The Intrinsic Liturgical and Juridical Obligatoriness of Ecclesial Worship

Abstract

The article seeks to understand better the distinction between liturgical and legal dutifulness in the worship of the Church, founding the two aspects intrinsically in the same reality of the sacred liturgy. Having to be liturgical regards how as per divine and human “con guration” pastors and all of the faithful are called to live the signs that signify and make the sancti cation of men and the worship of God, that is, according to a strictly liturgical logic. The traditional “liturgical law” arises in this area, and in its name the word “law” has a broad normative sense. Rather, the concept of right as the object of the virtue of justice is decisive for understanding the proper juridical dutifulness of the liturgy, according to which the pastors and all the faithful must act justly, i.e. giving or respecting the rights of the faithful, of the unbaptized and of the Church as an institution in all levels, in view of the divine-human configuration of these rights. It should be noted that these two dimensions of dutifulness are intertwined in the one reality of the liturgical mystery, so both are present above all in the liturgical life, and then in the