It’s All About Liturgy

The author here makes a good point, that regardless of how bad, awful, outlandish, puerile, even sacrilegious liturgical abuse may be, it is almost never disciplined or corrected, but tolerated, and even, in many ways, aided and abetted. Sadly, it seems, liturgia moribundus est.

But all is not lost. We may reiterate the point that we are the Church militant, with liturgical rules. As the Catechism reminds us “no sacramental rite may be modified or manipulated at the will of the minister or the community”. What is more, “(e)ven the supreme authority of the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily”. The liturgical actions signify not only what is being ‘done’ in the sacraments in the deeper, spiritual reality, but they cause that very reality to come into being. If we unhinge the liturgy, we ourselves become unhinged, doctrinally, morally, even ontologically. The Church is diminished, and so are we. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, in that order: The law of praying, is the law of believing, is the law of living. They lead inevitably, one to the other, for worse, or, we may hope, for the better.

Hence, the core of our current malaise is liturgical. For we live as we worship, which defines our relationship to God. This is the essential teaching of Scripture, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, of the Magisterium, the Fathers, and the saints throughout history. Saint Jean Vianney would treat himself with contempt, with his raw, moldy potatoes and selling all the furniture in the rectory, but he lavished great care, even expense, upon the liturgy and the church. Nothing is too good for God!

We need to get serious, and, as Peter Kwasnieski pointed out recently, move past a false, rose-tinted optimism, which minimizes and obscures the reality of evil, sin, the devil and the possibility of eternal loss. Back to Scripture, to Tradition, and to proper and fitting worship of the Father of us all, through Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer. +

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