Cardinal Sarah: There Is "A Deep Malaise" Around the Liturgy
• "The idea that we will all go to heaven is not what the Gospel says."
• "Sin must be denounced" and "the guilty must be punished."
• Islam is spreading because we [Catholics] are neither missionaries nor ardent in our faith. The advance of Islam reveals the lukewarmness of Christians. We do not dare to evangelise.
• "The liturgy obeys codified patterns, inherited from a thousand generations," but "the Catholic liturgy is sick today."
• "Why are so many young people fascinated by the ancient liturgy? Let us be honest. It would be too easy to declare sententiously that they all have a psychological need for identity. Should we not rather admit that many [Novus Ordo] celebrations disappoint them?"
• "It is sometimes believed that the liturgy must be made more approachable through the use of secular music, artificially relaxed attitudes, the removal of sacred separations and the architectural leveling of churches. This is a tragic illusion. All of these choices take us further away from God rather than closer to him."
• On "Traditionis custodes, I want to be explicit. There is a deep malaise and real suffering in the Church around the liturgy."
• "Very often, parish liturgies are not faithful to Vatican II. For example, does Gregorian chant have the first place in them, as it was requested?"
• "Current liturgical practice must evolve. It must integrate the best elements of the old in the light of the Council: the celebration oriented ad Deum or towards the Cross, the wide use of Latin, the use of the ancient offertory or of the prayers said at the foot of the altar."
• "A cult that does not become culture is an illusion."
• "What is happening in Germany [= German Synod] is frightening. It is a temptation to abandon the Gospel, a temptation to apostasy. The Church there is too rich, too dependent on the State, too tied to the world."
• [The German church] believes that by copying the Protestants, who bless same-sex unions and appoint women as pastors, it will be successful. However, these German Protestant communities have hardly any vocations or faithful! So, what are we running after?
Picture: Robert Sarah, © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk CC BY-NC-ND, #newsJyfqcyionc
