Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi

Dom Mark Kirby, the Prior of Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery (Silverstream Priory) has written a thoughtful and important article to which I’d like to draw your attention.

Speaking in Vienna this week, His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke said, “The Church’s discipline can never be other than true to her doctrine.” His Eminence was, in effect, articulating a principle that flows from the age–old law that grounds and shapes both Catholic doctrine and the Catholic moral life: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.

The lex orandi is the enactment of the sacred liturgy; it is composed not only of texts, but also of the whole complexus of sacred signs, gestures, and rites by which, through the mediating priesthood of Jesus Christ, men are sanctified and God is glorified. The sacred liturgy itself (being the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the other sacraments, the Divine Office, and the various rites and sacramentals found in the Church’s official liturgical books) is the Church’s theologia prima. It is in the sacred liturgy and though it that the Church receives her primary theology. The primary theology of the Church is a gift received from above, according to the word of Saint James: “Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren. Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:16–17). …

Read it all here.

It is very much worth your while.