Another of our extracts from 'Fit for Mission? - Parishes' by Bishop O'Donaghue of Lancaster. Click on the 'label' FFM Parishes to see others. See the 'Fit for Mission?' website and download the full document. The previous title in the series, 'Fit for Mission? - Schools' is downloadable here (pdf). This generated a Facebook support group.
From section 7.2.5, p35.
Where this hedonistic, consumerist mentality is present it reduces the liturgy to a form of entertainment. This shifts the priority of worship away from the adoration of God, to revolve around the personal likes and dislikes of the clergy and congregation.
I am sure many of you are familiar with the symptoms of this dysfunction in the life of the Church:
• The priest reduced to being almost an entertainer whose desire is to keep the interest of his
community;
• Members of the congregation who need constant novelty and stimulation;
• Laity who ‘shop around’ from one parish to the next until they find the ‘service’ that meets their particular tastes in liturgy.
All of these symptoms are manifestations of a deeper malady, which is a lack of true faith. Such shallow faith trivialises the liturgy to the proportions of man’s whims and caprices.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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1 comment:
I'm glad to see this comment. Anonymous implicitly confirms authorship of all three comments but still has nothing to say to our citations of the Catechism or the Code of Canon Law. Anonymous inhabits a church of his (her?) own making. The Catholic Church is something rather different.
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