Today’s NCRegister on line had an article which I have not come to expect in the Register, but I was delighted to see it:
http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/respect-for-rituals/
The article is a book review entitled: “US Churches Revive Respect for Rituals” by Joseph Pronechen:
Here are a few highlight sentences to whet the appetite:
“In his recent book Signs of the Holy One: Liturgy, Ritual and expression of the Sacred (Ignatius), Father Uwe Michael Lang says that the post-Vatican II tendency is primarily to focus on the revision of the texts with “insufficient regard for the complexity of the ritual.”
“…Father Lang points out that changes, especially abrupt ones, can signal that observing them “was not so important after all.” As evidence, he points to how many churches moved their tabernacles from a “central position at the high altar of the church to a peripheral place in the sanctuary or even to a side chapel” — or even out of sight. “The message was conveyed that it had become less important for the worship and life of the people.”
“Unfortunately, often in the post-conciliar period, beautiful churches — magnificent edifices built with nickels and dimes of the poor and enhanced with beautiful colors — were “done over in white, and sometimes there was more design in a McDonald’s restaurant than in these after renovation,” Father Philipps said.”
Read more:
http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/respect-for-rituals/#ixzz4Ck07tNrz
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