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
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... Position of the Celebrant at the Altar 21 II Direction of Prayer, Liturgy, and Church Architecture in the Early Church 35 1. Facing East: The Christian Direction of Prayer 35 2. The Direction of Prayer and the Position of the Celebrant ...
... positions in this debate. This is an important clarification. It sheds light on what is relative in the external symbolic forms of the liturgy and resists the fanaticisms that, unfortunately, have not been un- common in the ...
... position of priest and people as absolutely necessary. More recently the atmosphere has become more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann, Bouyer, and Gamber without at once being sus- pected of ...
... -Kunstverlag Ettal, Yale University Art Gallery, Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuth- ner, Sible de Blaauw, and Institut d'Études Augustiniennes. INTRODUCTION The position of the altar and the direction taken 13 Acknowledgments.
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. INTRODUCTION The position of the altar and the direction taken by priest and people in liturgical worship have again become matters for theological debate. This seems a good occasion to ...