The Organic Development Of The Liturgy by Reid Dom Alcuin

The Organic Development Of The Liturgy by Reid Dom Alcuin

Author:Reid, Dom Alcuin [Reid, Dom Alcuin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-09-23T16:00:00+00:00


The Mont Sainte-Odile Conference, 1952

A second private meeting of scholars, convoked by German and French liturgical institutes, was held at Mont Sainte-Odile in Alsace in October 1952,169 taking “Modern Man and the Mass” as its subject. Botte relates a telling incident from the eve of the conference:

Since the location was not easy to reach we were told to meet in a hotel in Strasbourg. . . . It was there I made the acquaintance of Msgr. Andrieu. . . . We had time to speak for an hour, but when the cars came to pick us up, Msgr. Andrieu remained in Strasbourg. He was the best historian of the Roman Liturgy. . . . We would have liked him to come, but a position he had taken was an obstacle: the Liturgy could not be reformed; it was a given element of Tradition which had to be accepted. He was allergic to the idea that the Liturgy could be modified for pastoral goals. 170

It is clear that the motivating principle was indeed that objected to by Andrieu: pastoral expediency. One participant, the Oxford Dominican Illtud Evans, related that the meeting

considered the obstacles in the existing Liturgy which make a true participation in it more difficult than it need be. And here it must be emphasised that the liturgical rites have never, in the economy of the Church’s life, been considered as untouchable ancient monuments. . . . The complex structure of word and gesture in which rites are in practice transmitted may well need to be modified so that they may more effectively achieve their purpose.

Thus there is a twofold approach to the work of reform: that of liturgical scholarship, with its exact analysis of the history of the sacred rites and its concern to see that modifications should be in the line of the Church’s Tradition, and that of the pastoral mission of priests anxious to give to the liturgical mystery its fullest efficacy in the often unfavourable climate of our time. 171

Evans’ rationale for liturgical reform (its republication172 as Worship’s account of the conference, indicates that his thinking was by no means marginal) patently assumes that the Liturgy is to be changed to accord with contemporary man. It also accords disproportionate weight to the “exact analysis” of liturgical scholarship. The assumption behind this rationale is flawed in that it would render the Liturgy the subject of the perceived needs of each generation, save only the consensus of scholars. This was not the aim of the Liturgical Movement in its origins: man and his mind-set were to be changed (formed in the Liturgy and in liturgical piety) that he might participate in the Sacred Liturgy. Evans does recognise the right of ecclesiastical authority to decide upon reform, but as we have asserted, it is possible for authority to be used to impose reforms based upon a defective rationale. What is missing from Evans, and we may infer that it is missing also from the mindset of the Sainte-Odile conference,



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