Being Liturgical - The Subject of Worship: The Practice of the Love of God (Hardcover)

The liturgical and sacramental life of the Catholic Church has, since the Second Vatican Council experienced first a euphoric transformation, and more latterly a crisis (in Europe, something approaching collapse, especially in the Low Countries) marked by confusion, philosophical illiteracy, excommunication, and even possible schism. This book offers a provocative analysis of that crisis: it may be summed up as a substantial and scholarly defence of the understanding that the primary purpose of human being is the love of God expressed as worship, and that the present liturgical and sacramental life of the Catholic Church is confused in that task. The book does not offer 'solutions', neither more 'inculturation' of liturgical form, nor a better implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium" and the other documents of Vatican II, nor an unthinking return to the pre-Conciliar past. It suggests that far from being a time for solutions, liturgists, theologians and the hierarchy have barely grasped the seriousness of the present situation, let alone being prepared for its overcoming. The book is therefore an invitation to a reflection: how the current situation arose within the Church; how it is conditioned and affected by questions reaching far beyond the Church but also penetrating Church life; and what light historical study might throw on these questions. Above all, the book attempts to show how a proper development of the philosophical issues in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church might open an understanding of the questions before us. In order to unfold its argument The Subject of Worship" will draw upon classical as well as contemporary sources - liturgical and philosophical texts, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Nouvelle Theologie," postmodern thought - to name just a few areas.>