REVIEW
The Mass is cenTral To The FaiTh; God is cenTral To The Mass a review oF The CaTholiC Mass: sTeps To ResToRe The CenTRaliTy of God by bishop aThanasius schneider n BY LEILA MARIE LAWLER
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became a Catholic in 1979 same direction as we. How difat the age of 19. Thus, I ferent this time of prayer was entered the Church in the from our normal experience of fullness of her turmoil. Other his role – how potentially formathan a few shards of memory tive. from my girlhood in New An elderly parishioner, now Haven – a glimpse of habited departed, reminisced about her nuns minding children in the youth in that little town. During schoolyard, young women at the Great Depression, Vespers Albertus Magnus College wearwas celebrated every Wednesday ing elegant sweater sets and evening at that same parish. After trim skirts rather than the hippie their shift at the factory across the garb favored by the new coeds street, “all the young people at Yale, and a truly sensorially flocked to it! Afterwards we overwhelming stop for ashes walked home with our friends, with my best friend Gina at St. and it was the highlight of our Mary’s — my inaugural experiweek!” I mused on the effect of ence of Catholicism was this pattern on their understanding enmeshed with the resistance of of the liturgy. In The Catholic BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER my fiancé, making his way Mass, Bishop Schneider WITH AURELIO PORFIRI back to the faith, to lounge quotes Pope Benedict XVI: THE CATHOLIC MASS: STEPS TO RESTORE Masses and the bland liberalThe Church’s existence THE CENTRALITY ism of the local parish. In short, draws its life from the proper OF GOD IN THE LITURGY I had had no contact with any celebration of the liturgy, and SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS traditional idea of Catholicism that the Church is in danger $21.95 in the liturgy. when the primacy of God no When I read the first chapter of The Catholic Mass: longer appears in the liturgy Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy, I and thus in life. The deepest was struck by Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s identificacause of the crisis that has shaktion of the abandonment of public Vespers and other en the Church lies in the obscurliturgical celebrations of the Divine Office after the Secing of the primacy of God in the ond Vatican Council as an indicator of rupture in worliturgy. All of this led me to ship. This observation is so true and is part of my early devote myself to the liturgy more extensively than in the experience of a void, of something missing. past, because I knew that the true renewal of the liturgy Bishop Schneider speaks of the replacement of woris a fundamental condition for the renewal of the ship of God with a human-centered gathering, with the Church. priest as a sort of master of ceremonies. When I finally And St. Peter Julian Eymard: took part in a sung Vespers at our parish, a lay-driven Without the sun, the world would fall into sterility and attempt at restoration, I was struck above all by the humprison-like darkness; it would be nothing but a picture of ble role of the priest. Normally the center of attention at death. Without the Holy Eucharist, the world would be but Mass (in the Novus Ordo celebrated there), at Vespers he an arid desert, a somber tomb; it would have the aspect of was simply praying with the people and then, in the ad the Last Day, preceding the Last Judgment. Today our bishops show signs of being impressed by orientem posture of Benediction, veiled with heavy statistics indicating that Catholics have lost their undervestments, he took his place at our head, facing in the
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INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2022
