Friday, January 13, 2006

B-16's Next Target

The Pope is rumored to be working on an extensive re-organization of the various Curial offices. We suspect that there will be re-assignments outside of the Curia, likely including the "retirement" of a fellow named Marini--the current Papal (liturgical Master of Ceremonies.)

Following is a brief quote from Mgr. Marini:

Today one cannot organize a celebration without first having thought: who is celebrating, what is being celebrated, where is it being celebrated. The celebration is the point toward which converge diverse and reciprocally coordinated elements under the guide of that spirit of adaptation that is the soul of post-conciliar reform. ...One finds oneself acting, in a certain way, upon a theatrical stage [palcoscenico]. Liturgy is also a spectacle

In refreshing and VERY stark contrast, the words of Cdl. Ratzinger:

"The liturgical reform, in its concrete realisation, has certainly distanced itself from its origin. The result has not been a reanimation, but a devastation. On one hand, there is a degenerate show-style liturgy, in which religion is rendered interesting with the aide of fashionable stupidities and seductive moral rules, with temporary success in the gang of liturgical fabricators and with an attitude of very pronounced rejection by those who search in the liturgy not the spiritual "showmaster", but an encounter with the living God for whom all 'making' becomes insignificant, an encounter itself capable of allowing us to climb the true riches of the being."

HT: Rorate Coeli

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I pray I am one happy Catholic chic come January 25.

Terrence Berres said...

"rendered interesting"?

"temporary success"?

If I'd seen either over the last few decades, I'd be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the people in charge of the parish liturgy.

Dad29 said...

Ummmmnnhhhh..

R. (B-16) has made it clear in other writings that 'for it to be liturgy, some things MUST be fixed' (immutable.)

And while Parish lit-committ's do, indeed, maintain 'some fixed' things, B-16's point is larger: those things should be 'fixed' across the entire Catholic world.

It is inane (and wrong) to have a "north American" liturgy, a "French" liturgy, a "Chinese" liturgy...

Which was the point of the Tridentine reforms of 400 years ago, except that even those reforms allowed for Syriac, Mozarabic, (etc.) 'variations.'