Ratzinger begins this chapter reminding the reader that everything Christians did architecturally served a liturgical purpose; that is, all such decisions are driven by the understanding of what God has revealed, and therefore, the proper response of the faithful is thus determined.
God's ubiquity surprisingly affects liturgical posture, in that it doesn't eliminate a kind of spatial awareness, but causes it to be even more centered on the central saving event: the resurrection of Christ. He thus strongly advises the priest face ad orientem, that is, turned with his back to the people, facing east.
It has been his opponents, who, while claiming he suffers from an irrational nostalgia, disallow any liturgical development, and chase a kind of liturgical primitivism.
He gives one example of the negative impact of the partial truth of the Eucharist as meal: the focal point becomes the community, rather than God, whose saving action called the community into existence.
God's ubiquity surprisingly affects liturgical posture, in that it doesn't eliminate a kind of spatial awareness, but causes it to be even more centered on the central saving event: the resurrection of Christ. He thus strongly advises the priest face ad orientem, that is, turned with his back to the people, facing east.
It has been his opponents, who, while claiming he suffers from an irrational nostalgia, disallow any liturgical development, and chase a kind of liturgical primitivism.
He gives one example of the negative impact of the partial truth of the Eucharist as meal: the focal point becomes the community, rather than God, whose saving action called the community into existence.
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