A news item from Germany, reported in kath.ch (the Swiss Catholic News Service) annoyed me today (here). “Annoyed” is indeed the right word, because it neither worried me nor troubled me. The topic as such should be worrying or troubling, namely that 2018 marked a new record high for people leaving the major churches, Catholic and Protestant, in Germany. We’ll know the statistical results for Switzerland come September.
But rather I was annoyed, because the statistics offered the author of the article occasion to push for a sort of church reform that is not reform at all but innovation. It is sort of like pretending that you would be more appealing as a person if you could just be somehow different, as in: try a facelift, try Botox, try a tummy tuck, try various implants, and why not a sex change while you’re at it! If people are truly running away from authentic Catholic, then why should I try and run after them? My odds of catching them and winning them over through pandering are practically null. Jumping ship is not what reform is about. Reform, if it is what we need, has to do with returning to faithfulness and begging pardon for past sins and failings. Reform involves making reparation, something profound, much more than a costume change.
Reforming a life, reforming Church practice is sort of like church architecture and the difference between vulgar barren concrete or whitewashed boxy spaces of the contemporary sort. It is no less obvious than is the difference between a 1970’s wreckovation and some of the restorations such as at our Cathedral here in Sioux Falls, which have been successfully completed in recent years. One of the joys of living in Switzerland is my having had the privilege of celebrating Mass according to the traditional form (Vetus Ordo) in old and for the most part untouched churches, some of them truly magnificent worship spaces, both big ones and small. Herein we are talking about more than beauty in the sense of adornment; we’re talking about a relative perfection in lines and proportion.
The mentioned article is obviously of a neo-modernist bent, pushing its own little mythology about innovation and change being the necessary trajectory of life. It is hard for most folks to balk at such when your whole life long it has been drummed into you that the progressive thing is to move forward never looking back. It’s a message at total odds with the rootedness which should be ours in Christ. The unseen God has manifest Himself in the Son; Jesus of Nazareth is not to be invented or sought out on some sort of quest into the unknown. We know Him and watch for His coming again in glory upon the clouds of heaven. As the angels announced on the Ascension Mount, this same one will return as you saw Him going. “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear Him.”
Be gone, tired old innovators! Make room for restoration, for a rediscovery of God’s Anointed One!
But rather I was annoyed, because the statistics offered the author of the article occasion to push for a sort of church reform that is not reform at all but innovation. It is sort of like pretending that you would be more appealing as a person if you could just be somehow different, as in: try a facelift, try Botox, try a tummy tuck, try various implants, and why not a sex change while you’re at it! If people are truly running away from authentic Catholic, then why should I try and run after them? My odds of catching them and winning them over through pandering are practically null. Jumping ship is not what reform is about. Reform, if it is what we need, has to do with returning to faithfulness and begging pardon for past sins and failings. Reform involves making reparation, something profound, much more than a costume change.
Reforming a life, reforming Church practice is sort of like church architecture and the difference between vulgar barren concrete or whitewashed boxy spaces of the contemporary sort. It is no less obvious than is the difference between a 1970’s wreckovation and some of the restorations such as at our Cathedral here in Sioux Falls, which have been successfully completed in recent years. One of the joys of living in Switzerland is my having had the privilege of celebrating Mass according to the traditional form (Vetus Ordo) in old and for the most part untouched churches, some of them truly magnificent worship spaces, both big ones and small. Herein we are talking about more than beauty in the sense of adornment; we’re talking about a relative perfection in lines and proportion.
The mentioned article is obviously of a neo-modernist bent, pushing its own little mythology about innovation and change being the necessary trajectory of life. It is hard for most folks to balk at such when your whole life long it has been drummed into you that the progressive thing is to move forward never looking back. It’s a message at total odds with the rootedness which should be ours in Christ. The unseen God has manifest Himself in the Son; Jesus of Nazareth is not to be invented or sought out on some sort of quest into the unknown. We know Him and watch for His coming again in glory upon the clouds of heaven. As the angels announced on the Ascension Mount, this same one will return as you saw Him going. “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear Him.”
Be gone, tired old innovators! Make room for restoration, for a rediscovery of God’s Anointed One!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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