To Catholic believers worship is a
contribution to God, pleasing to Him apart from any effect it may have
on the worshiper. Such a theory of it is, of course, open to grave
abuse. Sometimes it led to indifference as to the effect of the
worship upon the moral character of the communicant, so that worship
could be used, not to conquer evil, but to make up for it, and thus
sin became as safe as it was easy. Inevitably also such a theory
of worship often degenerated into an utter formalism which made
hyprocrisy and unreality patent, until the _hoc est corpus_ of the
mass became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer.
Here is a reason, once valid because moral, for our present situation.
Yet it must be confessed that again, as so often, we are doing what
the Germans call "throwing out the baby with the bath," namely,
repudiating a defect or the perversion of an excellence and, in so
doing, throwing away that excellence itself. It is clear that no
Protestant is ever tempted today to consider worship as its own reason
and its own end. We are, in a sense, utilitarian ritualists. Worship
to us is as valuable as it is valid because it is the chief avenue
of spiritual insight, a chief means of awakening penitence, obtaining
forgiveness, growing in grace and love. These are the ultimates; these
are pleasing to God.
A second reason, however, for our situation is not ethical and
essential, but economic and accidental.
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