LITURGY AND CRISIS OF FAITH
32 years after the first Mass celebrated in Italian and in front of the people by Pope Paul VI, here is what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, thinks of the new rite of the Mass created subsequently:
“I am convinced that the crisis of the Church in which we find ourselves today depends largely on the collapse of the liturgy… the liturgical reform has produced extremely serious damage to the Faith.” My Life, Edition San Paolo 1997.
Indeed, Faith is intimately linked to its moral and cultic expression. Saint James tells us: “Show me your Faith without works; I, it is by my works that I will show you the Faith.” Ep. 2, 18. Now the Work par excellence is the worship rendered to God, and mainly through the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the first end of which is adoration. At Mass, genuflection is the manifest expression of adoration. In the thinking of the best historians of religion, the ritual gesture is far more important than the word. We go to invisible realities through visible things.
This is why in the new liturgy the dramatic reduction in genuflections leads to the progressive loss of Faith in the real presence.
In the new rite, gestures of adoration have practically disappeared, particularly for the concelebrants who no longer genuflect! Not to mention the communion of the faithful received standing and in the hand…
The Holy Sacrifice according to the traditional rite perfect expression of our faith in the Real Presence, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.