Paragraph for the week

Instead of a quote for the week, this week we include a paragraph for the week. It is one from Pope Francis’ recent document on the liturgy ‘Desiderio Desideravi and gives a great example of how good he is at describing things!

“We could say that there are different ‘models’ of presiding. Here is a possible list of approaches, which even though opposed to each other, characterise a way of presiding that is certainly inadequate: rigid austerity or an exasperating creativity, a spiritualising mysticism or a practical functionalism, a rushed briskness or an overemphasised slowness, a sloppy carelessness or an excessive finickiness, a superabundant friendliness or priestly impassibility. Granted the wide range of these examples, I think that the inadequacy of these models of presiding have a common root: a heightened personalism of the celebrating style which at times expresses a poorly concealed mania to be the centre of attention. Often this becomes more evident when our celebrations are transmitted over the air or online, something not always opportune and that needs further reflection. Be sure you understand me: these are not the most widespread behaviours but still, not infrequently assemblies suffer from being thus abused.”