Escape from Scepticism

Written by a Brit, the book after which this post is entitled is quite enlightening and bespeaks the transformation necessary in modernity - a topic taken up as well by our Holy Father in his recent encyclical Spe Salvi.  Though the book generically treats of education, Christopher Derrick, the author, has this to say about "Ceremony" (pp. 90-91):

We should never despise Ceremony: the poet Chapman was right when he made that word into the name of a goddess, and represented that goddess as mankind's great defender against barbarism and ruin. All high civilizations have recognized this principle, and have attached great importance to formal or ritual or ordered behaviour, to good manners, to Ceremony. Their reasons for doing so have not been merely aesthetic. Man's image of himself is one of the great determinants of history; and between this and his behaviour-patterns, there is a two-way relationship of cause and effect. It is the instinct of all men and all societies to externalize and enact whatever notion they have of their own nature and destiny: conversely, our outward behaviour will always tend to modify the image of self and of society that we entertain. If in the secular culture of today most people tend to favour behaviour-patterns of the relaxed, casual, 'authentic', spontaneous, and slovenly kind, they thereby express and reinforce the very low view of man and of human destiny which characterizes that culture. . . .

It is only in the old Western tradition, and above all in Catholic Christianity, that man becomes something great. He needs to be personally humble. But he also needs to remember, and to enact, the principle that he is an immortal being, made in the image and likeness of God and bought with the full price of God's blood, a citizen of no mean city, having a destiny of more than royal splendour. By giving a certain formal and courteous and ceremonial character to the routines of daily life, he both asserts this principle and strenghtens his own apprehension of it. . . .

In today's world, Ceremony seems to be in retreat everywhere. Even in the worship of God, even in some monasteries, her reign is under attack. But she still retains a good deal of influence there, and also in the law courts, and in armies, and in the public acts of government: there are still certain occasions upon which men desire to enact a lofty image of themselves.

I don't know where else I would go with this, but to say that it seems a keen observation, and perhaps timely. I wonder what this has to say about the ongoing reform of the Liturgy that is taking place in the Church.