The Liturgical Movement was a 19th-century and 20th-century movement of scholarship for the reform of worship. It began in the Catholic Church and spread to many other Christian churches including the Anglican Communion, Lutheran and some other Protestant churches. [1]
At almost the same time, in Germany Abbot Ildefons Herwegen of Maria Laach convened a liturgical conference in Holy Week 1914 for lay people. Herwegen thereafter promoted research which resulted in a series of publications for clergy and lay people during and after World War I. One of the foremost German scholars was Odo Casel. Having begun by studying the Middle Ages, Casel looked at the origins of Christian liturgy in pagan cultic acts, understanding liturgy as a profound universal human act as well as a religious one. In his Ecclesia Orans (The Praying Church) (1918), Casel studied and interpreted the pagan mysteries of ancient Greece and Rome, discussing similarities and differences between them and the Christian mysteries. His conclusions were studied in various places, notably at Klosterneuburg in Austria, where the Augustinian canon Pius Parsch applied the principles in his church of St. Gertrude, which he took over in 1919. With laymen he worked out the relevance of the Bible to liturgy. Similar experiments were to take place in Leipzig during the Second World War. [2]
The Liturgical movement was influential in church design in France, Belgium Germany, Switzerland and the UK - where it was introduced in the 1950s. The New Churches Research Group was founded in 1957 in the UK to promote "a modern idiom appropriate to the ideas of the Liturgical Movement". [3] The NCRG was a group of Catholic and Anglican church architects and craftspeople who promoted liturgical reform of churches though publications such as The Tablet and Architects' Journal . The group was co-founded by Peter Hammond, Robert Maguire and Keith Murray (an ecclesiastical designer), and included architects Peter Gilbey, John Newton (Burles, Newton & Partners), Patrick Nuttgens, George Pace, Patrick Reyntiens (stained glass artist), Austin Winkley, Lance Wright, as well as Catholic priest and theologian Charles Davis. [4]
The Second Vatican Council saw the acceptance of many of the movement's ideas, resulting in a radical rethinking of design, expressing 'noble simplicity rather than sumptuous display'. [5] The turning points were the publication of Peter Hammond's Liturgy and Architecture, a critique of modern English church design, and the publication of Frederick Gibberd's design for the completion of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. [6]
An example of reordering is St Joseph's church in Retford, which was designed by Ernest Bower Norris in modern Romanesque design, incorporating Art Deco elements. It opened in 1959 and in 1968 was re-ordered by Gerard Goalen to comply with the recommendations of Vatican II. During the re-order, Goalen commissioned a large Christus Resurrexit for the sanctuary wall by Steven Sykes. [7]
The Catholic church became a major patron of modern architecture and art during the 1950s and 60s in the UK. [8] A group of modernist architects including Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, Gerard Goalen, Francis Pollen, Desmond Williams and Austin Winkley utilised contemporary design and construction methods to deliver the 'noble simplicity' instructed by Vatican II, literally to express the values of the Liturgical Movement in buildings. [9] Desmond Williams noted that his St Mary Dunstable church was "circular, with the object being to bring as many of the congregation near the altar, and proved very popular in attracting worshippers." [10] Maguire & Murray's St Paul's, Bow Common (1960) has not only been awarded Grade II* listed status [11] but was also voted best twentieth century church in the UK by the judges of the UK's Best Modern Churches competition (2013). [12]
Architects in this movement also collaborated with notable ceramic and glass artists such as Dom Charles Norris, Patrick Reyntiens and Steven Sykes.
Some of the churches built during this period are now being listed by Historic England in recognition of their outstanding modernist architecture and art. These include Goalen's Our Lady of Fatima, Harlow (Grade II listed, 1958), [13] St Mary Dunstable (Grade II listed, 1964), [14] Winkley's Church of St Margaret of Scotland, Twickenham (Grade II listed, 1969). [15]
The architecture of these churches was criticized by the architect Robert Maguire; he stated: "Gerard Goalen's T-shaped church of Our Lady of Fatima at Harlow, resplendent with its Buckfast Abbey glass. My only serious criticism of this – and it is serious – is that God's Holy People are divided, like All Gaul, into three parts." [16]
In the US, there has been a return to more traditional Catholic church layouts as a result of Pope Benedict's re-emphasising clerical distinctions. This has included revisiting pre-Liturgical Movement architecture in new construction and the renovation of modernist churches along traditionalist lines. [17] The traditional cruciform plan—which was largely absent from liturgical designs since Vatican II because of its fracturing effect on the assembly—has been incorporated into recent church buildings. [18]
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran body in the United States, has also revived a greater appreciation of the liturgy and its ancient origins. Its clergy and congregations have adopted many traditional liturgical symbols, such as the sign of the cross, incense, and the full chasuble, which have become more common than in years past. While some freedom in style is exercised by individual congregations, the overall style of the aspects of liturgical worship – including vestments, altar adornments, and a general return of many formal practices – has become closer to the styles of the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions. [19]
By the 20th century, the Church of England had made quite radical ceremonial and ritual changes, most of them incorporating revival of medieval Christian practice. [20]
The English Missal, published first in 1912, was a conflation of the Eucharistic rite in the 1662 prayer book and the Latin prayers of the Roman Missal, including the rubrics indicating the posture and manual acts. It was a recognition of practices which had been widespread for many years. The changes were the subject of controversy, opposition, hostility, and legal action. [21]
The revision effort that produced the failed 1928 proposed prayer book was based on medieval models, owing little to the researches or practices of continental scholars. [22] In the United States, William Palmer Ladd, who had visited a number of the European centers of Catholic scholarship and reform, introduced many of the ideas of the movement at the Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven. Ladd wrote a series of magazine columns (published as a book after his death titled Prayer Book Interleaves) that introduced much of the newer agenda to the Episcopal Church. While this American version of the movement had broad church roots, in England it was a new generation of scholars and clergy associated with the Catholic revival who led the next phase of discussion. With the publication in 1935 of Gabriel Hebert's Liturgy and Society, a debate in England began about the relationship between worship and the world as well as about the importance of eucharistic celebration and participation. Hebert, a Kelham Father, interpreted the liturgy on wider social principles, rejecting, for example the idea of the eucharistic fast as being impractical. Its members wished for more frequent communion, not merely attendance at Mass; they wanted to relate the eucharist to the world of ordinary life. Through its influence, the offertory was restored, though not without protracted controversy. [22] [23] [24]
Horton M. Davies, a professor at Princeton University, states: "What is fascinating about (the liturgical) movement is that it has enabled Protestant churches to recover in part the Catholic liturgical heritage, while the Catholics seem to have appropriated the Protestant valuation of preaching, of shared worship in the vernacular tongue, and the importance of laity as the people of God." [25]
The Mass of Paul VI, also known as the Ordinary Form or Novus Ordo, is the most commonly used liturgy in the Catholic Church. It was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and its liturgical books were published in 1970; those books were then revised in 1975, they were revised again by Pope John Paul II in 2000, and a third revision was published in 2002.
The Mozarabic Rite, officially called the Hispanic Rite, and in the past also called the Visigothic Rite, is a liturgical rite of the Latin Church once used generally in the Iberian Peninsula (Hispania), in what is now Spain and Portugal. While the liturgy is often called 'Mozarabic' after the Christian communities that lived under Muslim rulers in Al-Andalus that preserved its use, the rite itself developed before and during the Visigothic period. After experiencing a period of decline during the Reconquista, when it was superseded by the Roman Rite in the Christian states of Iberia as part of a wider programme of liturgical standardization within the Catholic Church, efforts were taken in the 16th century to revive the rite and ensure its continued presence in the city of Toledo, where it is still celebrated today. It is also celebrated on a more widespread basis throughout Spain and, by special dispensation, in other countries, though only on special occasions.
Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek Κύριε, vocative case of Κύριος (Kyrios), is a common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, also called the Kyrie eleison.
Christian liturgy is a pattern for worship used by a Christian congregation or denomination on a regular basis. The term liturgy comes from Greek and means "public work". Within Christianity, liturgies descending from the same region, denomination, or culture are described as ritual families.
In Christianity, worship is the act of attributing reverent honour and homage to God. In the New Testament, various words are used to refer to the term worship. One is proskuneo which means to bow down to God or kings.
The Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is the dicastery of the Roman Curia that handles most affairs relating to liturgical practices of the Latin Church as distinct from the Eastern Catholic Churches and also some technical matters relating to the sacraments.
The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales is a Catholic society dedicated to making the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, also known as the Tridentine Mass, more widely available in England and Wales. The group organised a petition for the Latin Mass in England and Wales which the Archbishop of Westminster, John Cardinal Heenan, presented to Pope Paul VI, who granted a papal indult in 1971.
The Roman Rite is the most common ritual family for performing the ecclesiastical services of the Latin Church, the largest of the sui iuris particular churches that comprise the Catholic Church. The Roman Rite governs rites such as the Roman Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours as well as the manner in which sacraments and blessings are performed.
Latin liturgical rites, or Western liturgical rites, is a large family of liturgical rites and uses of public worship employed by the Latin Church, the largest particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church, that originated in Europe where the Latin language once dominated. Its language is now known as Ecclesiastical Latin. The most used rite is the Roman Rite.
The Paschal mystery is one of the central concepts of Catholic faith relating to the history of salvation. According to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "The Paschal Mystery of Jesus, which comprises his passion, death, resurrection, and glorification, stands at the center of the Christian faith because God's saving plan was accomplished once for all by the redemptive death of himself as Jesus Christ." The Catechism states that in the liturgy of the Church "it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present."
Piero Marini is a Roman Catholic archbishop who is president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses. For twenty years he served as Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, in charge of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. In that capacity he worked for Popes John Paul II for 18 years and Benedict XVI for two years.
Annibale Bugnini was a Catholic prelate. Ordained in 1936 and named archbishop in 1972, he was secretary of the commission that worked on the reform of the Roman Rite that followed the Second Vatican Council. Both critics and proponents of the changes made to the Mass, the Liturgy of the hours and other liturgical practices before and after Vatican II consider him a dominant force in these efforts. He held several other posts in the Roman Curia and ended his career as papal nuncio to Iran, where he acted as an intermediary during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981.
Louis Bouyer, CO, was a French Catholic priest and former Lutheran minister who was received into the Catholic Church in 1939. During his religious career he was an influential theological thinker, especially in the fields of history, liturgy and spirituality, and as peritus helped shape the vision of the Second Vatican Council. Along with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others, he was a co-founder of the international review Communio. He was chosen by the pope to be part of a team to initiate the International Theological Commission in 1969.
Versus populum is the liturgical stance of a priest who, while celebrating Mass, faces the people from the other side of the altar. The opposite stance, that of a priest facing in the same direction as the people, is today called ad orientem or ad apsidem.
Francis Anthony Baring Pollen, FRIBA was an English architect who designed, amongst other significant buildings, Worth Abbey in West Sussex.
Gerard Thomas Goalen was a British architect who specialised in church architecture and was influenced by continental models and the Liturgical Movement. He was one of the most important architects of the Catholic Modernist movement in the United Kingdom during the 20th century.
Desmond Williams is a 20th century British architect who specialised in church architecture and was influenced by the Liturgical Movement. He was one of the most important architects of the Catholic Modernist movement in the United Kingdom.
Austin S. Winkley is a British architect who specialises in church architecture and is a member of the Liturgical Movement of UK ecclesiastical architects.
Peter Hammond (1921–1999) was a priest, writer, teacher and artist best known for his writings on church architecture and his significant influence on the modernising of church architecture as part of the Liturgical Movement.
Robert Maguire (1931-2019) was an influential British modernist architect and leading thinker in the British liturgical architectural movement of the Church of England. Maguire’s St Paul’s Church at Bow Common was voted the best church of the twentieth century in the UK.
In the subtitle for the fifth volume of his history of Worship and Theology in England, Horton Davies refers to the twentieth century as the 'ecumenical century.' Nowhere is that more obvious than in attitudes toward Christian worship. As Davies said: 'What is fascinating about (the liturgical) movement is that it has enabled Protestant churches to recover in part the Catholic liturgical heritage, while the Catholics seem to have appropriated the Protestant valuation of preaching, of shared worship in the vernacular tongue, and the importance of laity as the people of God.'
