Description
Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference
“What we previously knew only in theory has become for us a practical experience: the Church stands and falls with the Liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the faith no longer appears in its fullness in the Liturgy of the Church, when man�s words, his thoughts, his intentions are suffocating him, then faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells. For that reason, the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the centre of any renewal of the Church whatever.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger But how, today, at the beginning of the third millennium, do we achieve ‘the true celebration of the Liturgy’? Is the answer a wholesale return to the traditional rites? Is it in accepting a wide diversity of divergent uses – new, old and inculturated – in the Roman rite? Or is it in seeking an official reform of the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council? These are the issues that were discussed under the presidency of Cardinal Ratzinger at the conference held at the Abbey of Notre-Dame at Fontgombault from July 22-24 2001. This volume makes available in English translation the papers from that conference – papers which inform and challenge, and which make a significant contribution to the consideration of the question of the Liturgy in our day.
Reviews “Certainly one of the most important books yet published concerning post-Vatican II liturgical reform�I would urge every reader, priest reader in particular, to buy and to study this book�” Michael Davies – The Latin Mass A “valuable contribution to the debate… This work is not some sterile analysis of ‘the problem,’ nor is it a summary of emotive arguments or a longing for some romanticised notion of a liturgical renaissance. The papers are a practical look at the current situation from a wide variety of perspectives, each with a mind for the Church yet with well-developed, different solutions.” AD2000 “There is a real energy, as well as serious scholarship, in these presentations. Far better than a generalist�s introduction, these top-of-the-range essays and the seriousness of the discussion, give a vivid picture of the problems of the Liturgy in the early twenty-first century…these men know of what they speak.” New Directions Saint Michael’s Abbey Press 160 pp. sewn softcover
