Using VaticanSpeak to rather crudely discredit opponents in the liturgy wars:
. . . we can not forget, first of all, that the liturgy is life that forms, not an idea to be learned. [say what?] It is useful in this regard to remember that reality is more important than the idea [again ?] (see Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 231-233).
And it is good therefore, in the liturgy as in other areas of ecclesial life, not to end up favouring sterile ideological polarizations, [oh no, give me a sterile polarization any
day] which often arise when, considering our own ideas valid for all contexts, we tend to adopt an attitude of perennial dialectic [“we”? when he means those other benighted souls] towards [him] who does not share them.
Remarkable cut and thrust when you get down to it.
More:
Thus, starting perhaps from the desire to react to some insecurities in the current context, we risk then falling back into a past that no longer exists [vs. the past that still exists?] or of escaping into a presumed future.
The starting point is instead to recognize the reality of the sacred liturgy, a living treasure that can not be reduced to tastes, recipes and currents, but which should be welcomed with docility and promoted with love, as irreplaceable nourishment for the organic growth of the People of God.
And stop it with your support of perfectly church-legal Tridentine mass.
Pretty turgid stuff, I’ll grant you, sounding as if translated by a Google program, but all in all a case of stern condescension and dismissal. Mercy, anyone?
The liturgy is not “the field of do-it-yourself”, but the epiphany of ecclesial communion. Therefore, “we”, and not “I”, resounds in prayers and gestures; the real community, not the ideal subject.
When we look back to nostalgic past tendencies or wish to impose them again, there is the risk of placing the part before the whole, the “I” before the People of God, the abstract before the concrete, ideology before communion and, fundamentally, the worldly before the spiritual.
It’s how they talk in some quarters, but even allowing for that, it’s more scolding from the man who never responds directly to various criticisms, such as that of “the four cardinals'” asking about Amoris Laetitia, now 879 days ago.