14. Unless we truly love God, we will not be able to love our neighbours. How can our worship of God help us stand up in defence of human life?
According to the ancient wisdom of the Church, the law of worship is essentially connected to the law of belief and the law of practice. Christ comes into our midst through the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Sacraments of the Most Holy Eucharist and of Penance, to cleanse our hearts of sin and to inflame our hearts with His own love through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Only when we have a strong sense of the reality of the encounter with Christ in the Sacred Liturgy will we understand the truths of the faith and the moral life, and what they mean for our daily living. This sense is fostered by a manner of celebrating the Sacred Liturgy with our eyes fixed on Christ and not on ourselves. It should not surprise us that the period of post-Conciliar experimentation with the Sacred Liturgy, a period which was marked by so many liturgical abuses, was accompanied by a loss of faith and by moral decline. If the Sacred Liturgy is seen as a purely human activity, an invention of man, it will no longer be true communion with God and, therefore, will no longer nourish the faith and its practice in everyday living.
Cdl. Burke’s response to point #6 is also very timely.
I know you are not the least interested in what I have to say and would rather I just disappear, but I think this is really something to think about. This is a real chicken and egg kind of thing to me. Did abuse of the liturgy lead to loss of faith, or did loss of faith lead to the abuse of the liturgy? The reason I ask is because I see groups who are very faithful to the liturgy, such as SSPX and SSPV, and yet they have separated themselves from the Church. So is being “faithful to the liturgy” really the ultimate answer? All sedevacantist groups are highly critical of liturgical abuse, yet this doesn’t seem to be bringing them back to the church. FYI, I love the TLM.
What is the answer? Personally, I think it is Isa. 66:2. If our hearts are not right, our actions, no matter how good they may look on the outside, mean nothing.
Thanks for letting me post, Elliot.
As long as we can remain charitable, post away! I just didn’t like how things got off with your inaugural visit. :s
We’re all in this together.
Mary, I think you’re right.
There were problems long before Vatican II and the liturgical reform.
Popes going back into the 19th Century wrote about the problems of modernism in the Church. There were no clown masses going on back then.