Biskop Elliot snakket 11. mars også om pave Benedikts syn på liturgien som en levende ting som må utvikles organisk, og om hvordan fokus i liturgien alltid må være rettet mot Gud:
Cardinal Ratzinger’s critique of liturgical discontinuity rested on the conviction that authentic liturgical development is always organic. This understanding was favoured by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium. But changes that followed the Council were not always organic. As he bluntly put it, organic growth was replaced, “…as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, an on the spot banal product.”
Change in liturgy should not be concocted by committees or individuals or produced by experiments. That undermines the foundation of liturgical continuity – that liturgy is a gift, from God, through the Church. Yet he is frank about past problems, comparing the liturgy to an endangered fresco preserved by whitewash, which was stripped away, only to be “endangered by climatic conditions as well as by various restorations and reconstructions”.
While Catholic liturgy develops, it is a treasure handed on to us, entrusted to us by the Church. Therefore he applies to liturgy what he applies to the interpretation of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, a “hermeneutic of continuity”, understanding the Council in the context of all preceding Councils and papal teachings. By sharp contrast, the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” breaks with the past and interprets liturgy as our creation, what “we do”, or as we hear in some quarters, what we do when “we gather”, adorned with such inventions as “gathering hymns” and a “gathering rite”. …
…. We note how our Holy Father reminds us that in worship we are meant to focus on God, to give God the glory, not to glorify ourselves. He criticized a self-centered overemphasis on ourselves that has damaged the quality of worship. When the liturgical community turns in on itself, it ends up worshiping itself. Self-centric worship is supposed to “build up community”, but in practice it undermines community. “Only when the sacrament retains its unconditional character and its absolute priority over all communal purposes and all spiritually edifying intentions does it build community and edify humans.”
Les hele foredraget her.