- Dec 24, 2005
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This was written this week by Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the full gamut of Church teaching, from morality to the exercise of authority to dogmatic truths of the faith, were doubted and even outright denied—and religious vocations plummeted. The old maxim lex orandi, lex credendi (to which some have added lex vivendi) proves itself true all the time. The era of the “liturgy wars” was not about rearranging ornamentation; at a time of confusion and dissent in all areas of Church life, it was foundational to all that happened.
We seemed at one point in the recent past to have come to a peaceful coexistence with what Pope Benedict referred to as the two forms of the Roman Rite, after he issued his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. However, after Traditionis Custodes and then the even more severe restrictions from the Dicastery for Divine Worship on the celebration of the Roman Rite according to the 1962 Missal, the liturgy wars have been revived. While liturgy was not a focus of the cardinals in the conclave that elected Pope Francis after the resignation of Pope Benedict, it will undoubtedly be a central focus in this upcoming one.
With all of the issues facing the Church at this time, none is more important than how we worship. God created us for worshipping him. Divine worship, if it is truly to deserve the name “divine,” relies on a sense of the sacred, which in turn springs from the sacramental vision of reality: Physical reality mediates and makes present the spiritual, transcendent reality lying beyond it. If we lose this, we lose everything.
And there have been losses. There can be no argument that the very visible loss of the sense of the sacred in the way we worship is a fundamental cause (even if not the only one) of the massive disaffiliation of young people from the Church. According to a 2015 Pew Research study, 40 percent of adults who say they were raised Catholic have left the Church. And it is not getting better. A 2023 survey of 5600 people found that “Catholics have experienced the largest decline in affiliation of any religious group.”
Clearly not enough young people are meeting Jesus in the Eucharist; otherwise, they would not be abandoning him for other religious experiences or losing faith in God altogether. And just as clearly, the hunger for tradition among the next generation of Catholics who do remain is palpable.
As Francis X. Rocca wrote on April 9 in The Atlantic:
This rings true to me. Most of the devout young Catholics I meet grow up with the typical parish fare on Sundays, only later discovering the beauty of our authentic Catholic liturgical patrimony. Their reaction? Wonder, mixed with anger. They tell me—and this is a literal, word-for-word quote—“I’ve been deprived of my Catholic birthright.”
firstthings.com
Putting an End to the Liturgy Wars
The memories are still vivid, even though it was a long time ago. Having been born in 1956, I’m just old enough to remember the confusing and tumultuous era of “the changes” that came after the Second Vatican Council, particularly regarding the Mass. One elderly couple in my neighborhood mused aloud to my teenaged self that it was like the father not being home and the children playing however they liked.It should come as no surprise, then, that the full gamut of Church teaching, from morality to the exercise of authority to dogmatic truths of the faith, were doubted and even outright denied—and religious vocations plummeted. The old maxim lex orandi, lex credendi (to which some have added lex vivendi) proves itself true all the time. The era of the “liturgy wars” was not about rearranging ornamentation; at a time of confusion and dissent in all areas of Church life, it was foundational to all that happened.
We seemed at one point in the recent past to have come to a peaceful coexistence with what Pope Benedict referred to as the two forms of the Roman Rite, after he issued his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. However, after Traditionis Custodes and then the even more severe restrictions from the Dicastery for Divine Worship on the celebration of the Roman Rite according to the 1962 Missal, the liturgy wars have been revived. While liturgy was not a focus of the cardinals in the conclave that elected Pope Francis after the resignation of Pope Benedict, it will undoubtedly be a central focus in this upcoming one.
With all of the issues facing the Church at this time, none is more important than how we worship. God created us for worshipping him. Divine worship, if it is truly to deserve the name “divine,” relies on a sense of the sacred, which in turn springs from the sacramental vision of reality: Physical reality mediates and makes present the spiritual, transcendent reality lying beyond it. If we lose this, we lose everything.
And there have been losses. There can be no argument that the very visible loss of the sense of the sacred in the way we worship is a fundamental cause (even if not the only one) of the massive disaffiliation of young people from the Church. According to a 2015 Pew Research study, 40 percent of adults who say they were raised Catholic have left the Church. And it is not getting better. A 2023 survey of 5600 people found that “Catholics have experienced the largest decline in affiliation of any religious group.”
Clearly not enough young people are meeting Jesus in the Eucharist; otherwise, they would not be abandoning him for other religious experiences or losing faith in God altogether. And just as clearly, the hunger for tradition among the next generation of Catholics who do remain is palpable.
As Francis X. Rocca wrote on April 9 in The Atlantic:
This rings true to me. Most of the devout young Catholics I meet grow up with the typical parish fare on Sundays, only later discovering the beauty of our authentic Catholic liturgical patrimony. Their reaction? Wonder, mixed with anger. They tell me—and this is a literal, word-for-word quote—“I’ve been deprived of my Catholic birthright.”
Putting an End to the Liturgy Wars - First Things
The memories are still vivid, even though it was a long time ago. Having been born in 1956, I’m just old enough to remember the confusing and tumultuous era...
firstthings.com
