Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Monday 23 March 2009

You say "pink", I say, "rose", you say "tomato", I say.....

... sour grapes?
Someone please, please, please tell me what is the intention when the sniping over what is the precise shade necessary to fulfill liturgical directives as the sniper wishes to see them fulfilled?

I suppose that is just the gesture and posture of am eighty-something-year-old sitting outdoors, under several layers of cloth, in a climate where the heat index is in the vicinity of 100 degrees.

But many Americans of my generation, (or viewers of Nick, or something,) might imagine he's saying, "Buffy, Jooooooo-die....!" in exasperation, whilst sweeping his hand over his face, in the hopes that we he looks out again, the kids will have stopped their bickering.

I'm not just talking about vestments, here -- although obsessors over what I have heard called "liturgical tat" seem the most guilty just now.

Can we not be kinder, more charitable, to what are surely efforts made in good faith? It's not as if, in the case of, say, the tie-dyed horrors of Cologne, (IIRC,) a few years ago, we know the ugliness that barely skirted the edged of the correct colour was deliberate.

Or, as in the case of awful music at some mega-Mass in the US we know good and well what resources were available and rejected.

We all, probably, in our church work, whether salaried or volunteer, encounter both the ignorant or unskilled, and members of the don't-CARE-what-some-mean-old-document-says-this-is-the-way-we-do-it-HERE party.
Let's not lump them together.

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