[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“This role is increasing, as a result of technological progress” (CCC 2493).Since their power to mold minds is increasing, the real moral responsibility of the media is also increasing.However, modern media in the West are becoming increasingly immoral and more aggressively and uniformly secularist.As a result, modern man is becoming more docile to the secular media and less docile to God’s revelation; less sceptical to the world’s gospel and more sceptical to God’s.The communications and entertainment media constitute one of the major battlefields in the war between truth and falsehood today and offer one of the most important opportunities for Christians to bear witness to the truth and influence their society for the good.Christians should be encouraged to be active in this field, whether professionally or privately, and hold the media to higher moral standards.In addition to immoral content, there is a concern for the psychological effect of the very form and structure of modern media: The mass media “can give rise to a certain passivity among users, making them less than vigilant consumers of what is said or shown” (CCC.2496).This is mainly due to the fact that images cannot be argued with as clearly as ideas can.This is true of all images, good or bad, naturally or supernaturally planned.According to the saints and Doctors of the Church, evil spirits cannot directly influence our minds or wills, but they can tempt us by influencing our imagination, by bringing up deceptively attractive, erotic, or confusing images that are already in our memories, many of which come from the media.Thus also good images—good movies and stories, lives of the saints, sacred art—have much more power and importance than we suspect in the spiritual warfare between truth and darkness.19.Truth, goodness, and beautyThese three ideals of the human spirit, based on attributes of God, are by nature one.“The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty.Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendor of spiritual beauty” (CCC 2500).Truth and goodness are beautiful.PopeJohn Paul II entitled his encyclical about the foundations of moral goodness The Splendor of Truth, thus showing the unity of these three things.20.The truth of natural beauty“Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect.But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths’ of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God.Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to Mm through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos—which both the child and the scientist discover—‘from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator’ [Wis 13:5]” (CCC 2500).21.The truth of art“Created ‘in the image of God,’ [Gen 1:26] man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works.Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being’s inner riches.Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man’s own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, [cf.Wis 7:16-17] to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing.To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created” (CCC 2501).22.The truth of sacred art“Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God” (CCC 2502).We can judge sacred art by its effects, according to the principle “You will know them by their fruits” (Mt 7:16).“Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God” (CCC 2502).If sacred art (especially sacred liturgy) fails in this, its primary purpose, it is deformed, no matter how “relevant”, popular, or attractive it may be.Liturgical abuses are not just aesthetic lapses but offenses against divine truth.For the liturgy is a display, not of human taste, but of divine truth.The greatest-works of architecture were built to glorify the Architect of the universe: to house the incarnate eucharistic Christ.These were the cathedrals, miraculous “sermons in stone” that made rock and glass seem to take wing and fly like angels.Many of the world’s greatest paintings and statues were made for churches, and much of the greatest music was composed for Masses.For what happens within that sacred time and place is the most beautiful work of art ever conceived: God’s work of redeeming man from eternal darkness into heavenly light by enduring that hellish darkness in mans place on the Cross.The most beautiful thing man’s eyes have ever seen in this world is the bloody martyrdom of God himself.There, in every Mass, where Christ becomes truly present again in an unbloody manner but in the same act of love, offering himself for our salvation, we find truth incarnate, goodness incarnate, and beauty incarnate, and their perfect union.PART IIISACRAMENTS AND PRAYERHow Catholics WorshipChapter 1INTRODUCTION TO CATHOLIC LITURGY1.Liturgy is not “soft”2.Liturgy as God’s work3.The diverse and changing character of liturgy4.The liturgy in history5.The relationship between the liturgies of the Old and New Covenants6.The Holy Spirit in the liturgy7.Who celebrates the liturgy?8.The roles of clergy and laity in the liturgy9.The sources of sacred symbols10.Four kinds of symbols in the liturgy: Acts, words, music, and images11.Liturgical cycles and sacred times12.Sacred places13.Visible elements in the church14.Liturgy and spirituality1.Liturgy is not “soft”We need to begin with a very general point about the whole subject of liturgy, because this will make a difference to all the specific points about liturgy, as the color of a light makes a difference to everything it shines on.To many people, “liturgy” sounds like something “soft”, something vaguely sweet and sleepy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]