"Much water has flown under Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendour and mystery from Rome, since the pontificate of Pius XII. The essentials, I know, remain firmly entrenched and I find the post-Conciliar Mass simpler and generally better than the Tridentine; but the banality and vulgarity of the translations which have ousted the sonorous Latin and little Greek are of a super-market quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand-shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies; kneeling is out, queueing is in, and the general tone is rather like a BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots . The clouds of incense have dispersed, together with many hidebound, blinkered and repressive attitudes, and we are left with social messages of an almost over-whelming progressiveness. The Church has proved she is not moribund. "All shall be well," I feel, "and all manner of things shall be well," so long as the God who is worshipped is the God of all ages, past and to come, and not the idol of Modernity, so venerated by some of our bishops, priests and mini-skirted nuns."
React to this quote
More by Alec Guinness
See allResonant Thoughts
"The Self That in which all these worlds seem to exist steadily, that of which all these worlds are a possession, that from which all these worlds rise, that for which all these exist, that by which al…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their …"
— Felix Adler"There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates, who was killed because he was wise…"
— George Bernard Shaw"... the most important questions and insights and goals are unpredictable."
— Freeman Dyson"An excellent little book — highly informative, full of challenging and stimulating ideas, and teeming with …"
— Arnold M. Ludwig"As with physical gravity, an understanding of the forces of social attraction support predictions, or at le…"
— Nick Land"The world will accept you changing your style for them, but pretty soon they’re going to demand that you ch…"
— John F. MacArthur
