Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The Golden Calf Returns



"Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification."



"The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy in sacral disguise." -- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - The Spirit of the Liturgy pg. 23

4 comments:

Joe of St. Thérèse said...

Very much true! I have the book Spirit of the Liturgy, I did a little entry on it...When it becomes about us and not about God, we committ Idolatry, bottom line :)

Joe of St. Thérèse said...

Whatever those videos are, they are for sure not Catholic...(I hope, and if so, I'm going to have to get in my armchair and start deposing people of their offices

Walter said...

Hi Joe,

Unfortunately they are. The first is Fr. Pfleger’s, the priest in the video below praising Obama, in Chicago. The second is "The Rock" catholic church in St. Louis. Both are "African American" parishes. If they are so African American why aren't you or I attracted to them? For me its because I am more interested in being Catholic than any ethnicity. Not because I deny or am not proud of being Black in America but because I love Christ and the proper worship of him is FAR more important than some feel good ethnocentricity.

Black Catholic life...another casualty of the "Spirit of Vatican II".

You know, I wonder what all those African Americans who used to frequent these places but are now the faithful departed who knew and loved the Latin Mass would think if they came back to see this? Would they even recognize it as Catholic worship?

Joe of St. Thérèse said...

I don't think that they would recognize this at all.

You are exactly right proper worship of God is more important than ethnocentricity.

It's all apart of the sterotypes that go along with being black, one of them being we can't work our way around a Roman Graduale and only sing spirituals or gospel music.

spirit of VII destroying Catholicism by the minuite. (but we know that we're going to wn, the gates of hell won't be prevailing against us)

Exactly, it's not that I deny being black, but first and foremost we are Catholics and paricipate in a divine sonship within the Church.

I find it in a way to be funny with all these stereotypes, when the Faith was being spread, it wasn't by spirituals that the Faith grew, but by being true to one's self, not compromising the Faith. I think that inculturalization has went a bit too far with the Novus Ordo Mass. And a proper sense needs to be returned.

But until there's a mass exorcism on the spirit of Vatican II, we'll still have this mess.