…hang all the law and the prophets. The two things are the two essential commandments that we love God and love our neighbor.
One of the problems in the church is between two groups of people: the God lovers and the people lovers. The God lovers focus on liturgy, spirituality, prayer, adoration, consecrated life, vocation, religion and worship. The people lovers focus on peace and justice, the church as the pilgrim people of God, the fellowship of the brothers and sisters, the ministry of the sacraments to one another.
The God lovers see the Mass as a solemn sacrifice that takes us to the very threshold of heaven. They want fine liturgy an esoteric, magnificent and otherworldly worship. For the God lovers worship is to lift us from this vale of tears to transport us to the worship of the cosmic sphere. For them the Mass is the great sacrifice that applies the eternal act of redemption to souls in need of salvation.
The people lovers see the Mass as the fellowship meal of the people of God. The worship is warm and comforting. It is designed to make everyone feel good about themselves and each other. The content is all about helping one another and making the world a better place. The church is in this world and is of this world and needs to adapt to this world so that more and more people can be helped.
As you read this you are probably already, instinctively choosing which of these two models you like best. You will believe that yours is the best and that, at best, the other one is faulty, and at worst it is heretical and damaging to the church and should be stopped.
In fact we need both don’t we? We’re supposed to love God and love our neighbor. So why all the division if there really is the division I see? It is not because one is right and the other wrong, but because we have not prioritized properly.
The lovers of people may not like to hear this, but the love of God is the first priority. Love of neighbor comes after the love of God and is dependent on the love of God. We cannot love our neighbor if we do not love God first. Why? Because we have not motive, no power and no grace to love our neighbor if we have not loved God first.
Therefore the love of God is the Catholic priority. Loving our neighbor is mandatory and cannot be overlooked, but it comes after the love of God. If this is true, then we must ask ourselves where we properly love God and where we properly love our neighbor. The answer is that we love God primarily within the life of prayer and worship: within and through the liturgy.
If we love God in church, then we love our neighbor outside of church. Most of the problems with modernist liturgy and worship is that they have brought into the church what rightly belongs outside the church. In other words, the fellowship, the peace and justice, the social activism, the missionary enterprise, the education and health care and family concern–all of this is the proper activity of the people of God outside of the liturgy, and we have brought it all into the liturgy.
As a result, the liturgy has become all about loving people and not loving God. Why is this? Because too many Catholics have not simply put the love of God elsewhere, they have replaced the love of God with the love of people. Clever theologians thought that the supernatural, otherworldly aspect of worship seemed too much of a stretch for ordinary, modern, scientific people, and in a move of breath taking condescension, made the liturgy folksy and people centered and dumbed down the whole thing.
The result has been a disaster. Catholics therefore love people, but have lost the language for loving God, and of course, once you no longer love God, it is not very long before you are no longer able to love people either, for what do you find to love in them if you have not loved God first, for the only thing I find lovable in my neighbor is the image of God in him, and the only way I can discern this is by first learning to love God.
The final result of all this is that we not only have forgotten the art of loving our neighbor, but we have been left with the only remaining remnant which is love of ourselves. Thus what was once the glorious worship of Almighty God has become a mish mash of comfort hymns and self help therapy which is all about how good God makes me feel.
The only remedy is to return to Christ’s priorities: to learn once more how to put the love of God first in our lives so that we may eventually learn again how to love our neighbor.
“Clever theologians thought that the supernatural, otherworldly aspect of worship seemed too much of a stretch for ordinary, modern, scientific people, and in a move of breath taking condescension, made the liturgy folksy and people centered and dumbed down the whole thing.”AMEN!!!!
I must put a disclaimer in: that is NOT me on the left with the nonsense liturgical nonsense!I looked at the photo and had a senior moment when I could not figure out how “I” was in the photo. It must be a twin of mine – I thank you for this article, Father Longenecker … me who loves an orthodox Mass – Happy Holy Week –
A very cogent explanation of the current state of affairs in the Church. Now, how can it be set right? Any ideas?
Amen, Fr.Mass should be about God, not about us. So how to fix the division? How to correct the misguided attitudes?
I so hope you have some suggestions too Father! I have been thinking about how much of a cross it is to reclaim our Catholic Identity and how, just like The Cross, it will be sooooo worth it. The church, as The BOdy of Christ, I am told must also suffer…be betrayed and abandoned and scourged and die…to be redeemed.It is an agony in the graden to think of such things happening….
It’s a cross! Amen to this post! If the Church talks down to me (via dumbing down the liturgy) It won’t be able to lift me up to Heavenly things. I can’t wait to read some of your suggestions to make it better, make it right again. However, I have a inkling that you’ll put AVAIL yourself to the Sacraments and Holy Hours of Adoration for starters!
Fr. Longenecker,I was listening to a Fr. Corapi CD in the car this morning, and he was making roughly the same point you are in this post.He was speaking on 1 Peter 1:22 – “Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere mutual love, love one another intensely from a (pure) heart.”He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that you can’t have sincere love of your fellow man, of your neighbor, without first being purified by obedience to the truth. So many Catholics who single-mindedly focus on social justice issues have lost sight of the importance of obedience to truth and to Truth and to the Church. Without the purgation of self-interest that comes with fidelity to the Truth, these people-first Catholics have a difficult time thinking with the Church on a whole host of topics. While their efforts to love their fellow man may be laudable, without having the mind of the Church they end up exchanging divine charity for a worldly charity, defined by a fallible human intellect, which seeks not to offend as its primary goal. They fail to love their fellow man as the Church teaches that they should. Many believe that they are showing charity by being supportive of their marginalized fellow man, but in many instances, they end up confirming their fellow man in his sins through a misplaced attempt at tolerance, which is not charity at all.This seems to give your blog post a little scriptural support!
Very good blog, thank you :)If people just weren’t so afraid to put their own self aside and be humble to Our Lord, to dare to love Him..how great would that be.
Wonderfully said. I will link to it later. (Right now I have to finish painting my house)It is priests like you who keep me from ripping my hair out! Thank you….
Amen Father!I just wish we had more priests here in the US that believed and understood the same thing!
Amen Father!I just wish we had more priests – and bishops – here in the UK that believed and understood the same thing!(with thanks and apologies to Andrew Hedstrom)
What I get from Vatican II documents, and the writings of JPII and B16, is that both the vertical and horizontal dimensions are needed in worship. If it’s too far to either end of the continuum, it’s stilted and false. That’s how it feels to me anyway.