Abstract
As public forms of worship of the Catholic Church, liturgies utilise visible social resources to convey supernatural gifts of grace. These rites involve actions that effect what they signify by denoting participation in the redemptive effects of the sacred mysteries surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ. Liturgical enactments operate in a narrow divide between the natural and the supernatural. The actor believes that his liturgical actions are spiritually efficacious and this belief is secured by a faith to which God responds through grace and revelation. This Divine response somehow manages to transcend the all too human efforts to use insignificant social resources to seek and to find the holy.
A Church is like a reproduction of heaven — only not as good !
(Clifton Cathedral altar server, age 9)
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Notes and References
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© 1991 Kieran Flanagan
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Flanagan, K. (1991). Liturgical Theology: Some Sociological Implications. In: Sociology and Liturgy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375383_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375383_3
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