Monday, October 20, 2008

Going the rounds...

...of Catholic blogs is the ghastly, revolting, but of course extremely funny suggestion for a "youth liturgy" produced by some twerp and being officially promoted by the Bishops' Conference. Who honestly imagines that anyone will take this sort of rubbish seriously? Click on the link for a good laugh.

Like most of us, I've been to some fairly unattractive Masses in which young people have used loud, well-intentioned, but very poor music (see below). But they DON'T WANT idiotic bogus "liturgies" written by middle-aged sillies who think that worshipping God is less important than walking around with banners with fashionable meaningless slogans on them. Young Catholics want to to to church to worship God. It is they who are leading the crusade for more adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, it is they who have brought Confession back into the forefront of Catholic retreats and events, it is they who go to Walsingham with Youth 2000 and fill the halls and chapels at events run by the FAITH Movement, in huge numbers. They are not - repeat NOT - interested in having some inane rubbish instead of the timeless reality of the Mass as offered by the Church.

2 comments:

angela said...

I've seen some of those blogs too and been appalled by some of the comments (on Damien Thompson's especially) but if you look at the actual website these suggested liturgies come from I think you'll find it has been blown out of all proportion.
What is given are a few suggestions, it even says on the site they are just some ideas and no one is expecting anyone to do them all or even use them in the Mass. The little gospel drama would actually be quite good for a school assembly I thought.
I don't know the organisation involved and it was probably produced without the aid of a liturgy specialist but you'd think they had suggested celebrating the Eucharist with coke and crisps the way some people are carrying on.

Joe said...

Angela:

The resources are clearly suggestions to be used at Mass, though, as you say, some of them might be better used in other contexts.

However: look for any Trinitarian references in the resources - and remember that Liturgical prayer is addressed "to the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit" - and the lack of the Trinitarian references becomes a very serious matter. Look also for affirmation of the divinity of Christ.

I agree with you that many of the comments on Damien Thompson's blog are inappropriate and unhelpful. What is needed is a more analytical critique.