ostrowski

Subscribe to the CCW Mailing List