[Agrarian]

K, I agree with everything you wrote. I also have to admit that I found nothing in Ratzinger that I really disagreed with.

But there is soemthing about the tone and emphasis of his essay that makes me very uncomfortable, but that I couldn't articulate well -- that's why I haven't posted anything on this thread, yet.

At the heart of my discomfort is exactly what C of D points out -- the heavy emphasis on the horizontal aspect of communion.

K, you are right that for us Orthodox, this horizontal aspect is part and parcel of what communion is. As our priest said a week or two ago, sin creates isolation, alienation, and lonliness. Put differently, he said "everyone goes to hell alone, but we all go to heaven together." When we were having a time of troubles in our parish, and a split was looking inevitable, one of the things that we agreed on was that this would hurt our path to salvation. We need each other, and in a sense "it takes all kinds" -- we gain something from communion with everyone else in the parish, something we wouldn't gain without them.

I think, though, that *in the context of Vatican II* the way that Ratzinger talks makes me squirm a bit.

The Orthodox approach to communion never loses the vertical aspect. The performance of proskomede by the priest alone in preparation for the Liturgy is intensely vertical, although the horizontal aspect is there, and in a bigger way than Ratzinger even discusses, since the communion of the living with the departed and all the saints is enacted there. During the Liturgy itself, the priest still faces east when at the altar -- symbolically facing God along with the people. The reverence shown to the Gifts is deep. The sacrificial aspect is clear.

For the Orthodox, it seems that the vertical aspect of the Eucharist creates the horizontal in a natural and organic way, whereas the post Vat II Catholic church seems to attempt to directly jump to the horizontal and social aspects of communion, bypassing the vertical aspect. This is most strikingly created symbolically by the fact that the priest faces the people.

I know that I'm rambling, but I'm attempting to put my finger on what it is that makes me uncomfortable with the Cardinal's writing. It just seems a bit mushy. It technically is nothing I can disagree with, and seems to correct many of the previous Roman overemphases on the vertical (typified by the fact that Roman priests can say mass and receive "communion" all by themselves -- there is no imagery of communion with one's fellow Christians in a mass that is said with no-one else present).

[Kolokotronis]

"For the Orthodox, it seems that the vertical aspect of the Eucharist creates the horizontal in a natural and organic way, whereas the post Vat II Catholic church seems to attempt to directly jump to the horizontal and social aspects of communion, bypassing the vertical aspect. This is most strikingly created symbolically by the fact that the priest faces the people."

I keep forgetting that the Tridentine Mass is no longer the regular liturgy of the Roman Church, though you'd think I would be very conscious of that fact given the discussions here on FR. Seen in the context of the NO, I can appreciate what you are saying. Even though the Cardinal says, in a very Orthodox way,

"For this reason, in my prayer at communion, I must look totally toward Christ, allowing myself to be transformed by him, even to be burned by his enveloping fire."

the very fact that as he says these prayers he is facing the congregation certainly speaks volumes to the Faithful, even if the Cardinal knows what he is doing. Time and again we have all written "lex orandi, lex credendi". I suppose therefore it is fair to wonder if the Cardinal, should he be elected pope, would restore the Liturgy in the West to the liturgical Orthodoxia one sees in the East. As Fr. Tom points out in the article I snipped, it all comes together at the Divine Liturgy to let us know what we are about when we pray the Liturgy. Nothing we do there is meaningless and thus the actions and position of the priest in the NO liturgy of necessity take on a great meaning which may have the tendency to lead the Faithful into some very basic error, like thinking the liturgy is about us rather than for us.