Posted on 06/20/2002 12:51:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
LITURGY-JESUITS Jun-19-2002 (710 words) xxxi
Liturgy not place for theatrics, say speakers at
Jesuit conference
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- Liturgy is a communal form of prayer and not a showplace for the creativity or the piety of any participant, whether celebrant or member of the congregation, said speakers at an international conference in Rome.
Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Mechelen-Brussels told the June 17-22 conference the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council rightfully emphasized the importance of the active participation of everyone at a liturgy.
But many attempts to involve people and make the liturgy more relevant have ended up being more a celebration of the creativity of planners and celebrants than of faith in Christ and his saving work, the cardinal said.
The International Meeting on Jesuit Liturgy brought together 122 Jesuits from 44 countries as well as Vatican officials and other Catholic and Anglican experts on liturgy.
Opening the conference, Cardinal Danneels, a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, said the active involvement of people in the liturgy is "an unparalleled gift" from Vatican II to the entire church.
However, he said, setting the liturgy free from "its untouchable quality, which in itself is not a bad thing," also left it open to "a sort of liturgical 'coup' in which the sacred is eliminated, the language trivialized and the cult turned into a social event."
"The exaggerated emphasis from before the 1950s on discipline, obedience, fidelity to the rubrics ... is replaced by self-will and by the elimination of every sense of mystery in the liturgy," Cardinal Danneels said.
The liturgy is not the community celebrating itself, he said. "We are not creators, we are creative servants and guardians of the mysteries. We do not own them nor did we author them."
"If we turn the liturgy into the most individual expression of the most individual emotion, then we wipe out any possibility of communal celebration," he said.
Cardinal Danneels likened liturgy to playing, saying it is something that is done for its own sake.
The power of the liturgy needs time and repetition in order to be understood, he said. "Analysis is out of place here; only a prolonged listening and familiarization is appropriate."
The cardinal also said time is needed to discern which expressions of local culture can appropriately be incorporated into the liturgy.
"It remains an open question whether we should consider inclusive language to be a question of inculturation," he said.
While some would describe the use of gender-inclusive language as "a radical cultural change," Cardinal Danneels said it appears to him to be "an anthropological problem which is not only significant for biblical and liturgical texts but for the use of language as such and for the whole dimension of conviviality between men and women."
Jesuit Father Robert F. Taft, professor emeritus at the Oriental Institute in Rome, said that, despite the fact that some of the world's best liturgical scholars are Jesuits, the liturgical life within the Society of Jesus is often inadequate.
When St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the order, insisted that Jesuits not be required to recite the Liturgy of the Hours together, he wanted to ensure that the members were free to minister to others anywhere and at anytime, Father Taft said.
"What Ignatius failed to see, because of the state of Catholic liturgy in his day, is that ... liturgy is, by its very nature and irreplaceably, public and communitarian: salvation is not an individual but a body called the church of Christ," he said.
"For prayer to be Christian, it must also be common, and if our prayer is not that, then we are inadequate as Christians and especially as praying Christians," he told the conference June 18.
The Jesuit decried the "largely privatized eucharistic practice" in much of the order where many Jesuit priests celebrate Mass privately each day.
"Private preference or devotional needs" are not an adequate reason to go against the church's preference for communal celebrations of the Mass, he said.
"In the matter of liturgical prayer, which is an expression of the life of the church, personal preference, taste and need always give way to the ideal expressed in the tradition and magisterial teaching of the church," Father Taft said.
END
"We are not creators, we are creative servants and guardians of the mysteries. We do not own them nor did we author them."
In other words, we are partakers of the liturgy, praying, receiving the Blessed Body and Blood of Christ together as a community.
Well, this fellow sounds very out of step. The whole purpose of the "liturgical reform" movement, which culminated in the Novus Ordo, was to move away from "stodgy ritual" and place more emphasis on the "charism" of the Presider, where it belongs.
The cardinal also said time is needed to discern which expressions of local culture can appropriately be incorporated into the liturgy.
Who needs time? "Inculturation" must move ahead at full speed. I believe it was Chairman Mao who said "Let a thousand Novus Ordos bloom." In the bad old days the identical Mass was celebrated in Roman Catholic churches throughout the globe. Now we know that each parish, each priest, should have a unique way of "celebrating" the communal meal.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of Battle; Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke Him, we humbly pray, and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell, Satan and all the other evil spirits, who prowl through the world, seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen
Salvation,thanks for posting the St. Michael prayer on different threads.We need it,this battle is ,in a large part,totally spiritual.
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