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In this short volume, Phillip Rosemann sets out to articulate the structures of Catholic existence in terms adapted from contemporary philosophy. Using a concept from the last works of Michel Foucault, Rosemann focuses on the liturgy as a "technology of the self." Through language, the liturgy "makes" the world in which the believer lives. But whereas modern philosophers hold that the human mind imposes its structures upon reality, the liturgical self exists in accordance with a cosmin order that stems from the Word.
If one dialogue partner is Michel Foucault, the other is Joseph Ratzinger, the late Pope Benedict XVI. Although this pairing may seem surprising, two facts suggest its fruitfulness. First, scholars now speak of a "Christian turn" in the late Foucault, a thinker often denounced - falsely - as the epitome of philosophical decadence. Second, as one of the leading liturgists of our time, Ratzinger incorporated crucial insights from modern philosophy into his liturgical theology. In relation to Ratzinger, too, moreover, some clichés need to be corrected.
In the resulting dialogue between Foucault and Ratzinger, the reader discovers what is the specific mode of existence of the "liturgical subject," and how Catholic time and space are constituted liturgically. In the end, the Thomistic adage gratia non tollit naturam turns out to be an excellent way of summarizing how the liturgical subject relates to the cosmos: not by destroying it, but by listening to the words of creation and perfecting them.
The University of Dallas Aquinas Lecture for 2024, Gratia non tollit naturam is published here with an introduction by Fr. James Lehrberger, OCist.
