Liturgical Movement

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.[1]

The Latin Tridentine Mass remained the standard eucharistic liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church in the West until the Second Vatican Council. Josef Andreas Jungmann had considerable influence on the Council through his Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development and his presence as a peritus, as well as on the Commission that would implement the liturgical changes. In 1963, the Council adopted, by an overwhelming majority, the Constitution On Sacred Liturgy, "Sacrosanctum Concilium". For the first time the vernacular liturgy was permitted, even if to a minor extent in relation to those practiced afterward by national churches. The influence of Hippolytus was evident in the form of Eucharistic Prayers. Accompanying this was the encouragement for liturgies to express local culture (subject to approval by the Holy See). The close connection between more intelligible participation in the Eucharistic celebration and carrying one's faith "into the marketplace", exhibiting commitment to social justice in one's life, has been observed.[2]

Our Lady of Fatima, Catholic Church, 1960

"To the architect or priest who should ask: "How can I build a liturgical church?" I should think any liturgist would answer: "There is no standard liturgical blueprint, but if you take some fundamental principles constantly into account, by this very fact your church will be liturgically functionally efficient, and will be redolent of a sacred nature in the best liturgical tradition." Liturgical Principles for Church Architecture, Placid Murray, The Furrow, Vol. 13, No. 9 (Sep., 1962), pp. 499-515

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". The Liturgical movement was influential in church design in France, Belgium Germany, Switzerland and the UK - where it was introduced in the 1950s.[3]

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'.[4] 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.[5]

The English Missal, published first in 1912, was a conflation of the Eucharistic rite in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer 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.[12]

The attempt to revise the Book of Common Prayer in 1927 and 1928 was rooted in the past, owing little to the researches or practices of continental scholars.[13] 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 pastors 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.[13][14][15]

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.[16]

Horton M. Davies, a professor at Princeton University, states that "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."[17]

• Louis Bouyer
• Annibale Bugnini
• Gregory Dix
• Romano Guardini
• Marion J. Hatchett
• Gabriel Hebert
• Friedrich Heiler
• Reynold Henry Hillenbrand
• Josef Andreas Jungmann
• Christine Mohrmann
• William Palmer Ladd
• H. A. Reinhold
• Gunnar Rosendal
• Hermann Sasse
• Alexander Schmemann
• Max Thurian
• Clarence Rufus J. Rivers
• Lex orandi, lex credendi
• Sacrosanctum Concilium
• Berneuchen Movement
• Kirchliche Arbeit Alpirsbach
• Evangelical Catholic
• Convergence Movement
• Crypto-Protestantism

• A Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, J.G. Davies (SCM)
• Earth and Altar Donald Gray (Canterbury Press 1986)
• Liturgy and Society A.G. Hebert (Faber 1935)
• The Early Liturgy, Josef Jungmann (DLT 1960)
• A Short History of the Western Liturgy, Theodor Klauser (trans. J. Halliburton) (1969)
• Giewald, A. & Thomann, G. The Lutheran High Church Movement in Germany and its liturgical work: an introduction, Lulu.com, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4709-7378-0

• Adams, William Seth. Moving the Furniture: Liturgical Theory, Practice, and Environment. New York: Church Publishing, 1999. vii, 172 p. N.B.: The author writes from an Anglican (Protestant Episcopal Church) standpoint. ISBN 0-89869-316-0
• Buchanan, Colin O., ed. Modern Anglican Liturgies, 1958-1968. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. xix, 388 p., ill. with 3 tables (2 of them on fold. charts). N.B.: Includes various internationally selected liturgies with comments about them by the various contributors.
• Marshall, Michael. Renewal in Worship. Rev. American ed. Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1985. xi, 142 p. ISBN 978-0-8192-1374-7
• Reid, Dom Alcuin. The Organic Development of the Liturgy: Ignatius Press ISBN 978-1586171063