Wednesday, March 09, 2016

Money quote from Henry Sire on impoverishment of Catholic devotional life


Another reader who has enjoyed reading Henry Sire's Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Traditionrecently emailed what he judges to be the "money quote" from the book. Something, certainly, to ponder:
"The central fact of the past fifty years is the vast impoverishment of the spiritual life of Catholics as a result of the liturgical revolution. The tradition of the Church had enriched the life of the faithful with a great wealth of spiritual aids: the intimate devotion of low Mass and the grandeur of high Mass on great feasts, the attendant rites of eucharistic devotion, Benediction, processions of the Blessed Sacrament, the Forty Hours, the devotion to the Sacred Heart with its domestic prayers and its communions on the first Fridays of the month, the stations of the cross, devotion to Our Lady in all its forms, the praying of the rosary, devotion to the saints with the knowledge of their lives and love of their individual characters, and fostering this all the sodalities and confraternities that gathered the devout into a true community. The iconoclasm of the liturgists swept everything away, leaving the ordinary Catholic with virtually no experience of prayer except the weekly parish Mass, reduced to its flattest expression." (p. 373)
[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

6 comments:

Scott Woltze said...

Please take down the awful photo!

Pertinacious Papist said...

Hey, I picked that photo with great care. Isn't it just 'perfect'?

Scott Woltze said...

Not quite. It doesn't have an attractive, half-naked 20 year old lector/eucharistic minister. But it does have the guy in shorts, the giant crucifix that no one can see because it is behind them, no kneelers, the "charismatic" woman in pant suits, every one facing each other instead of the Lord.

Sometimes I want to go full-on Trad and scream, "Nu-church", or "It's a different religion!", but I just suffer patiently.

Tiny Tim said...

You're a better man than I am, Scott.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

The entire display would have caused Jean-Pierre De Caussade to explode in a paroxysm of eye rogues, head butts, and pivot kicks to the groins.

JM said...

The picture is perfect since it looks like almost every Catholic service I encounter.