Beautybeautybeauty! The Reform of the Reform, Liturgy, and the Cessation of Critical Questions

Catholic News Service distinguishes itself again (NOT!) with this bit of shlock touting the virtues of the "reformed reformed" liturgy entitled, absurdly, "The Call of Beauty."

Note how the clip opens with a loving slow shot of a cardinal's hat followed by a loving slow camera pan across a bit of white lace.  Beauty embodied.

And then listen to His Eminence Cardinal Ray Burke 'splain to us after we've been awestruck by the cardinal's hat and the lace that this is all about "Christ himself."

Yep.  I'll admit it: I never see a slow-motion shot of a cardinal's hat and a bit of lace that I don't say to myself, "Christ Himself!"

Then, as we watch Cardinal Ray dispensing communion to a bevy of all-male ordained members of the body of Christ, who are dominating the altar in this "beautiful" exercise in "reformed reformed" liturgy, and who are kneeling and whose backs are turned to us: as we watch the "beautiful" pageantry, Cardinal Ray assures us that "many of the faithful" are rediscovering the Mass through such "beauty."

You know the faithful he means, surely?  The 99% who are sitting in their pews.

Sitting and watching.  In silence.  While the privileged elite at the altar stage the beautiful spectacle for us.

Sitting and watching a show put on for us by the 1% of all male ordained show-stagers.  A show from which the rest of us are excluded, except as spectators.

But which we're asked to regard as "beautiful."  And as so gob-smackingly awe-inspiring that all critical questions about the exclusion of 99% of the faithful--and of all women--from the center of the stage should fall by the wayside as we enter the space of awe and "beauty."  Where, as Cardinal Ray assures us when the show begins, all of our questions fall by the wayside, because the "beauty" is "beyond discussion.  At least to reasonable people."

Because for godssake, can't you see: it's bootifool.  Such spectacle.  Such show.  

So much lace!  

And so much money.

So much money, which always and "beyond discussion" puts Christ right into the minds  and hearts of of "reasonable people," doesn't it?

For Robert McClory's insightful commentary on the video and on Cardinal Ray's argument, see his remarks today at National Catholic Reporter.