Monday, April 18, 2011

Latin EF: new generation's way to promote religious vocations

Fr. Z to dying Benedictine community:
Of course a new generation of men will use the new tools out there.

Switch back to Latin worship and the Extraordinary Form and then start admitting postulants to train in the old style of Benedictine monastic life.

The monasteries which do this have more vocations than they have room.
Related
In James K. A. Smith's provocative but confused book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), he offers this otherwise brilliant sentence, whose deep significance (if the rest of his book is any evidence) escapes him, but could have been developed to profound effect:
I will argue that the postmodern church could do nothing better than be ancient, that the most powerful way to reach a postmodern world is by recovering tradition, and that the most effective means of discipleship is found in liturgy. (p. 25)
The portions of the book intended to be the most creative -- by way of suggesting the direction in which the church (what he means is nebulous) ought to develop in postmodern times -- end up looking like particularly ill-adept attempts at trying to re-invent the wheel.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:12 AM

    The monasteries which do this have more vocations than they have room.

    Build it and they will come.

    ReplyDelete