The Liturgical Movement: Right and Wrong Directions—II

Extract

In my first article I offered some reasons for thinking that the concept of modelling modern liturgies on some pattern formed in the distant past is one which has begun to outlive its usefulness. However, if we turn from Rome and the documents produced by the Consilium there to the actual areas of concern or experiment, we find a potentially far more fruitful situation. Two groups of people seem to be most interested in the changing shape of liturgy: those who love the Roman rite and wish to see it preserved in more or less its present form and those who feel that a new creation is required if we are to have forms of worship apt for the needs of contemporary man. To be sure, the habit of accepting whatever comes from above is ingrained in the Catholic and a large number of the faithful will certainly make the best of whatever is offered liturgically, as they have done in the past, but the two groups I have mentioned are the only ones whose response to liturgical change is not basically passive; each can put up a good case and it is around their needs as worshipping members of the people of God that two types of liturgy will crystallize. Such a polarization is something which we shall have to accept; we must give up the desire to enforce upon all our fellow Catholics a type of worship which at a given moment happens to suit us personally. We must also realize that the two concepts of worship involved are not susceptible of the kind of superficial reconciliation provided by the ICEL translation of the Canon.