Richard Fenn ( Liturgies and Trials ) notes that serious, absolutely binding speech – promises, for instance – is comparatively rare in normal conversation. When we do make binding promises, we give ad receive “signs and symbols that something out of the ordinary is occurring” – an oath, an exchange of rings, witnesses.
He sums up, “The liturgical language of religion is therefore the last human defense against the slipperiness, ambiguity, and uncertainty of all human acts of speech; and even these liturgical guarantees are widely known to fail.”
Is it a surprise, then, that deconstruction and all the modes of postmodern suspicion should arise on the heels of the de-liturgization of social life?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Restoring Man at Notre Dame
It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
Natural Law Needs Revelation
Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…
