Religion & Law

Respect/Reverence: the link between liturgy and life

By rstith

In the report linked below, John-Henry Westen finds it strange that there is a de facto connection between cultural and liturgical activists. It seems to me that the explanation for this (frequent, certainly not universal) connection lies in a common lack of perception for dignity or sacredness, and with it the loss of respect or reverence for life, on the one hand, and for the Host on the other. This absence of awareness of the great or holy is a result not just of becoming friendlier and more informal, but of the reduction of the whole world to the banal categories of "fact" and "value." This reduction endangers not only the unborn and the liturgy but any firm recognition of the human individiual, as I tried to show in my ?The Priority of Respect: How our Common Humanity can Ground our Individual Dignity,? 44 International Philosophical Quarterly 165 (2004), available through http://www.valpo.edu/law/faculty/rstith/

Here is Westen's report:  "Although it may seem a little strange, there is a definite battle being waged within the Catholic Church. It is the same culture war being waged by secular moderns against those who uphold traditional morality, it is pro-life vs. pro-choice. But within the Catholic Church the same battle is fought along liturgical lines, and the publication in the Vatican newspaper of an article calling for Catholics to receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue is telling..."

The full text of his story is available at:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2008/jan/08010904.html

Full post as published by Mirror of Justice on January 11, 2008 (boomark / email).