Annie’s Reviews > Milestones: Memoirs: 1927 - 1977 > Status Update

And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds—partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart.

But when the community of faith, the worldwide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. (Ok there is still more coming)

“I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God expiate and whether or not he speaks to us and hears us.“ (cont in next note cause I don’t want to miss any of it and can’t underline this bk!)

Cont: For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something “made”, but something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision…Wheb liturgy is self-made, however, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own product but rather our origin and the source of our life.

Missal of Paul VI: “There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and judicial authority: this has caused us enormous harm.”

“I know of no more convincing proof for the faith than precisely the pure and unalloyed humanity that the faith allowed to mature in my parents and in so many other persons I have had the privilege to encounter.”

“Exegesis has always remained for me the center of my theological work. Maier is to be thanked for the fact that, for us, Sacred Scripture was “the soul of our theological studies”, as the Second Vatican Council would later require.”

“I have often reflected since then on this remarkable disposition of Providence: that, in this century of progress and faith in science, the Church should have found herself represented most clearly in very simple people, in a Bernadette of Lourdes, for instance, or even a Brother Konrad, who hardly seemed to be touched by the currents of the time.”