Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

Rites preserve, sermons undermine faith. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 454

When he repudiates rites, man reduces himself to an animal that copulates and eats. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 440

Rationalizing dogma, relaxing morality, simplifying the rite, do not make it easier for the unbeliever to approach [the Church], but rather ...

A cloud of incense is worth a thousand sermons. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 410

Ritualism is the discreet guardian of spirituality. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 410

To restore an old liturgical gesture in a new context can amount to heresy. To receive communion standing today, for example, becomes a gest...

“Religious instruction” appears at times to have been invented in order to counteract the religious effectiveness of the liturgy. Escolios a...

At the thought of the current Church (clergy, liturgy, theology), an old Catholic first becomes indignant, then astonished, and finally he j...

By suppressing certain liturgies we suppress particular certainties. To fell sacred groves is to erase divine footprints. Escolios a un Text...

The sacrifice of the Mass today is the torturing of the liturgy. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 293

The current liturgy makes official the secular divorce between the clergy and the arts. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 257

The liturgy can definitely only speak in Latin. In the vernacular it is vulgar. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 247

Christianity, when it abolishes its ancient liturgical languages, degenerates into strange, uncouth sects. Once contact is broken with Gree...

To innovate in liturgical matters is not sacrilege, but stupidity. Man only venerates immemorial routines. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Se...

Liturgical incense is the oxygen of the soul. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 212

A ceremony is a technical procedure for teaching indemonstrable truths. Ritual and pomp overcome man’s blindness before what is not material...

Note: This entry is designed to gather into one place the aphorisms in which Gómez Dávila mentions God and religion. Other aphorisms relevan...