This is part of the “Open Vault” series - in which I pull relevant posts from Charlotte was Both and share them here to the Substack audience.
Originally published, June 2025
Yes, we’re on a theme this week. Appropriate, I suppose since it’s Corpus Christi season.
Also, with bishops trying to lay the hammer down liturgically in the context of a new papacy, it’s in the air.
As is my wont, I turn to history. This week, I’ve been skimming through proceedings of the North American Liturgical Weeks, which are here at the Internet Archive.
Three points, briefly:
When you read mid-century Liturgical Movement material, and then consider the present moment, you see how profoundly the Reform of the Reform and even contemporary advocates of the continued use of the Traditional Latin Mass have been impacted by that work. Whether it’s admitted or not. Of course, it often is, and even embraced as a point of argument – as in, do you know who’s really living out the ideals of the Liturgical Movement and the Council? Not the idiot blessing the congregation with a guitar, that’s for sure. And on that, I hope we can all agree.
That said, one point that’s frequently argued today is that “active participation” as envisioned by the Liturgical Movement does not center exterior and vocal participation. Reading these proceedings, one sees that this is just not true. Of course internal participation is the core of it all, as Pius X and then Pius XII articulated, but there is no question that when those seeking to deepen the laity’s liturgical spirituality spoke of “active participation,” they meant being attentive to and engaged with the liturgical action as it was happening and, as much as possible, seeing and hearing and then joining the action through saying or singing parts of of the Mass.
This is a frequent subject of talks at the Liturgical Weeks – explaining it, citing parishes where i was happening before the Council, and then offering advice on how to get reluctant congregations on board afterwards.
See Pope Pius XII’s 1958 De musica sacra et sacra liturgia – Instruction on Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy to see what they were working with.
Yes, other more deconstructive and even destructive voices were part of the movement and even guiding it, particularly in Europe, but in these proceedings, we see such positive energy at work, fixed on an ideal: the Body of Christ, joined in prayer both internally and externally, joining in the Sacrifice, worshipping and then going out into the world, sharing the riches of life in Christ.
Finally, for now, how quickly things changed. Which never ceases to amaze me.
There’s no more instructive way to understand this than to compare, say, the proceedings from 1958 with those of 1967. It’s almost tragic.
In 1958, the enthusiasm for what was possible and probably coming – more vernacular, external congregational participation, probably ad populum – was palpable: that by being able to see and hear more clearly what was going on, encouraged to participate with their own voices, by being deeply prepared through studying the Mass and the Scriptures and papal encyclicals, Catholic laity’s faith would be deepened. And this conversation was, for the most part, framed by the language and structure of the Mass as they received it, not in any future imagined iteration. It was, we might say, quite traditional in content and tone.
And then, just nine years later, Mary Perkins Ryan, a very important figure in the American liturgical movement, who’d written books in the 30’s and 40’s centered on developing one’s spirituality in the context of the Roman Rite, including Your Catholic Languge: Latin from the Missal and – Key to the Missal, recently reprinted by a traditional-oriented publishing house – spoke these words at the 1967 Liturgical Week:
But our problem is that, in the course of the centuries, the liturgy became a “sacral” act, carried out by a priest set apart from the people, carried out in a sacral edifice, a church. It became something sacred more in the pagan sense of set-apartness than in the Judaeo-Christian sense of ordinary life and actions consecrated to God by his gracious presence with his people and their response to him. This, it seems to me, is where the real question of relevance arises. How is the mass once more to become recognized as the focal act of ordinary Christian life, springing as it were from the heart of Christian daily living and in turn illuminating and fructifying it as Christian living?
We have the problem both of rites which do not now, or in the foreseen revisions, seem to spring out of ordinary life nor reflect back to it. And we have the problem of Catholics’ attitude to the rites. Do not a great number of them like a “sacral” mass which seems apart from daily life? Don’t they miss the dim religious light of Gothic churches, the sense of mystery engendered by the “blessed mutter” of the “old” mass? Don’t many of them go to mass mainly to fulfill a sacral obligation having nothing to do with the way they live from day to day, or to “feel good” in a comfortable sense of special religiousness?
How are we going to change their expectations to more integrally Christian ones?
Other questions come to mind here: What kind of architecture, decoration, art, and music would be needed to convey a truly Christian sense of sacredness? What about vestments? It is not simply a matter of using the current styles of architecture, art, music, clothing. This may and already has resulted in mere banality or worse. What is needed is the ordinary given a new dimension, evidencing the transparency of the fully human to the divine, of the human person and community to Christ and the Spirit. But what might this mean concretely? Should we look forward to churches which would be something like stylized living-dining rooms, for instance? The essential phases of the mass are: meeting together with Christ, listening to Christ, giving thanks with Christ as we eat together, partaking of the food and drink that is himself. Do we want the settings of the mass — architectural, artistic, musical — to be conducive to helping the Christians who are to use them to meet, listen, and eat together?..
…..We might also hope that such a future revision would go more directly from the consecration to the actual “taking and eating,” and enable the participants to take and eat and take and drink along with the celebrant. And is it too much to dream of a rethinking of the Lord’s intentions about the kinds of food and drink through which he wills to give himself to us as our food and drink? Did he really mean Orientals or South Sea islanders to receive him under the foreign forms of wheat bread and wine made from grapes? Did he really mean Americans to receive him under the form of a food-stuff which is a mere accompaniment to “real” eating, and a drink which is, for most of us, not the drink of either thirst-quenching or social significance?
Nine years. Like from 2017 to today. It’s astonishing.
For a digest, less importantly of Ryan’s thoughts, but of what was becoming mainstream liturgical thinking, check out her collection of columns – again, published in 1967 – Has the New Liturgy Changed You?
(Included in this is the column used by Nico Fassino as the title to his Pillar piece on the history of standing to receive Communion: “Stand Like Free Men.”)
Studying this period of Catholic history is invaluable and for those engaged in contemporary discussions, necessary, not only for the background itself, but for the cautionary lesson in provides in human nature, as well as institutional and social dynamics. aka: be careful what you wish for.
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