Liturgy article #1: What is the liturgy? What is the Liturgical Movement?
In my post of December 17 I mentioned I wanted to write a few educational pieces of the topic of liturgy. The renewal of our liturgical worship has to be, in my honest opinion, one of the key pressing concerns of today’s Catholic agenda. Now the most significant Catholic document of recent memory regarding the liturgy has to be Sacrosanctum Concilium, a.k.a. the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II. I plan of doing a running commentary of the various paragraphs of that document, but before doing so I thought I’d cover a few background points about the document itself. After all, what the heck is a church “constitution” anyway? What’s Vatican II? And for good measure, what does the word “liturgy” mean?
What is the liturgy?
To put it simply, the word “liturgy” refers to the acts of public worship that the Church, as the Church, offers to God. Obviously there are many forms of prayer which exist in the Church, and many of these (such as the Rosary) are explicitely promoted by the Church as wholesome and good. Not all of them are liturgy, however. We recognize liturgical prayer by its explicit and profound connection to the mystery of the Church. Whether it is because the rite in question is presided by an ordained minister, or simply because the ritual book is published officially by the Church, the liturgy takes a group from being just a bunch of praying individuals to becoming a manifestation of the Body of Christ in our world.
With regards to the specific list of acts of public worship, these are:
- The sacrament of the Eucharist, which is at the very heart of Christian liturgy, and is even itself called the “Divine Liturgy” in some traditions.
- The other six sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage, Holy Orders), which, while having their own value, are nevertheless oriented to the Eucharist in some way.
- The various “sacramentals” of the Church, which are instituted by the Church but which are oriented towards the sacraments, whether specifically (such as the use of Holy Water, which is connected to Baptism), or generically (such as the various rites for Blessings, or the rite of Exorcism).
- The Liturgy of the Hours, a.k.a the “Divine Office”, which encapsulates the rest in a process of unceasing prayer which is meant to sanctify, not just moments in time, but time itself.
I should point out that all the rituals of the liturgy “bathe”, in a sense, in an overall context called the “Liturgical Calendar”, by which the various feast days (like Christmas) and spiritual seasons (like Lent) are defined. The Liturgical Calendar isn’t a ritual per se, but it *is* the interface between the rhythms of the liturgy and the rhythms of our daily life.
What is the Liturgical Movement?
Prior to the Protestant Reformation, there were many local variations in how divine worship was offered by the Church, without causing any great difficulty. During the Reformation, however, this lack of uniformity opened the door to a number of problems. There is an ancient theological principle called Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, which means that the way the Church prays is a reflection of what the Church believes. The Protestants, as part of their movement, proposed a number of changes to the liturgy of the Church, some of which were cosmetic, but others of which reflected their desire to alter Catholic doctrine.
The Catholic Church developed its response to the Reformation through its own Counter-Reformation, which included clamping down on the permitted local variations to the liturgy. Bishops, for example, were no longer allowed to adapt the liturgy in any way, and a new Roman Congregation (called the Congregation of Rites) was established to supervise the liturgy. All this was necessary to avoid allowing heretical propositions to creep into Catholic worship, but it also had the effect of arresting the natural process of development of that manner of that worship. The world, however, did not stop changing, which meant that over time the liturgy became more and more the specialty of the “professionally religious”, with the ordinary people often following things only from afar.
The Liturgical Movement began in the mid-19th century as an attempt to rediscover the richness of the liturgy as a source for Christian life. It began with the Benedictine monks of France and their abbot, Dom Guéranger, who placed liturgical worship and Gregorian chant at the centre of their spirituality. The movement began to spread to parish life through the publication of translations of the liturgical texts in the language of the people, allowing people to understand better what was actually going on. This eventually led here and there to greater participation by the people in the liturgy itself, particularly through offering the various responses (which until then was only done by those around the altar, such as the altar boys).
The Liturgical Movement was encouraged by the leadership of the Church, particularly by Saint Pope Pius X and Pope Pius XII, who undertook certain limited and cautious reforms. But it was the Second Vatican Council, called by Blessed Pope John XXIII, that undertook the task of spreading positive liturgical reform throughout the Church everywhere in the world. Vatican II met from 1962-1965, and gathered over 2000 Catholic bishops from every continent. And its very first published document, promulgated on December 4, 1963, was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which crowned, in a sense, the efforts of the Liturgical Movement up until that time.
This Constitution spurred a reform in almost every liturgy of the Roman Rite, and all in a very short time, which placed enormous pressure on those leading the task of reform. We must also not forget that this was the 1960′s, and a spirit of rebellion against any and all authorities, whether political, ecclesiastical, or historical, was in the air. Some problems quickly arose. In anticipation of the expected liturgical changes many people began to change the liturgy on their own, and not always in a way consistent with Catholic teaching or tradition. Once the new liturgical books and instructions did come out, there was great controversy over how to implement them. Many churches, for example, were gutted of their liturgical art: painted ceilings were whitewashed over, vestments were literally thrown into the garbage, liturgical music of an often dubious quality was introduced, and a general cheesiness and bad taste seemed to reign in many places. This extreme produced its opposite: a Traditionalist movement sprung up to re-affirm the value of the pre-conciliar liturgy, but some of the more extreme branches of the movement wound up leaving the Church! Apart from these extremes, however, a whole liturgical cottage industry seemed to spring up, with so-called experts solemnly declaring that certain practices were “wrong” and needed to be replaced by practices which were “right” — until the next batch of experts came along a few years later, declaring the opposite.
Today many people are calling for a renewal of the Liturgical Movement, such as in the Oxford Declaration of 1996, and the foundation of the Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy. Opinions vary as to how far this renewal needs to go, and of what it should consist.
A personal reflection
I was born in 1970, making me a child of the reforms of Vatican II. I did not grow up with the pre-conciliar liturgy, and I have no nostalgia for it. At the same time, I am not sure the goals of the original Liturgical Movement have yet been met. The Liturgical Movement sought to place the riches of liturgical worship of God at the heart of Christian life, and yet statistics show that a large percentage of Catholics stay home on Sunday, preferring their own personal prayers to those of the Church in the liturgy. How can it be, for example, that the percentage of Quebec Catholics attending Mass in French is 1/10 of what it was when the Mass was in Latin? It seems like an odd statistic, given that very few understood the Latin (or, because of the way Mass was celebrated, could even hear most of it!)
As for those who *do* join in our liturgical worship, I am not sure that even they are always doing so fully conscious of the meaning of the liturgical actions. I don’t blame them, mind you…I must confess that until I got to the seminary, my own liturgical education was sorely lacking, and I think many if not most people would be quite open to learning and understanding more about the way we pray as Catholics. As a pastor I feel my own responsibility in this area, to help people discover the beauty and joy of what it means to worship God in the heart of the Church. My hope is that these reflections can be just one more contribution to re-discovering a true liturgical dimension to our common Catholic life — even if only for myself. So please stay tuned!