Irish theologian raps ‘service-station approach’ to liturgy
April 28, 2017
A noted Irish theologian has called for a change in pastoral approaches, saying that the decline in active faith is connected with the “uninspiring” liturgy.
Father Vincent Twomey, a former student of Joseph Ratzinger and a longtime professor at the Irish seminary in Maynooth, writes that an anti-intellectual attitude in the Irish Church, and a routinized approach to pastoral work, has sapped interest in the beauty and transcendence of the liturgy. As a result, he says, ‘the source and summit of the Christian life has been reduced to an obligation to be satisfied with the least pain for either priest or people.”
Father Twomey rejects proposals for change offered by the dissident Association of Catholic Priests, arguing that those proposals are “predicated on the same traditional model, namely providing the requisite services to the people, as in a service station. The net result is a desiccated liturgy.”
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