terça-feira, 28 de fevereiro de 2012

THE SPIRIT OF THE LITURGY, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

THE SPIRIT OF THE LITURGY, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Reviewed by Brian W. Harrison




The majority of important works on the Catholic Church's sacred liturgy have tended to take a rather specialized approach, focusing on only one or just a few of its various areas: theological, historical, pastoral, cultural, artistic, musical, or the minutiae of rubrical questions. This little volume (232 small-sized pages) by Cardinal Ratzinger - who, in addition to his work as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has long shown a deep interest in, and knowledge of, liturgical matters - sets out to provide a brief overview of all these different facets of the Church's central acts of worship. In doing so, he avowedly takes his inspiration from a book of the same name published back in 1918 by the renowned German-Italian theologian Romano Guardini: his idea is to seek and elucidate the unifying 'spirit' which should always underlie the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice, in the present post-Vatican-II context of unprecedented and often ill-advised liturgical change.read...