norms and Church

It occurred to me today that changing the rites of the Church from those prescribed in the norms is a form of lessening the “publicness” of the rites; those norms are the only chance we have for a universality of practice. So, the more closely the liturgy conforms to norms, the more “public” it is, while the more it deviates, the more “provincial” or even “private” it becomes.

Props to Christus Vincit, TNLM, and Closed Cafeteria for this article of Arinze’s commentary; maybe thinking about this article is what made the public/private thing occur to me.