Arinze on the Liturgy

Read, learn, and inwardly digest, my dear people. Cardinal Arinze, the Terror of “Northern progressives” from the “deep South”, has issued this gem on the liturgy: Hearts and Minds: thinking about and celebrating the Liturgy.

This time last year, Cardinal Arinze was my top bet for bishop of Rome. (No, I wasn’t against our dear Papa Ratzy from being elected—I just didn’t believe the Cardinals had the guts to do it). I still think he would have made a little ripper of a Pope. Ah well.

As you will see from his writing style, the newspapers would have loved him. Nice short “new-bite”-length sentences.

Here’s a taste:

“God is not our equal. He is not our colleague. He is our Creator. Without him we would not exist at all. He is the only necessary being. It is normal that we acknowledge this fact. Those who refuse to adore God must not decorate themselves with the apparently nice title of liberal intellectuals. If we are to call a spade a spade, we shall inform such people that they are unreasonable, ignorant and blind to most obvious facts. A child who refuses to recognize his parents is not a liberal. He is a brat. Would it be wrong to call him stupid, and unaware of common sense, and even of his own best interest? And God is to us much more than parents are to their children.”

Tasty? Yes. Here’s more:

“Gradually in the Church of the Latin Rite from the Middle Ages, Eucharistic devotion has developed in such forms as visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament, personal and group Holy Hour of Adoration, and Eucharistic Benediction, Procession and Congress. None of us should behave as if he or she had outgrown such manifestations of faith and had no need of them.”

And one more bit:

“A do-it-yourself mentality, an attitude of nobody-will-tell-me-what-to-do, or a defiant sting of if-you-do-not-like-my-Mass-you-can-go-to-another-parish, is not only against sound theology and ecclesiology, but also offends against common sense. Unfortunately, sometimes common sense is not very common, when we see a priest ignoring liturgical rules and installing creativity – in his case personal idiosyncracy – as the guide to the celebration of Holy Mass.”

You gotta love these guys at Headquarters. The progressives clamoured for a non-Italian pope, and they got JPII. They clamoured for a voice from the South, from Africa, and they got Cardinal Arinze. It seems the further they are from the centre, the more centred they become.