Catholic Sensibility

Busy weekend navigated. My dear wife's birthday was Saturday. In my parallel life at church, I scheduled myself for a fascinating workshop analyzing Monteverdi Vespers in anticipation of this concert. Anita was not too pleased, but seeing as how she took the morning to sleep in after present-opening in bed, I wasn't feeling too guilty later. Got home last night and wouldn't you know? My new mandolin slicer was stuck somehow. On the first potato. As I was poking around, making sure the hand protector's little spikes were actually in the potato in question, it all unstuck and whoosh! The second slice took a small piece of my thumb. Ow. Good thing I like my potato slices extra thin, eh? Brittany didn't believe me when I said I left a slice of my thumb in the slicer. A few days past due on my monthly magazine deadline, my editor will be pleased I slaved away last night to finish up. No play and all work for your CS host. In Catholic circles, I see a good bit of wordplaying around certain terms. Although they like to think otherwise, conservative Catholics think such play (namely pc-speak) is the exclusive domain of progressives. Not so. We gave you the passcodes years ago. One term that fascinates me is "reform of the reform." You can find ongoing essays about it here and lots of other places, too. If I understand it correctly, the term suggests that progressives got things partly to all wrong. So naturally, the reform needs reform. My question: if the next generation comes along and decides the neotradiliturgists botched things, will they speak of reform of the reform of the reform? Then another pendulum swing around mid-century for reform^4? You get my point. Why not just keep focused on liturgical reform? Though I think liturgy is on the right track overall since 1960, the work is unfinished and there is still improvement to be made. I missed the first generation of liturgical renewal, but I'm not keen on being in the Reform3 movement. For liturgy people, liturgy is the focus of our ministry in the Church. Fine-tune reforms? Yes. But I think there's too much detachment in speaking of a "reform of the reform." Reform is/was merely the means to an end: better liturgy. And liturgy itself is not an end to itself. Liturgy is the means by which we worship God and cooperate with our sanctification. Reform is already twice removed from the main effort here. Instead of using language to stake out political or ideological territory, why not just say what's wrong with the liturgy as you experience it? Then do your homework on tradition and the arts, and make your suggestions from there.