Subversive Catholicism
Papacy, Liturgy, Church
Martin Mosebach, Angelico Press, 2019
One more small victory for retirement! I got my Mosebach book read, this being an English amplification with a couple additional and important essays added to the German original from 2012, which highlighted the ultramontane. The editors of the English edition have done the author a great service from the choice of title to the additional content.
While all the talk of Marian shrines and of Lourdes, in particular in Part III, headed "Christians in the World", must per force be to key to what the book is all about, I did much prefer the first two parts on the Papacy and on the Liturgy. In Part II, the chapter on "Prayer" (pp. 41 ff.) is most deserving of attention and the chapter "Christmas Every Day" (pp. 55 ff.) is a must read.
I will leave you with just one quote (p. 89), to my mind striking because it was set down almost a decade before the infamous Pew Survey pointing out the dreadful loss of faith among Catholics and particularly of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament:
"When the inhabitants of Gaul, England, and Germany became Catholic, they understood no Latin and were illiterate; the question of the correct understanding of the Mass was entirely independent of a capacity to follow its literal expression. The peasant woman who said the rosary during Mass, knowing that she was in the presence of Christ's sacrifice, understood the rite better than our contemporaries who comprehend every word but fail to engage with such knowledge because the present for of the Mass, drastically altered, no longer allows for its full expression."
Mosebach is a novelist first and foremost, without any degree in theology to my knowledge. The man demonstrates a clarity of expression and depth of thought in matters of the sacred, which would gain my vote for classing him a doctor of the Church.
This book does not disappoint. Tolle et lege!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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