Pp. Emeritus Benedict XVI has not stopped writing on the Only Thing That Matters, the Mass (liturgy.)
According to katholische.de, the German Catholic newspaper:
...The
emeritus pope, in the preface, is pursuing a core thesis that the
deeper cause of the present crisis of the Church is the darkening of God
in the liturgy.
"The misunderstanding of the liturgical form, which is widespread in
the Church, focuses on the aspect of submission as well as its own
activity and creativity". The consequence: "The doing of man has certainly put the presence of God in oblivion". The Church, however, lives on the "right celebration of the liturgy", emphasizes Benedict XVI. If the pre-eminence of God were no longer clear in the liturgy and in life, the church was in danger....
...Benedict XVI draws a pessimistic picture of the present in his text. "In the consciousness of today's people, the affairs of God and thus also the liturgy did not appear urgently," he complains. All things are urgent today, only the matter of God is not.
The emeritus pope recalls the principle of the monastic rule of
Benedict of Nursia (around 480-547) that nothing should be preferred to
worship....
So. Where is GOD in your parish's Mass? Has He been stashed someplace behind a screen of incessant jabber-flappy, or incessant, purposeless, music? Do the "announcements" take more time than the Canon of the Mass?
Hmmmm???
Pope Benedict’s “The Spirit of the Liturgy” of seventeen years ago should be required reading for every seminarian, deacon, priest, bishop and Cardinal. The current Pope could benefit from a close reading – and implementation of it also – but I’m not holding my breath on that.
ReplyDeleteIn it, Benedict put his finger on all that was wrong and wrongly promoted - jammed down our throats, more like – in the Novus Ordo Mass since Vatican II. God was no longer the focus. The Sacrifice of the Mass became the ‘community meal’ and a narcissistic celebration of us.
Right order will not be restored in this pontificate and will likely take more than one subsequent pontificate to be effected.