Tuesday, August 05, 2014

"The impoverishment of the Church’s liturgical culture is a major problem for the remarried"

William Oddie offers some surprising ruminations on the question "If they can’t receive Communion, what is left for them to be part of?" -- surprising because of their liturgical implications (and vice versa):
The fact that for most of the Church’s history frequent reception was not the normal practice may bear a little reflection. To begin with, it is surely the case that automatic reception of Holy Communion is in itself undesirable: it was supposed to be part of the heightened sense of “participation” in the celebration that post-conciliar liturgists went on about: what it has actually led to in practice is a huge loss of reverence for the sacraments in general (the growth of automatic reception was mirrored at every stage by a corresponding decline in recourse to sacramental confession), and in a loss of reverence for the sacrament of the altar in particular.
This, and much more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

No comments: