Longing Soul,
I believe you are trying, but there are several logical problems with your arguments.
- Equivocations. The first problem that I see is that you don’t define your terms well, and some concepts are all mixed up. In your post 70, for example, you write ‘‘no particular type of Remembrance [is] infallible’’. The trouble here is in the words "type of Remembrance’’ and ‘‘infallible.’’ Infallibility, as a concept, never properly speaking applies to an action. An action is moral, immoral, licit, prudent, etc. but only categorical statements can be fallible or infallible. That being the case, it is of course true that a Mass (Sacrificial Remembrance) is not ‘‘infallible,’’ any more than my giving a poor man alms is ‘‘infallible.’’ ‘‘Type of remembrance’’ is problematic because of a little monastic concept ‘‘Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.’’
‘‘The Law of Prayer is the Law of Belief.’’ The fundamental theologian and Vatican II architect Yves Congar pointed out that many, many faithful Catholics would give heretical statement after heretical statement if asked to describe Christ’s Hypostatic Union. Are they, therefore, heretics? Congar persuasively replied that no, they are not heretics because they pray in such a way that presupposes orthodox belief - whatever their difficulties in discursively explaining their beliefs. ‘‘An arian could never pray as a Catholic does’’ Congar wrote.
That concept applies to the Mass as well: in your post 66, you significantly call the Mass a "Sacrificial Remembrance.’’ That word ‘‘sacrificial’’ is necessary. If it is not there, then it is not what Christ intends. That is why John the Evangelist depicts Christ crucified on the Day of Preparation - the day on which the lambs were sacrificed for the Passover - but omits the synoptic Gospels’ inclusion of the Last Supper. The Sacrifice is the Last Supper. John’s sacrificial imagery goes so far as to quote prophecy drawn from the Jewish sacrificial litury : ‘‘Not a bone of Him shall be broken’’ (19:36).
When it boils down to it, if you don’t have sacrifice, you don’t have Christ’s intention, no matter what other way you have chosen to remember Him. And so we can conclude that, yes, there is a ‘‘type of remembrance’’ which is prescribed for the Church: that type is sacrifice - and in particular, Eucharistic Sacrifice.
- Red Herring. Another problem I find is in your post 66, regarding Latin. You correctly observe that Latin was not the original language of the liturgy. But that is utterly irrelevant.
The fundamental theologians from Van Balthazar to Ratzinger to Pie Noit have cautioned against ‘‘archeologism.’’ This is declaring a golden age, and trying to fit the Church’s structures into that age - even when that golden age is the Apostolic Era. Latin ought to be retained in the Liturgy, not because it was the original, but because it has, over the course of centuries, become a Sacred Language. The concept is theologically the same as Sacred Space (the justification for the efficacy of pilgrimages) and Sacred Time (which explains the spirituality and doctrine regarding the Liturgical Year); simply put, Latin gained over time a particular element which is spiritually valuable - and it is because of that particular element that it ought to be preserved. I believe, then that you get it backwards when you write that Latin is treated as grounded in the ‘‘origin… of Catholicism when recall that doesn’t reflect its origin.’’ It is Latin’s contact with Catholicism that has made Latin important, not Catholicism’s contact with Latin that has made Catholicism important.
- Begging the Question. Finally, I believe that, in this statement, you are assuming the very point you are attempting prove (i.e. that the Church ought to adapt to the culture).
Beneath its open surface, it is a surprisingly rigid statement. It is a hallmark of our current dominant philosophy to think change is a virtue - and that its progress is inevitable. The title of the Emperor in the West was Conservator Mundi; if the Empire is the world’s paradise, then the main job of the Emperor must be to conserve it as it is. The medievals thought similarly, but felt the fall of the empire so keenly that they spent 1000 years trying (successfully) to preserve greco-roman culture; the reason we possess pre-renaissance western literature at all is because of the Europeans’ decided beliefs in a non-progressive teleology. It is only in the past four-hundred years that people have begun to think of cultural-change as something good or inevitable.
To say, then, that the Church as ‘‘pilgrim’’ means that the Church ought to change with the culture is a statement that would have no precedent in pre-modern ages. Under what authority except current popularity would you claim that your fluid notion of culture is self-evident, and the non-progressive notion of cultural-preservation of the romans and medievals obsolete? ‘‘Reactionary’’ is a relatively recent word for a relatively recent concept, but its nativity marks a new rigidity: all ideas that are not in motion are in se repulsive. I do deny that belief, and since the only justification for it at the moment is the assumption that that belief is true, I find that, as it stands, you are assuming what you are trying to prove.
