Ever Old and Ever New A Review of Martin Mosebach's The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy
An excerpt.
Nearly everywhere, the Mass today fails to unite Latin Rite Catholics, even juridically. Liturgical law is rejected, ignored or paid mere lip service by the modernizers (whom Mosebach calls "late Catholic Puritans", p. 135) who always know more than the Church. Some years ago, reformers replaced the older formalism and legalism with the formlessness decried by Mosebach in his book's title. Formlessness is the enemy. (For an articulate discussion of what he means by the contemporary rebellion against "form", see pp. 104-106; 147). A denial of beauty produces formlessness.
Formlessness is a heresy when it refuses certain revealed truths. They are mediated by material, concrete signs and symbols which are in themselves beautiful. In a word, Mosebach is preaching sacramentalism. Loss of form means loss of content!(p. 206)On the other side, most of the antiquarianism Martin Mosebach so well understands is lost on contemporary Catholics, as it was said to have been lost on the French court in 1654. People know too little of their own church history and they have already for too long been deprived of their liturgical tradition. Those who still go to Mass in the industrialized West are minimally catechized. Perhaps it was always this way, everywhere. The elite with Mosebach's level of erudition could be stuffed into a telephone booth, as a professional liturgiologist once expressed it.
Read the full article (here)
No comments:
Post a Comment