SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes:

I just encountered this passage from C.S. Lewis, one which was not familiar to me.  Like so much of his work, it expresses something many of us know but have never given such excellent expression:

Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a wide-spread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast — all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual. (emphasis mine)

Given what you’ve said to me about your appreciation for real liturgical beauty and purpose, I thought you might find it interesting.  Though of course, the liturgical problem is only one of expression of something much more general, the attack on transcendence and on hierarchy.

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