Google+
 
Pagina precedente | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 » | Pagina successiva

ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 21/07/2014 00:41
Autore
Stampa | Notifica email    
14/06/2009 06:48
OFFLINE
Post: 17.704
Post: 378
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Senior



'The new iconoclasts
have destroyed the faith'

by Maria Antonietta Calabro
Translated from

June 13, 2009

A review of
L'ERESIA DELL'INFORME:
lA LITURGIA ROMANA E IL SUO NEMICO

Cantagalli, 2009, 252 PP

Published in English in 2006
The Heresy of Formlessness:
The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy


Martin Mosebach's book, a defense of traditional Catholic liturgy, will be out in bookstores in Italy on Tuesday. The volume is published in a series of cultural publications based on the teachings of Benedict XVI, who during the liturgy of Corpus Domini on Thursday, reiterated that "liturgy must be respected", referring to the 'secularization even within the Church" with the view of 'transforming it into an NGO' [non-governmental organization - those international advocacy groups beloved by the UN because they generally support liberal causes dear to UN bureaucrats] .

In the very society that is dominated by a culture of image, the Church has undergone an assault by the new iconoclasts, who by their debasement of the liturgy, have managed to deal a very grave blow to the Catholic faith, resulting in "a historical and religious catastrophe'.

The hues used by Martin Mosebach are downright Caravaggio-like, and his polemics do not spare anyone. This passionate apologia for the beauty of the Church's great liturgical tradition is developed not by a theologian nor a canon law expert, but by one of the most important of contemporary German writers.

That means he comes from the country where the post-Conciliar distortions have been the worst, the native land of Benedict XVI himself, who often underscores the threat of secularization to the Church (most recently in his Corpus Domini homily last Thursday) and that 'liturgy must be respected".

"Linguistic and musical kitsch, as well as in contemporary images and architecture, have completely inundated the external image of the Church's public activities," writes Mosebach.

His book title and subtitle leave no doubt: he describes the heresy of formlessness, alluding directly to a Mephistophelean enemy of the ancient Roman liturgy "which should properly be called Gregorian" but is rather referred to as Tridentine, almost as if to negatively underscore its association with the Counter-Reformation. [The Council of Trent was called specifically to counteract the Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther.]

The publication of the book will surely rekindle the debate over the Lefebvrians, on the restoration of tradition, and even on the rapprochement between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Churches, which, starting with teh Orthodox Churches, have been able to 'preserve' the pluri-millennial tradition of liturgy that is more or less that of the Latin Church.

"The Mass of St. Gregory the Great is today found confined to the 'extremist fringe' of the Roman Church, while the divine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom lives in all its splendor in the very heart of the Orthodox Church(es)".

On the level of 'common sense', of a writer who describes behavior, Mosebach follows in the wake of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar whose principal work was Glory, for a theological esthetic, whose first volume is entitled 'Perception of form".

In the same way that man is soul as well as body, form and content cannot be separated, Mosebach affirms, that is, 'diabolically' separated [Greek diaballein, to separate].

For this reason, the form that liturgy has assumed over the centuries, through a slow and almost involuntary process, is not independent of the salvific content of the Mass.

"Only saints like Ambrose or Augustine or Thomas Aquinas," writes Mosebach, "could have added anything to the Mass, not men closeted in some office, not even if they live in Vatican City."

It was thus, he says, that "the modernizer and progressivist Paul VI" became a 'tyrant of the Church" in the sense of the word as used in antiquity, when "the interruption of tradition on the part of the sovereign was defined as an act of tyranny".

[Personally, what I found most unsettling and troubling about the liturgical reform of 1969-1970 - as objectionable as the very changes made - was the fact that radical change in a liturgy more than 500 years old was imposed literally overnight.

But I wonder if anywhere in the book, Mosebach acknowledges that Paul VI - whom I will always hold it against Paul VI that he gave in to his liturgical advisers and their misguided idea that protestantizing the Mass would 'popularize' it - apparently realized soon enough how the Novus Ordo had opened the door to all kinds of liturgical abuses, emblematic of all other post-conciliar liberalizing abuses, and used an allusion to Satan as Mosebach does when he spoke about 'the fumes of Satan that had somehow infiltrated into the Church'.]


The only historical comparison to describe this war against 'the beauty of the liturgy' - the visible face of mystery, according to Mosebach - was the Byzantine iconoclasm during the the 8th and 9th centuries, the so called War of teh Icons.

But the liturgical iconoclasm of our time had something different: "To my mind, it arose from religious ischemia and exhaustion".

In its essence, it constitutes a forgetting: "The standard that holds for art must, to a greater degree, apply to the public prayer of the Church: namely, that the ugly can only come from the untrue, and in the field of religion, this means the presence of the Satanic".

The German writer gives this pitiless definition: "The model of this new liturgy is the presidential table at a party meeting, an assembly with microphones and leaves - to the left, an ikebana vase with exotic and bizarre plants with old roots, and on the right, two TV lights set into handmade candle holders. With seeming dignity and thoughtfulness, the members of the administrative council look at the public, as clerics do during a concelebration.

"Such an assembly, regulated by a democratic order of the day, is the phenotype of the new liturgy and this is none other but the inevitable consequence of the fact that those who do not approve of supra-temporal mystery inevitably wind up in political and social affairs".

There is no third way, the author says. And naturally, one often arrives at rupture: "There are clerics who do not find it easy to decide on the face they should have at the Consecration. What should be the facial expression of someone who performs the Consecration?"

So, the success of a 'celebration' of Mass is gauged by the 'performance' of the priest. On the altar, in place of the crucifix, they have the microphone to amplify their preaching
- which could be 'unctuous or all-knowing, intellectual or bombastic, intimate or sober". Not to forget night-light type candles.

A quotation from Goethe - a dialog from Faust - expresses the unappealable verdict of the writer: "I have often heard this boast - that a comedian can preach to a priest. But surely if the priest is a comedian, sometimes this can happen".

On the part of the faithful, there is their so often cited 'active participation' in the Mass. What was active in the washing of the feet, it is asked, seeing that St. Peter did not want to be part of it?

For the faithful today, it makes no difference now whether they are standing or seated. And that they almost never kneel.

In contrast, "it was through the signs of adoration that I could see from my earliest infancy," Mosebach writes, "that the Host became for me that which the tradition of the Church says that it is: a living Being".





P.S. I have found an extensive book review of Mosebach's book by a Benedictine Oblate when it came out in the English translation, but it is in PDF format and I dom't have the time to do the line by line adjustment needed when converting PDF to regular text formatting, so here is the link:

www.andrewespress.com/formless.pdf




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/07/2014 00:41]
Amministra Discussione: | Chiudi | Sposta | Cancella | Modifica | Notifica email Pagina precedente | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 » | Pagina successiva
Nuova Discussione
 | 
Rispondi
Cerca nel forum

Feed | Forum | Bacheca | Album | Utenti | Cerca | Login | Registrati | Amministra
Crea forum gratis, gestisci la tua comunità! Iscriviti a FreeForumZone
FreeForumZone [v.6.1] - Leggendo la pagina si accettano regolamento e privacy
Tutti gli orari sono GMT+01:00. Adesso sono le 22:27. Versione: Stampabile | Mobile
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com