There is a long article at Praytell about how the 1980’s and 90’s saw liturgical renewal collapse. For the author, who is a nun, it was all those mean conservatives, mostly laity, who rejected the brilliant leadership of this nun and others like her, who wrote the article.
And that my friends was and is the problem: liturgical experts who think so highly of themselves and their newly acquired power to manipulate the liturgy of the Church as THEY think best, becoming liturgical Nazis to enforce THEIR vision for liturgical renewal, creativity and inculturation, a top-down approach that rank and file clergy and laity rejected, especially laity and sometimes in an indignant and righteously angry way.
The nun who writes this article sees the collapse from her superior perspective alone and in her old age longs for the good old days when she had power over the liturgy and over the laity. Gone with the Wind is that!
As an aside, she is right that most liturgical commissions of dioceses are a thing of the past precisely because they were power hungry liturgists foisting their power on the poor laity. I think bishops should have an advisory council for the liturgy, but orthodox ones that promote reading the black and doing the red but with style and energy.
Pray Tell is pleased to reprint, with permission, the Amen Corner from Worship 98 (July 2024). To subscribe to the journal Worship, visit the link here.
6 comments:
Since they could no longer have themselves and all their pals rewriting liturgy to incorporate all the local mix-match of people customs to include protestants of various stripes, and aboriginal, they dropped out, the poor dears.
And those horrid people kneeling instead of standing, disrupting unity, and them not happy with reserved consecrated hosts but wanting communion from off the altar of the mass they were attending, and even not wanting to sing protestant hymns at a Catholic mass!....why, no wonder the poor dears dropped out, and I think the writer should follow their lead. The article is what? A retread updated 25yr old article? It was not worth puzzling over the header....
Here is an honest article about the decline of the Jesuit Order written by a Jesuit:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/257795/prominent-jesuit-the-society-of-jesus-is-in-profound-decline
Blessedly and interestingly, a truly inculturated, grassroots liturgical renewal is sweeping the land. Guess what it is? Laypeople demanding a return to traditional Catholic prayers and practices. Professional liturgical "experts" who are over the hill and facing living out their remaining years with waning power and influence hardest hit. Tiny violins are on back-order.
Nick
Nick, I had a master tech sarge who would hold up thumb and first two fingers in a tripod, waggle the index back and forth between thumb and middle finger, and ask, "Do you know what that is?", and in answer to the silence, he would say, "It's the sound of ten-thousand tiny violins playing My Heart Bleeds For You."
.....liturgical Nazis to enforce THEIR vision....
no further comment necessary!
Every liturgy committee is an unnecessary aberration. The liturgy is already planned, even the music. Just do what the Church has already set in place. Of course it would help if the NO had fewer options, but the options do not need to become mandatory.
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