"[Conservative critics of the liturgical perestroika] ... note a certain confusion, and therefore a certain annoyance: first, these observers say, it was quiet, everyone could pray as he wanted, everything was known about the performance of the rite; now everything is new, surprise, change....
"We will not criticize these observations, because we should show how they reveal little penetration of the meaning of religious rites, and let us not glimpse a true devotion and a true sense of the meaning and value of Holy Mass, but rather a certain spiritual indolence, that does not want to spend some personal effort of intelligence and participation to better understand and better perform the most sacred of religious acts, to which we are invited, even obliged to associate ourselves. ... [I]t is in the nature of a practical, as well as spiritual, reform of inveterate and piously observed religious habits, to produce a bit of agitation, not always pleasant at all; but ... some explanation, some preparation, some thoughtful assistance soon remove the uncertainties and immediately give the sense and the taste of a new order. ...
"[W]e should not believe that after some time we will return to quiet and devoted or lazy, as before; no, the new order must be different, and must prevent and shake the passivity of the faithful present at Holy Mass; first it was enough to watch, now it is necessary to participate; before the presence was enough, now attention and action are needed; first someone could doze and maybe chat; now no, he must listen and pray. ... The assembly becomes alive and operative; intervening means letting the soul enter into activity, attention, conversation, song, action. The harmony of a community act, accomplished not only by the outward gesture, but by the inner movement of the feeling of faith and piety, gives the rite a particular strength and beauty: it becomes chorus, becomes concert, becomes rhythm of an immense flying wing to the heights of mystery and divine joy. ...
"[In contrast, we hear praise for the new rite from those who say,] finally you can understand and follow the complicated and mysterious ceremony; finally we get a taste; finally the Priest speaks to the faithful, and we see that he acts with them and for them. ...
"[I]t is to be believed that the warning of the religious intensity that the new form of the rite demands will not fail".
-- Pope Paul VI, 17 March 1965
http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/audiences/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_aud_19650317.html
1 comment:
With apologies to Bertolt Brecht:
The Solution was The Revolution
After the uprising of Lefebvre
Pope Paul VI
Stated that traditionalists
Had forfeited the confidence of their masters
And could win it back only
By acting like protestants. Would it not be easier
In that case for the Pope
To dissolve the traditionalists
And create more protestants?
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