Turning Toward the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical PrayerIntroduction by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) Turning towards the Lord presents an historical and theological argument for the traditional, common direction of liturgical prayer, known as "facing east", and is meant as a contribution to the contemporary debate about the Catholic liturgy. Lang, a member of the London Oratory, studies the direction of liturgical prayer from an historical, theological, and pastoral point of view. At a propitious moment, this book resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican Council. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come. In this situation, Lang's delightfully objective and wholly unpolemical book is a valuable guide. Without claiming to offer major new insights, Lang carefully presents the results of recent research and provides the material necessary for making an informed judgment. It is from such historical evidence that the author elicits the theological answers that he proposes. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 86
... Prayer 35 2. The Direction of Prayer and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar 61 3. Liturgy and Church Architecture 71 III The Common Direction of Liturgical Prayer: Its Theological and Spiritual Contents 95 1. The Relevance of ...
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. FOREWORD To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the disappearance of Latin and the turning of the altars ...
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the ar- chitects of the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the very beginning resolutely opposed to the po- lemical ...
... liturgical prayer in the modern world. Häußling's chief objection is this: Against the intention of the Council, the ... praying com- munity. Thus there can be no question that, in an age when man has made himself the centre of his own ...
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. acter' of the liturgy.5 Reinhard Meßner refers to the ... liturgical tradition in the Roman Catholic Church of today indicates an eschatological deficit.6 A similar note is struck by Andreas ...