27 August 2010

On Liturgy: priestcraft is also soulcraft

One word best describes this piece on the new Missal: BAM!

An excerpt:

Publicly owned corporations are more accountable to their shareholders than tenured bureaucracies, which may explain why it took the Ford Motor Company only two years to cancel its Edsel, and not much longer for Coca Cola to restore its “classic” brand, while the Catholic Church has taken more than a generation of unstopped attrition to try to correct the mistakes of overheated liturgists. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius is now in its sunset repose and the bright young things who seem to be cropping up now all over the place with new information from Fortescue and Ratzinger, may either be the professional mourners for a lost civilization, or the sparks of a looming golden age.

One thing is certain to a pastor: the only parishioners fighting the old battles are old themselves, their felt banners frayed and their guitar strings broken, while a young battalion is rising, with no animus against the atrophied adolescence of their parents, and only eager to engage a real spiritual combat in a culture of death. They usually are ignorant, but bright, for ignorance is not stupidity.

Go read the whole thing and give thanks to God!

Follow HancAquam ------------>

2 comments:

  1. That was a great article. One of the interesting things I've heard, time and again, is the complaint that mine is an "ignorant" generation. Fair enough, but ignorance is often the fault of the teachers who abandoned their duty to teach, as happened when catechesis began to focus less on the Catechism or even the Bible and Church history, and more on pop psychology, ideology, and the modern pet theories of whichever session leader happened to be in that day. The passage from John 21:15-17, "Feed my sheep...feed my lambs...feed my sheep," should imply authentic instruction ("Man does not live on bread alone..."), a failing of the Church (at least in the states) for the last few decades. This new translation should be a step in the right direction. If we are ignorant, we are also eager to learn. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Giving thanks to God...

    The whole piece, and many of the comments, too, are refreshingly out there, and no nonsense, and thoughtful. Real? Is that it? I couldn't put it down, as it were. Thanks for the link, Father.

    This thought among a few others stands out for me. "Neglect of the aesthetics of worship is not remedied by the worship of aesthetics."

    ReplyDelete