Changes in the Liturgy: Cri de Coeur

Extract

Orate fratres, say the priest — ‘Pray brethren, that this sacrifice which is Mine and your my be acceptable'. So the congregation is offering the Sacrifice of the mass with the priest. We are not simply there, we are taking part. Our part is subsidiary, certainly, but it is not just a fiction or a facade, it is real. Therefore, we should think about it and utter ow. thoughts. We have a subsidiary part in the offering, we should make our subsidiary contribution to the discussion of the mass which is now everywhere being carried on. We have been co-offering, sub offering, for nineteen hundred years. I have sometimes asked myself ‘Doesn't anybody wonder what we think?’ And now an editor has asked me.

It may seem surprising that the liturgical education of my childhood was as good as it was—for my first eleven years belong to that very unliturgical period, the nineteenth century.