Mahlmann, quoting Dittmer, on the phrase ecclesia semper reformanda

The traditional dichotomous division . . . of [the] church into [a] spiritual community (inward, eccl[esia] abscondita, proprie, community of believers) on the one hand, and [a] bodily community (outward, eccl[esia] visibilis, improprie, community of the baptized) on the other, must . . . be extended out into a trichotomously articulated concept of the church (I-III).  According to this [conception] it is (I) its pneumatic foundation ([the] opus Dei [(work of God)] that establishes the church as [a] spiritual community.  Within the sphere of the church as traditional so-called bodily community one must distinguish further between the dimension of [the] bodily community as (II) concept or typically ideal way of speaking or regulative idea, and th[at] dimension of the] bodily community as (III) [that] historical reality to which ecclesia semper reformanda est applies.   While the four classical notae internae or essential properties of the church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) are applicable to level I, the two reformed characteristics or notae externae (Word and Sacrament as means of grace; cf. CA 7) are to be applied to level II.

     "According to [the systematic theologian Johannes M.] Dittmer, ecclesia semper reformanda can therefore be applied exclusively to aspect of the 'church' no. III, and has therefore a narrow significance.  The call [for perpetual reform issued by] the formula can never [1] touch upon aspect of the 'church' no. II—that is its mission [(Auftrag)], the 'administration of the means of grace instituted by God' (CA 5, 7, and 8), to put it in the ancient phraseology [quite] deliberately—[2] dispense with it, or even [3] want only to alter ([i.e.] improve upon) it.  And certainly not aspect no. I of the 'church', for this is, as worked [(gewirkt)] by the means of grace (aspect II of the ‘church’ no. II), the opus Dei solius [(work of God alone).  But] in order that this might be grasped even more precisely, I propose to tease out of aspect of the 'church' no. III, in the sense of the optimal, an aspect no. IV in the sense of the deficient historical accomplishment of its task, and to relate ecclesia semper reformanda only to this aspect of the 'church' no. IV.  Every understanding of the formula that goes beyond this narrow significance is illegitimate, since this—to put it with Balthasar Mentzer (1565-1627)—[would be to] destroy 'die gantze Ordnung vnsers Heyls | und alle die Mittel | welche Gott zu vnser Seligkeit verordnet hat [(the entire order of our salvation | and all the means | that God has established for our beatitude)]'."

     Theodor Mahlmann, "'Ecclesia semper reformanda': eine historische Aufklärung: neue Bearbeitung," in Hermeneutica sacra: Studien zur Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert:  Bengt Hägglund zum 90. Geburtstag, ed. Torbjörn Johansson, Robert Kolb, and Johann Anselm Steiger, Historia hermeneutica:  Series studia 9 (Berlin:  Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 383 (381-442).
     For much more, go here.

mysterio > virtute

"May this sacred offering, O Lord, confer on us always the blessing of salvation, that what it celebrates in mystery it may accomplish in power.  Through Christ our Lord."

"Benedictionem nobis, Domine, conferat salutarem sacra semper oblatio, ut, quod agit mysterio, virtute perficiat.  Per Christum Dominum nostrum."

A salutary benediction upon us, O Lord, may this sacred oblation always confer, that what it advances in mystery it may bring to a conclusion/perfect in virtue.  Through Christ our Lord.

     Super oblata, Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal.  =Bruylants no. 81 (vol. 2, p. 32), from the 8th-century Gelasian sacramentary.

T. S. Eliot in 1935

"the fundamental problems are problems of theology":

"at a moment when ecumenical Christianity is engaged in a fight for its existence it finds itself deeply divided.  The most important divisions by no means always coincide with confessional differences; they are often found within the same confession.   Deeper in many cases than the differences which separate one confession from another are disagreements in the conception of God, in the understanding of His relation to the world and His purpose for mankind, in the interpretation of man and of the Christian ethic. . . ."

     T. S. Eliot, "The Christian in the modern world," a previously unpublished lecture "delivered at the annual meeting of the Church Union Literature Association at Church House on January 31, 1935."  "Outside the catacombs," Times literary supplement no. _____ (July 7, 2017):  18 (16-18).

ICEL, the International Commission for Emotivism in the Liturgy?

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 390, p. 84 (c. 980+)

How the heck do you get from

Domini est terra et plenitudo eius; venite, adoremus eum 

The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; come, let us adore him

to

Come, let us worship God who holds the world and its wonders in his creating hand 

(Antiphon to the Invitatory, Saturday, Weeks 1 and 3)?

Or to

Come, let us worship God who brings the world and its wonders from darkness into light 

(not yet sure where this one comes from, but see, if not the Liturgy of the hours itself, then at least DivineOffice.org)?

"The Christian can accept a fact which is incompatible with Christianity: he cannot accept a theory which is incompatible with Christianity."

     T. S. Eliot, "The Christian in the modern world," a previously unpublished lecture "delivered at the annual meeting of the Church Union Literature Association at Church House on January 31, 1935."  "Outside the catacombs," Times literary supplement no. _____ (July 7, 2017):  16 (16-18).  Eliot is discussing the distinction between "support[ing] a system which is in existence," and "giv[ing] assent to one which is as yet ideal," namely either Communism or Fascism.

"What ideological and semantic shifts might achieve better results, by enrolling everyone in a more productive dialogue?"

"Like Gay, when attempting to discuss white privilege, Eddo-Lodge encounters denial and defensiveness—this is, she says, 'one of the reasons why I stopped talking to white people about race.  Trying to convince stony faces of disbelief has never appealed to me.'  Gay is more circumspect.  'We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics', she says, 'because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking about difference.  Indeed, Eddo-Lodge nuances her own stance:  'I am also an insider in so many ways.  I am university-educated, able-bodied, and I speak and write in ways very similar to those I criticize.'  This begs the question:  if we accept that privilege is 'relative and contextual', as [Roxanne] Gay suggests, do we need to re-examine the notion and naming of white privilege?  What ideological and semantic shifts might achieve better results, by enrolling everyone in a more productive dialogue?"

     Bernardine Evaristo, "Check your privilege:  a provocative argument about race relations," Times literary supplement no. ____ (July 7, 2017):  12.

The "'structural' sin of modern liberal cultures"

"the peculiarity of our age lies precisely in its ability to render invisible, as it were, the primacy it accords to relations of power, through its claim of a technology or technical expertise or institutional procedures considered 'neutral' 'in themselves,' and thereby supposedly equally open to moral or immoral use.  Our age's distinctive 'imbecilism,' in other words, consists in its ignorance of the more basic—ontological-theological—sense in which a false primacy of power-relations is  hidden already in this claim of neutrality."

     David L. Schindler, "The meaning of the human in a technological age:  Homo faber, Homo sapiens, Homo amans," Communio:  international Catholic review 26, no. 1 (Spring 1999):  90-91 (80-103).

what is most objectionable about 'proceduralism' is not so much that it grants priority to (putatively empty) form over substance, but that the priority it grants to form itself already hiddenly contains (however unwittingly) the substance of mechanism.  'Empty' procedures are exactly the mechanized hence dumb procedures that Bernanos saw as the content of imbecilism.
     . . . an appeal to 'formal' institutional procedures and freedom of choice as the primary means for putting forward a genuinely creaturely notion of the self just so far already embodies (however hiddenly and unwittingly) a contrary, technological notion of the self.  Here, then, we see the peculiar difficulty in dealing with modern technological problems:  those who would offer a solution to these problems characteristically appeal to methods that imply a primacy of the (mechanistic) anthropology-ontology which, at the most basic (objective) level, generates the problems in the first place. . . .
     . . . particular attention must be given to the distinct way in which modern liberal societies conceal their (ontological-spiritual) ambiguity and indeed 'voluntarize-privatize' their sin:  that is, by claiming to have carved out 'public-institutional-technical-procedural' space empty in principle of any ('evil') ideology, leaving evil to be exhaustively identified with an always (supposedly) private abuse of freedom [(99-101)].