Dad29: Sustaining the "faith-feeling"

Perspective from an Anglican priest of the traditional flavor:

The sort of liturgical culture which Anglicans and Roman Catholics have experienced since the 1960s is in fact a culture which was common in English Protestant Non-Conformity for many generations before the 1960s; and in a Protestant ethos it represents the theologically right and appropriate liturgical expectation. If the faith-feeling, fiducia, is the salvific reality to which the Christian must cling, then worship can have no other purpose than to produce and sustain it. It is not for nothing that Protestant ideologues have seen the Sacraments - on the rare occasions when they celebrate them - as merely 'enacted Words'. The problem for us is that for nearly half a century many Anglicans and most Catholics have been indoctrinated into that same essentially Protestant presupposition. When, now, they are exposed to something ancient and authentic, they can feel excluded by the celebrant - "Why isn't he attending to me?"

Yes. That would be the 'horizontality' so often mentioned by those who criticize the Bugninian 'reforms.'

And it justifies the use of a bluesy/rock "Wade in the Water" by a local musico-twit at Sunday's Mass (Baptism of the Lord.) The logic is perfect.

(No, I am not making that up.)

D29