Henri de Lubac framed this claim in terms that arguably have become the most familiar mantra in sacramental theology: “If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ.” Or, as Karl Rahner prefers: “Jesus Christ is the “primordial sacrament of salvation.” If we stretch the logic, every Christian is called to be a sacrament in the world. Each priest and bishop and religious are called to be sacrament in a very special way. We all exist sacramentally. But we see the Synod of a particular Church initiate a crisis that makes liturgy “a battleground” for “outdated issues.” It looks as if renewal scandalises closed minds.
An archbishop celebrates sacred liturgy with police and commandos inside the church. We fail miserably to witness. The Church fails to interpret along three structural moments: first, an exodus out of the world; second, the conversion to the image of Christ; and in the third place the ethical mission toward the other. But such actions from the leadership shows a profound crisis of sacramentality. We can speak of decline in sacramental participation and practice, or secularization of our society. But more than that, the very church is indulging in counter witness. We witness the absence or we create the absence of Christ in the church. Are we epitomising a totalitarian theocracy? Any Christian Church that attempts to exercise this type of inquisitorial authority using the appropriate role of the ecclesiastical structure is where one finds the dangerous temptation of misuse of authority. The Inquisitor identifies freedom as the specific cause of humanity’s torments. In identifying freedom as the root cause of humankind’s torments, the Inquisitor sets himself up to impose a remedy to the ills plaguing the human race. Inquisitor went wrong in his conception of freedom, as he denounces Christ: “Instead of taking over men’s freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely, seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law, man had henceforth to decide for himself with a free heart what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide.”
In this tragic situation, we hear these words of Pope Francis: “When liturgical life becomes something of a banner of division, there is the odour of the devil, the deceiver, in there. It is not possible to worship God and at the same time turn liturgy into a battlefield for issues that are not essential, or indeed for outdated questions and to take sides, starting from the liturgy, on ideologies that divide the Church.” We have seen that any and every reform in this Church was met with opposition. Every renewal was branded as Latin and Western. The restorationist attitude was nothing short of fundamentalism. The Pope laments: “It is true that every reform creates resistance. I remember, when I was a boy, when Pius XII began with the first liturgical reform, the first one: you can drink water before communion, fasting for an hour… ‘But that’s against the sanctity of the Eucharist!’ they rent their garments in despair. Then, the Vespers Mass: ‘But, how come, Mass is in the morning!’ Then, the reform of the Easter Triduum: ‘But how is it possible, on Saturday the Lord must rise, now they postpone it to Sunday, to Saturday evening, on Sunday they don’t ring the bells… And where do the twelve prophecies go?.’ All these things scandalized closed minds. It also happens today. Indeed, these closed mind-sets use liturgical matters to defend their own point of view. Using the liturgy: this is the drama we are experiencing in ecclesial groups that are distancing themselves from the Church, questioning the Council, the authority of the bishops … in order to preserve tradition. And the liturgy is used for this.” Liturgical conflict only serves to reveal ethical depravity. Engagement with God through the scripture and the sacraments and assent to God’s gift economy must free us to form new forms of relationship with one another. Relationship points towards the possibility of genuine living-in-grace between brothers and sisters. A genuine religious worldview needs both an ethical critique of prayer and worship calls for a liturgical critique of ethics.