{"id":62,"date":"2011-06-01T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2011\/06\/in-defense-of-liturgy-the-first\/"},"modified":"2011-11-17T10:24:52","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T15:24:52","slug":"in-defense-of-liturgy-the-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2011\/06\/in-defense-of-liturgy-the-first.html","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Liturgy the First"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>e\u2019ve all been there before; still high from the joy of the Mass when, in what can only be termed as a\u00a0sabbatical buzz-kill, we are approached by the Christian who demands our attention and asks, \u201cWhy all the rules, rites and rituals, papist? Why all the custom and tradition? Surely God wants us to love him freely, to approach him personally, authentically, from our hearts: So why the pews, the candles, the kneeling and crossing of thyself?\u201d Or perhaps the question was put to us a little more roughly, in the form of the Great Evangelical Misconception, \u201cWhy do you need a priest to get to God?\u201d Or maybe<\/em> we\u2019ve approached the entire issue from the other end; sitting frigid in the pew, cynical about the lack of participation in our church, wishing more than anything that we could simply read our Bible in our rooms, out of strangling clothes. Whatever the case, the real question everyone\u2019s revolting over is this: Why liturgy?<\/p>\n

I aim to provide a satisfying answer for the Lutheran, the Anglican, the Presbyterian (I SPELLED THAT CORRECTLY ON THE FIRST TRY!), and the Methodist, who \u2013 though perhaps with less giddy thrill than the Catholic \u2013 have been known to don robes, light candles and otherwise engage in the\u00a0scandalous\u00a0following of form. If you are interested in knowing why Catholic liturgy is specifically awesome, I\u2019ll give you a hint: it\u2019s all in the Book of Revelation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

But the first problem confronted when answering the question is one of definition. I maintain that there are three definitions of liturgy, and the first is more of a reaction than a definition. It is what our minds immediately jump to: the kneeling, sitting, standing; the ritual, repetition, form; the structure of worship. If liturgy is taken in this sense, then I put forth that every denomination, even if they are called the Free-Thinking Disciples of non-Gender-Specific-Jesus-Figure Church of Happy, practices liturgy. Worship has a form, because humans have form, whether you like it or not. Whenever an action is repeated because it has been shown to be good, there you have liturgy. Therefore if \u2013 like the Evangelicals \u2013 you deny the liturgy of candles and incense, you do not escape liturgy, you merely trade it in for a new liturgy, one which \u2013 for whatever reason \u2013 tends to involve hand-holding prayer circles and Casting Crowns. Even if your Christianity is reading the bible in your room, that<\/em> is your very liturgy, that is the structure of your worship.<\/p>\n

Thus the Catholic, along with every liturgical Protestant, when asked: Why liturgy? has all sorts of witty, embittered and grumpy responses to pick from;\u201dBecause my liturgy is better than yours\u201d or \u201cBecause Christian radio is a lousy replacement for the Communion\u201d or simply \u201cWhy your own?\u201d The question should really be, \u201cWhich liturgy?\u201d and \u2013 not to make to much of a plug for Mother Church \u2013 but the Bible makes it pretty clear that the closer you\u2019re getting to the liturgy of the Universal Church, the closer you are to getting to heaven\u2019s, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

This all gets wrapped up in a similar complaint often made by Baptists and fundamentalists, whose definition of liturgy is our second one, that of tradition, and is expressed against in the Great Fundamentalist Misconception, \u201cWhy do you use tradition over Scripture<\/a>?\u201d Ignoring the fact that Tradition compiled Scripture, and that they are in sync and one is not favored over the other, that question can be answered with another: \u201cWhy do you?\u201d Every time you sit in a pew facing a preacher and say \u201cAmen!\u201d at important statements, there you practice tradition, for no scouring of the Bible will lend those particular habits authority. In fact, every time the preacher says that \u201cTradition must not be placed ahead of Scripture\u201d, he practices tradition, for where can that<\/em> dogma be found in Scripture?<\/p>\n

I ask you, for a moment, to truly imagine a church without liturgy, without form. No thing, no matter how\u00a0minuscule; not even the seating arrangement, could be repeated. Every service would have to be radically different; even the name of the church would have to change for every service.\u00a0Perhaps even the location. Public\u00a0worship without liturgy is\u00a0congregational anarchy, that is to say, it does not exist.\u00a0And even if that could be achieved, there would be an unspoken liturgy still; that the only rule is that there are no rules. Again, the value of my point is this; that the question is not whether or not to have liturgy, but whether that liturgy will be vague, modern and colloquial, or ancient and universal. In my next post I hope to explain why the latter is the way to go, and why it gets a bad rap.\"\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all been there before; still high from the joy of the Mass when, in what can only be termed as a\u00a0sabbatical buzz-kill, we are approached by the Christian who demands our attention and asks, \u201cWhy all the rules, rites and rituals, papist? Why all the custom and tradition? Surely God wants us to love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liturgy"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Defense of Liturgy the First<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We've all been there before; still high from the joy of the Mass when, in what can only be termed as a\u00a0sabbatical buzz-kill, we are approached by the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2011\/06\/in-defense-of-liturgy-the-first.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Defense of Liturgy the First\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We've all been there before; 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