In Place of God

"Sacred dance is an important and critical component in the worship life of the contemporary Catholic Church

"Everything that is danced is in place of God".

In place of God you say? Yes, well, we rather suspected that was the purpose of your contemporary worship all along.

We're glad you had the honesty to say so.

But then this. We can't believe you don't see it:

"The egregious stupidity of this theologically handicapped and artistically illiterate pastor continues to dumbfound me these many, many months later".

Dumbfound? Truly? Stupefy, in the sense of having been rendered stupid, this we are ready to believe, but dumbfound? We are dubious. But we hope, and pray.

"Apostasy in Sacral Disguise"

Owing to the comments on Connect the dots... I am posting here another part (p 21-23) of Ratzinger's very good book, The Spirit of the Liturgy.

This is too long and I invite you not to read it, but I can't bear to edit it, nor am I so qualified.

In the context of Ratzinger having described the product of the liturgical reform as a banal fabrication, here is his take on the consequences that follow such fabrication. Pay special attention to the bit where he says "pointless", "empty" and especially "apostasy in sacral disguise":

Man himself cannot simply "make" worship. If God does not reveal himself, man is clutching at empty space. …But real liturgy implies that God responds and reveals how we can worship him.
...

In the Old Testament there is a series of very impressive testimonies to the truth that the liturgy is not a matter of "what you please." Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than in the narrative of the golden calf (strictly speaking, "bull calf"). The cult conducted by the high priest Aaron is not meant to serve any of the false gods of the heathen. The apostasy is more subtle. There is no obvious turning away from God to the false gods. Outwardly, the people remain completely attached to the same God. They want to glorify the God who lead Israel out of Egypt and believe that they may very properly represent his mysterious power in the image of a bull calf. Everything seems to be in order. Presumably even the ritual is in complete conformity to the rubrics. And yet it is a falling away from the worship of God to idolatry. This apostasy, which outwardly is scarcely perceptible, has two causes. First, there is a violation of the prohibition of images. The people cannot cope with the invisible, remote, and mysterious God. They want to bring him down into their own world, into what they can see and understand. Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one's own world. He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God.

This gives us a clue to the second point. The worship of the golden calf is a self-generated cult. When Moses stays away for too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking, and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification.

The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.

Rector Redux

A few days ago, I linked to the Rector and recommended him as warmly as ever I did recommend an accursed heretic.

I fear I may have led my gentle reader astray and feel as if additional comment is called for. The Rector, you see, has changed. He does not seem quite himself since the hiatus. He is not nearly so literary, or funny, or English.

Some have suggested the Rector may have suffered a bump on the head, but I think Freemasons actually have him locked up somewhere with the real Paul VI. An imposter has taken his place and is promulgating all manner of oddity.

Updates may follow, as appropriate.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to my blog. Indeed, yee haw even. Feeling a bit like a clip-show on a fizzled sitcom, now seems as good a time as any and better than most to look back at the year.

Outreach to Newfangled Catholics is taking up nearly fifteen percent of posts. Likewise weighted are exhibitions on muddled popular thinking, secular and ecclesial.

Around the five percent mark are sport, politics and culture, and making fun of Trads. Fatherhood seems rightly represented with about ten percent of posts.

Heretics and fools, accursed and contemptible, have been strongly represented. Leading the category have been the damnable bishops of the Canadian Patriotic Association. Also included are garden-variety heretics like Anglicans, politicians, and Jesuits.

Though shocked to find myself so well rounded, sadly, whisky and drink are barely represented in five percent of posts. Evidently a reordering of priorities is urgent.

So grab your hip-flask and tin-foil hat. For the next while at least, I mean to continue the Outreach to Newfangled Catholics but significantly expand the treatment of alcohol and making fun of trads. The Cannucki Bishops, increasingly inconsequential, may fade from view.

Connect the dots...

Like a bell clanging in the ear of the Newfangled Catholic, eventually he's just got to hear it. Even Ann Coulter's got it worked out:

"without a fundamental understanding of man's place in the world we risk being lured into, among other things, slavery"

Slavery you say?! But just how is man to realize his fundamental place?

Anyone?

Papa Ratz? Hast thou the answer?

"Whenever Israel falls away from the right worship of God... her freedom, too, collapses"

Now then, isn't it time we all just abandoned the wretched Novus Ordo?

At the Fireside

Though incompletely at ease in recommending a heretic, I hasten to distinguish between the merely accursed heretics and the really contemptible ones.

The Rector is not contemptible in the slightest and, glory be, is back and come out swinging.

He is not to be missed. Pour a glass of gin before you settle in. Add tonic water, you souse.

Archbishop Ranjith on the Mass

Again on why the Liturgy is all that matters, His Grace pretty much captures it:

"What happens in the celebration of the Lord’s glory is not a merely human reality. If one forgets this mystical aspect, everything gets mixed up and confused. If the liturgy loses its mystical and heavenly dimension, then who is left to help man free himself from his egoism and self-enslavement?"