Abstract
For Catholic social thought, the liturgy is fundamentally a divine site where the inadequacies of even our noblest ethical strivings are offered in humble hope for God’s Kingdom. Yet the liturgy is also a work of humankind, and deeply affected by tensions between the Church and contemporary secularity, manifested, for example, in the decline in participation in the Eucharist and controversies over translation. Since these tensions stem from social experience, Catholic social thought is called upon to understand them and to offer perspectives which can help to name and clarify the connections within this field of tensions. The aim of this article is to draw on some contemporary insights in liturgical theology and in Catholic social thought, in particular the work of Charles Taylor and José Casanova, that relate to this field of tensions and to explore ways in which they might mutually illuminate each other.
The most important way of conceiving the relationship between Catholic social thought and the liturgy is to understand the liturgy as the place where we not only confess our sins, but where we also acknowledge the insufficiency of ‘the ethical’ itself. In the liturgy, we recognize the inadequacies of even the most sincere and engaged social action, of all our attempts to bring about justice and peace in this world. We offer this acknowledgement in humble hope to almighty God, whose reconciling act in Christ has given sure hope that our ethical failures and defeats will be overcome by the reconciling power of God’s Kingdom, made present for us in sign and anticipation in the sacraments. In the liturgy, all our intellectual and moral striving for justice is laid at the altar in hope for a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev. 21:1). In this sense, although we must first ‘reconcile ourselves with our brother’ (Matt. 5:23–24) before worthily celebrating the Christian liturgy, it is the liturgy that is indeed ‘the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.’ 1
The Liturgy: A Work of God Enacted in a Human, Social Context
This general perspective must be fundamental to conceiving the relationship between Catholic social thought and the liturgy, yet, taken on its own, it can have the weakness of conceiving the liturgy too unambiguously as the divine site where all the human insufficiency and failure of the ethical is resolved. The liturgy is indeed a work of God, on which true hope is founded, but it is at the same time a work of humankind, and therefore deeply affected by social contexts. The language and symbols of the liturgy are all drawn from specific cultural contexts, just as all those who celebrate it participate in particular social contexts in which their ‘joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties’ are experienced. 2 It is a fundamental aspect of the incarnational character of Christian faith that the presence and work of the eternal God can indeed be experienced and responded to in these very specific human contexts. Yet it is also true that they deeply affect many aspects of the celebration of the liturgy itself. In particular, the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and contemporary secularity affects the liturgy in manifold ways, giving rise to a range of tensions.
These tensions are manifest, for example, in the absence of so many younger Catholics from communal worship, based in the claim that it is superfluous to their private experience of God; in the grief of many older Catholics at their absence; in the view of many in the hierarchy that the language of the liturgy must be distanced from the ‘everyday’ language of secular experience; in the re-emphasizing of clerical–lay and gender distinctions in the new English translation of the liturgy; and in the decision of some members of the hierarchy to understand the reception of the eucharist as a sign of demarcation from those who are judged not to be in conformity with Catholic teaching on some ethical questions, abortion in particular. 3 All of these tensions deeply affect the ways in which the liturgy is experienced and celebrated by Catholic communities. They stem from particular aspects of the relationship between contemporary secularity and the Catholic liturgy, whether that be understandings of the ‘Age of Authenticity,’ to use Charles Taylor’s term, that make communal liturgy purely optional to the religious life, or initiatives of hierarchical authority that seek to establish and emphasize new forms of difference and demarcation between sacred and secular, and between lay and ordained, as a means of identity-formation based in a stronger sense of transcendence. 4
Since these tensions stem from social experience, and from perceived solutions to the challenges of secularity, Catholic social thought is called upon to understand them and to offer perspectives which can help to name and clarify the connections within this field of tensions. In doing so, it can serve the Church’s self-understanding in the very important and far-reaching domain of the relationship of its liturgical action to secularity. It may also assist in alleviating these tensions to some degree, by exploring their meaning and context and offering more positive conceptions of this relationship and its possibilities. The aim of this article is to draw on some contemporary insights in liturgical theology and in Catholic social thought that relate to this field of tensions and to explore ways in which they might mutually illuminate each other.
The Historical Context of Sacrosanctum Concilium
In a very significant statement on Vatican II’s document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, made on the 20th anniversary of its promulgation, Cardinal Joseph Cordeiro, a Pakistani Bishop of Goan background, summed up the distinctive character of the document, against its background in the Tridentine era, in the following way: The Church lived in a state of siege—desperately trying to repel the attacks of the enemy—the over-turning of ancient values, the flouting of authority, and a centrifugal chaos. This state of tension and insecurity and the concern to ‘hold on’ is reflected in the worship of the time: the clinging to Latin (which fewer and fewer people understood), the stress on centralizing (the priest and the altar boy made the Mass; the people came in almost as a kind of afterthought to ‘hear’ the Mass), the vast distance and separation between aisle and sanctuary; the worship of a Church in tension. As against this, the Document shows us the Church not merely at worship, but relaxing at worship, relaxing to be herself as church … It is this posture of relaxation I believe that endows the Document with a quiet drive and inner resilience that will take many more decades fully to be actualized.
5
Cardinal Cordeiro’s appraisal includes two fundamental insights about the historical relationship between the Catholic liturgy and social context. Firstly, that certain features of the Tridentine liturgy were deeply affected by the embattled situation of the Church in the post-Reformation and modern periods, and, secondly, that the genius of Sacrosanctum Concilium is that it could sum up and express anew the character and meaning of Catholic worship in a peaceful way—a way that was not removed from its own historical epoch, since no articulation of faith can or should claim that, yet a way that could peacefully contemplate the meaning of worship without being constrained or limited by defensive reactions to its historical circumstances. In contrast with so many developments in the life of the Church since the Reformation, this document of Vatican II was able to give theological expression to the meaning of Christian worship in a way that was not a response to a threat, but rather a contemplation nourished by the deepest sources of Catholic tradition. As Cardinal Cordeiro concluded, the ‘quiet drive and inner resilience’ of this document, and the reform process that it gave the highest sanction to, will ‘take many more decades fully to be actualized.’ 6
It is important to remind ourselves that Sacrosanctum Concilium, and Vatican II in general, were able to achieve this peaceful insight in an epoch that was at least as conflictual and inhospitable to Catholicism as our own. In geopolitical terms, the world was profoundly affected by the fear of thermonuclear war and superpower tension was at its peak during the Cuban missile crisis in the same year as the first session of Vatican II. The cultural and ideological landscapes were deeply influenced by logical positivism in the Anglo-Saxon world and by atheistic existentialism and Marxism in Europe. Although the churches had a much firmer place in society at that time, Catholic life in many parts of the world was deeply marked by sectarian tensions and by conflict with atheistic social and cultural influences, including large and militant Communist Parties in the Latin countries of Europe. An awareness of the highly conflictual context in which Sancrosanctum Concilium was developed and promulgated can remind us that the Church can achieve the peaceful self-understanding that this document expresses even in turbulent times, and encourage us to continue to reform the liturgy in ways that are not unduly reactive to the socio-cultural challenges that Catholicism encounters in our own day. In particular, it encourages us to seek to understand our contemporary social situation so that we can carefully discern the ways in which the reform of the liturgy can be continued so that, as Sancrosanctum Concilium affirms, ‘the sanctification of humanity in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way’ (SC 10). 7
Contemporary Secularity and its Influence on the Liturgy
How, then, should we understand the relationship between the Church and contemporary secularity, and its influence on the liturgy? In seeking to reflect on this field of tensions, I will draw especially on the work of two Catholic social thinkers, Charles Taylor and José Casanova. I will firstly consider the question of the personal motivations for participating—or not participating—in the liturgy, and then consider the question of the meaning of secularity in a broader socio-political context and its implications for the public meaning of Christian liturgy.
Personal Motivations for Participation in the Liturgy
As Taylor has argued in his A Secular Age and a number of more recently published essays, many of the traditional motivations for participating in communal liturgies are no longer experienced by broad sections of the population in contemporary Western societies, with important variations between Western Europe, the USA, and the English-speaking countries of the British Commonwealth. In very general terms, apart from migrant groups and allowing for the variations just alluded to, Church membership is no longer fundamental for social identity-formation. Because of the changes that Taylor sums up as the transition from the ‘Age of Mobilization’ to the ‘Age of Authenticity,’ Church membership is no longer part of being formed by, and contributing to, a ‘Neo-Durkheimian’ sense of civilizational order, in which national identity, personal morality, and Church membership are all mutually reinforcing. 8 Further, as a result of the historical processes of reform that led in unpredictable ways to what Taylor names the ‘buffered self,’ the fear of hell or of malevolent supernatural forces in general has all but disappeared. 9 The emancipation of the secular from the sacred, engendering what Taylor calls ‘the immanent frame,’ has included the secularization of moral consciousness, which focuses on ‘human flourishing’ and does not perceive a need for any religious reference for its advocacy of human rights or the benevolent minimization of suffering. 10 Drawing on the work of Grace Davie, Taylor notes that committed secularists are relatively few—most people continue to seek transcendence in some way. Yet, for the majority this is ‘believing without belonging,’ a respect for organized religion as a ‘reserve fund of spiritual force or consolation’ that may be activated at times of crisis, grief or celebration. 11 Even this somewhat residual respect has, of course, been deeply eroded by the sexual abuse crisis and by negative reactions to Catholic teaching on some areas of sexual and reproductive ethics.
The Liturgy and the Socio-Political Context of Secularity
In terms of the broader socio-political context of secularity and secularization, much of the debate—and the implications for liturgical development—focuses on the degree to which the Church now finds itself in a hostile ideological and social context, which, for some, is perceived as a reason to draw back on elements of reform in the post-Vatican II era. The document Liturgiam Authenticam (henceforward LA), issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2011, 12 justified the change from the dynamic equivalence mode of translation authorized in Comme le prévoit (1969), and embodied in the 1973 and 1998 International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) translations, by arguing that ‘the omissions or errors which affect certain existing vernacular translations—especially in the case of certain languages—have impeded the progress of the inculturation that actually should have taken place. Consequently, the Church has been prevented from laying the foundation for a fuller, healthier and more authentic renewal’ (LA 6). In response to this, it emphasized that ‘the greatest prudence and attention are required in the preparation of liturgical books marked by sound doctrine, which are exact in wording, [and] free from all ideological influence’ (LA 3), coupling this with detailed criticism of the use of inclusive language in translations into English (LA 30–31). 13 It is evident that the Catholic Church is subjected to ideological attacks and gratuitous mockery across a wide range of media, as well as social and political contexts, in the Western world. However, as I argued above in relation to the historical context of Sacrosanctum Concilium it is very doubtful if this situation is worse than what the Church faced in the 1960s and whether it justifies positions like those expressed in Liturgiam Authenticam. The question of language is of course of special urgency in light of the fact that most people in Western societies do seek some sense of transcendence, and the language in which this is expressed, and its power to communicate and to illuminate and expand experience, are of the greatest importance. 14
Both Taylor and Casanova emphasize that, though many persist in an understanding of secularism explicitly as a need to privatize or be liberated from religion,
15
secularization is most effectively and accurately understood as a process of social differentiation and of accommodation of diversity. For Casanova, ‘the understanding of secularization as a single process of differentiation of the various institutional spheres of subsystems of modern societies … remains relatively uncontested in the social sciences, particularly within sociology.’
16
For Taylor, a secular society is one marked by three goods, which we can class in the three categories of the French Revolutionary trinity: liberty, equality, fraternity: 1. No one must be forced in the domain of religion, or basic belief. This is what is often defined as religious liberty, including, of course, the freedom not to believe … 2. There must be equality between people of different faiths or basic belief … 3. All spiritual families must be heard, included in the ongoing process of determining what the society is about (its political identity), and how it is going to realize these goals (the exact regime of rights and privileges). This (stretching a point a little) is what corresponds to ‘fraternity.’
17
In their Secularism and Freedom of Conscience 18 Taylor and his co-author Jocelyn Maclure develop an understanding of contemporary political secularism 19 explicitly as a means of political co-existence for diverse religious and moral convictions: ‘although it is generally assumed that the aim of a regime of secularism is still to find the appropriate relationship between the state and religions, its broader and more urgent task at present is to make it possible for democratic states to adapt adequately to the profound moral and spiritual diversity existing within their borders.’ 20 They argue ‘that respect for the moral equality of individuals and the protection of freedom of conscience and religion constitute the two main aims of secularism today.’ 21 Secularism means that the state must be neutral in relation to all world-views, whether these be religious or philosophical. This mandates a distinction between political secularization, through which the state affirms its independence from religion, and social secularization, which is ‘an erosion of the influence of religion in social practices and in the conduct of individual lives.’ In the light of this distinction, ‘the state must seek to become politically secular but without promoting social secularization.’ 22 However, the state’s neutrality in relation to different goods is not complete, since of its nature the secular state defends the idea that individuals are autonomous moral agents, free to define the good life for themselves, which does make more difficult the task of those seeking to pass on tradition, or to defend tradition by shielding members of their communities from the wider society.
The chief responsibility of the secular state is to foster the ‘conditions for managing contemporary moral and religious diversity in an equitable manner.’ 23 From this point of view, Taylor and Maclure argue that certain versions of republicanism, which depend on a specific notion of reason as contrary to religion are ‘problematic in societies marked by a diversity of conceptions of the good life.’ 24 They distinguish in particular between ‘republican’ and ‘liberal-pluralist’ conceptions of secularism. While the republican form does involve ‘marginalizing religious affiliations and forcing them back into the private sphere, the liberal-pluralist model, by contrast, sees secularism as a mode of governance whose function is to find the optimal balance between respect for moral equality and respect for freedom of conscience.’ 25
In my judgment, two key points emerge from these analyses of secularization in contemporary Western society. Firstly, that, though there are many voices which advocate restriction of the Church’s influence to the strictly private sphere, the fundamental social dynamic of secularization in Western liberal democracies is in its coming to terms with religious and moral diversity, rather than in a struggle between secularist ideology and religion. Secondly, Taylor and Maclure’s distinction between ‘liberal-pluralist secularism’ and ‘republican secularism’ gives Christian communities a very helpful analytical tool both for affirming their own right to contribute to the public forum and for respecting religious and moral diversity. In essence, republican secularism still bears the marks of struggles between the Church and political ideologies emerging from the fall of the ancien régime, and, as such, is not relevant and helpful to the challenges of a pluralist and globalizing socio-political order, in which the world faiths can play a very constructive role.
The intellectual resources provided by these social thinkers gives us grounds for confidence that the processes of social and cultural change we are experiencing need not necessarily be understood in terms of confrontation and demarcation, and that there are opportunities for living out the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity in a new way, giving the Catholic Church—and Catholic worship—many opportunities for mission and witness. 26 Nevertheless, as Taylor notes, employing key terms from John Rawls’s political thought, our societies no longer live on the basis of a shared world of meaning, but rather through an ‘overlapping consensus’ of different ‘comprehensive doctrines,’ which must be negotiated to preserve the key moral and political principles of democratic life: this ‘overlapping consensus between different founding views on a common philosophy of civility is something quite new in history, and relatively untried. It is consequently hazardous.’ 27
Implications for Liturgical Theology
What are the implications for liturgical theology of these contributions from social thought? In the first place, in terms of the motivations for participating in Catholic liturgy, the most important insight is in fact an affirmation of the most fundamental character and purposes of the liturgy: that it is a gift of God, intended for the worship of God, the building up of the Church, and salvation of the world. As John Baldovin trenchantly puts it in his Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics: ‘How can we combat the narcissistic notion that liturgy exists primarily for us to “get something out of it” if we do not recognize in a profound way that in worship God lays a claim on us, that in this sense liturgy is first and foremost a duty?’ 28 As was noted above, in Taylor’s analysis the process of secularization in the Western world has removed a number of extrinsic motivations for participation in the liturgy, including the affirmation of social identity together with a shared moral code, as well as the fear of hell and the demonic, and has also given rise to the widely shared conviction that one can be an authentic and morally engaged human being without active membership in a religious community. It would be too sweeping a judgment to say that none of these motivations or perspectives matter, and their relative importance is certainly culturally specific, but it is noteworthy that one effect of the process of secularization has been to drive home to us that the liturgy is not about ‘what we get out of it,’ not about a set of essentially extrinsic motivations, but rather about—as Sacrosanctum Concilium expresses it—‘the sanctification of humanity in Christ and the glorification of God’ (SC 2). To this extent, despite the very real pain that the decline in participation in the liturgy has caused in Catholic communities—particularly in the light of the possibilities for actuosa participatio that Vatican II offered—it can provoke deeper reflection on the true meaning and purpose of the liturgy.
Secondly, an awareness of the broad socio-political context of secularity can assist liturgical discernment in responding to the needs and concerns of participants in the liturgy, while resisting any reductionist accommodation of the liturgy to the priorities of particular social groups. Liturgy has the intrinsic purposes of worship of God and sanctification of humanity, rather than extrinsic goals such as affirming various forms of social identity and bonding. Yet it is also true that it must speak to, and express, the real circumstances of life of those who participate in it. It must articulate and respond to their personal spiritual experience in relation to the revelation of God’s love in Christ manifest in the liturgy. As we have already noted, the language of the liturgy is crucial in this regard. In this light, liturgy’s intrinsic purposes must never be subject to the priorities of particular societies or social groups, yet at the same time it must be able to express their deepest concerns so that these also may be offered to God in prayer and hope. In the Western world, these considerations have their concrete form in concerns that the post-Vatican II liturgy has been excessively subject to the preferences and priorities of middle-class communities. In his Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue,
29
Bruce Morrill noted the criticism by some theologians of middle-class liturgies, in particular on the emphasis by many parishioners on community-building rather than worship,
30
and asks: Are some of these theologians’ awareness and criticisms of the middle-class ethos of the parishes related to the people’s apparent resistance to being confronted by an otherness or non-identity in the words and action of the liturgy? It would seem that the Second Vatican Council’s agendas of both openness and adaptation to modern society and the recovery of crucial elements of ancient Christian liturgical traditions have not realized equal degrees of success. Indeed, one gets the impression that modern society to some extent directs the adaptation of the liturgy and, thus, suppresses the recovery of traditions.
31
In this connection, Morrill expounds Johann-Baptist Metz’s critique of bourgeois religion, which does not challenge the concerns and preoccupations of life in affluent societies: ‘The ironic result is that these middle-class parishes prove unable to provide relief (the “opium”) from the pressures of the instrumentalist, evolutionary world. Those churches which do not challenge likewise do not console, and so Metz does not find it difficult to understand why in Germany and other First World nations the churches are so empty.’ 32
The temptation for middle-class communities in affluent countries to shape liturgical celebration in ways that affirm their own priorities is clearly a very real one that must be stringently resisted. However, the answer to this problem is not to intensify the clericalized character of liturgy, nor to claim that use of archaic language effects of itself a greater sense of transcendence or holiness. The weaknesses of bourgeois society are not seriously challenged by greater ecclesial authoritarianism and archaism. In some ways, bourgeois religion may in fact be affirmed rather than challenged by this kind of ecclesial response, since it does not call middle-class communities to engage more wholeheartedly with the needs and suffering of the world, but tends rather to put its priority on acceptance of correct linguistic forms and rubrics and of clerical and hierarchical authority. The greatest challenge to the weaknesses of bourgeois religion is for middle-class communities to engage with the realities of life in the world as a whole, particularly with the suffering and need of the disadvantaged in their own communities as well as with the needs of communities in the developing world. This calls on middle-class communities themselves, and their priestly and episcopal leadership, to give equal priority to sexual, life, and family ethics and to the ethics of justice (in its broadest economic and ecological implications) in a wide range of contexts.
Thankfully, the global communion of the Catholic Church does provide many means of awakening and enacting both inter-communal and international justice. The liturgy itself is a crucial source of transformation in this regard, enabling Christians to witness, in however fragile and imperfect a way, to the coming of God’s Kingdom. As Morrill notes in his more recent Divine Worship and Human Healing: Liturgical Theology at the Margins of Life and Death,
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in words that express a similar concern to Baldovin’s criticism of conceptions of liturgy as something we ‘get something out of’: ‘Sacramental celebration is not so much about having something at the conclusion that one did not have before but rather about being more deeply aware of oneself and others as the very site of the loving faithfulness and gracious mercy of God, in whatever condition we find ourselves.’
34
This challenge to personal transformation, and the call to witness that it brings with it, are not enhanced, but rather undermined, by an intensified clericalism and rubricism in the liturgy. As Morrill argues, [the] symbolic minimalism, clerical instrumentalism and narrow juridicism characterizing modern Roman Catholic sacramental practice, let alone much of the theory and ideology surrounding it, have all contributed—along, of course, with other social, economic, political and religious factors—to ever-increasing numbers of the faithful drifting away from regular participations in the rites. These just do not matter so much in the regular rhythms (if there is such a thing in postmodern society) of people’s lives.
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Finally, the processes of secularization do offer possibilities for mutual respect in the context of shared citizenship, even though the debates that define our political identity and the goals of our society will be vigorous and sometimes hazardous. In this way also, social thought re-affirms the character of liturgy as oriented to mission, to public witness to God’s saving act in Christ and all its implications for the ways in which we respect, support, and reconcile with each other in human community. Inspired by the liturgy, and healed by its divine mercy, Christian social commitment can engage in public debate in ways that recognize diversity and contribute to the common good of all. As Edward Foley argues in his ‘Engaging the Liturgy of the World: Worship as Public Theology,’ ‘mission, as it is broadly construed at the beginning of the third millennium, is not so much a church’s acquisition of new members, but rather the way a community of faith brings its gifts to the service and transformation of the world.’ As Foley notes, this too is part of the heritage of Sacrosanctum Concilium, which teaches that ‘the liturgy … most of all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church’ (SC 2). 36
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2
Gaudium et spes 1.
3
This matter received considerable public attention during the presidential candidacy of the Catholic Democrat politician John Kerry in 2004. For discussions of this, see: Rose Marie Berger, ‘Eucharist in an election year: what is hiding behind the flag of “moral decency”?’ Sojourners Magazine 33/8 (2004): 37; ‘Communion Controversy Worries Democrats,’ America 191/4 (2004): 5; ‘Canon Law on Sanctions Leaves Much to Interpret,’ America 190/17 (2004): 4–5.
4
As Bruce Morrill, SJ, notes in his ‘Holy Communion as Public Act: Ethics and Liturgical Participation,’ Studia Liturgica 41 (2011): 31–46, with reference to Jerome Baggett’s Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live their Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), the tension between the laity’s understanding of the liturgy and that of many in the hierarchy is manifest in the communion procession,
‘which strikes me as a particularly powerful ritual-symbolic practice of what he [Baggett] identifies as the “tolerant traditionalism” characterizing a vast majority of American Catholics—a highly individualistic, constructive clinging to the faith while purposely refraining from judging the faith of others. The now ubiquitous popular approach to the communion procession, I would aver, enacts publicly that highly personalized, mutually accepting manner of belief, the ethos of the “people’s church” that collides head on with that of the “bureaucratic church” of the clerical hierarchy, which historian Jay Dolan [referred to in Baggett, 238] observes as seemingly “ever more intent on imposing discipline and exerting control over the faithful”’ (p. 43).
In his ‘Sacramental-Liturgical Theology since Vatican II: The Dialectic of Meaning and Performance,’ Plenary Address to the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA Proceedings 67/2012: 1–13), Morrill explores this tension between different understandings of the meaning and purpose of ritual in relation to marriage in particular, exploring how ‘the power inherent in marriage insofar as it is human ritualizing is diffuse and varied among its principal actors’ (11), especially because of ‘the dissonance many of the laity experience between their human agency and religious ideology and the ideology of the official expert class of the church, namely, the bishops and clergy’ (12). In his Liturgy and the Social Sciences (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1999), Nathan Mitchell presents an analysis of the ‘high church consensus’ in the social sciences concerning the nature of ritual, and subjects this to critique from the perspective of ‘emerging ritual tradition’ arguing that this ‘high church consensus’ fails to give due weight to rituals that often emerge on a culture’s margins and are characterized by inventiveness, creativity, change and variability (see especially pp. 46–49).
5
Joseph Cardinal Cordeiro, ‘The Liturgy Constitution: Sacrosanctum Concilium,’ in Alberic Stacpoole, ed., Vatican II by Those Who Were There (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), 187–94, at 189, quoted in Paul McPartlan ‘Liturgy, Church, and Society,’ Studia Liturgica 34 (2004): 147–64, at 163. As McPartlan argues, just as Lumen Gentium is often seen against the background of Vatican I, Sacrosanctum Concilium should be seen against the background of Trent, since it was the Tridentine Mass that was reformed: ‘Such a long perspective is important; it invites us perhaps to be patient with our continuing failings and to realize it may take some time yet to absorb all that the Council gave us, and some time yet to live the liturgy, and hence our Christian lives, with all the corporate vitality that Beaduin and de Lubac longed for’ (163).
6
As Kevin Seasoltz notes, in his ‘Liturgy and Ecclesiastical Law: Some Canonical and Pastoral Challenges’ (Worship, 85/6, [2011]: 520–41), rather than being reactive to history, and seeking to remove the liturgy from historical change, ‘Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy established the principle of historical relevance; the document conceives the people of God in a historical context. That history is constantly changing, revealing God to God’s people in varying ways’ (523). This concern for a relationship to the people of God within history also relates to the meaningfulness of worship, ‘hence the emphasis in recent decades has not only been on the validity of the sacraments but also and above all on the meaningful celebration of the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ’ (522).
7
Here Sacrosanctum Concilium sums up the two fundamental ends of liturgy, the worship of God and the sanctification of humanity. In response to criticism of post-Vatican II liturgies as neglecting the primary importance of the latreutic purpose of liturgy, John Baldovin writes:
‘I think it is safe to say that the liturgy is primarily about glorifying God (with the caveat that it is always God’s act first), but at the same time I want to recognize that the conciliar constitution affirms that one cannot dissociate the latreutic and didactic elements of the liturgy. Our growth in holiness and our acknowledgement of the holiness and glory of God need to go hand in hand. In this sense it is important to emphasize the fact that the liturgy always has a didactic and edificatory aspect in addition to a latreutic one. Mistakes are made when the didactic element overwhelms the latreutic.’ John F. Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2008), 141.
8
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 2007), see especially Chapters 12 and 13. In his ‘A Secular Age: Dawn or Twilight?,’ an extended review essay of Taylor’s work, in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (2010, eds. Michael Warner, Craig Calhoun, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen), 265–81, available in open access on 
(accessed November 13, 2012), José Casanova judges that A Secular Age ‘offers the best analytical, phenomenological, and genealogical account we have of our modern, secular condition’ (265), while at the same time arguing that there are substantial differences between Europe and the USA, notably that the USA had no ‘Palaeo-Durkheimian period’ and its very foundation coincides with the ‘age of mobilization’ (272). In broader terms, Casanova raises the question whether, as globalization develops and the modernization of India and China proceeds, it will become evident that European secularization is a very particular process, with historical origins in Latin Christendom, that is not applicable to the rest of the world. In this case, Casanova argues, it will be evident that Taylor has performed the very significant task of pointing out the genealogy of secularism to itself (281). However, this does not mean that some of the tensions in Church life experienced in Europe will not be—and are not being—felt in other continents. In his ‘A Global Sign of Outward Grace: The Sacramentality of the World Church in the Era of Globalization’ (CTSA Proceedings, 67/2012, 14–22), Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator SJ, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Eastern Africa, rejects the ‘oft-repeated argument that some of the contentious issues facing the world church do not pose challenges for the churches of the south … Human and family life issues (sexual orientation, same-sex union, abortion, contraception, divorce, polygamy, etc.), abuse of feminine bodies, and misuse of clerical and ecclesiastical authority are as neuralgic in Africa as they have proved to be for churches of the north’ (20).
9
Taylor speaks of the ‘buffered’ self in contrast to the ‘porous’ self of pre-modern societies, which lived in fear of ghostly and supernatural beings influencing the self and its environment. He remarks on the fact that, in order to occasionally transgress the bounds of the ‘buffered self,’ many people in Western societies seek out the frisson of dark supernatural forces by viewing horror films, something he notes that our peasant ancestors would have found quite incomprehensible. ‘Western Secularity,’ in Rethinking Secularism, Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan van Antwerpen, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 39.
10
Taylor, A Secular Age, Chapter 15, and ‘Western Secularity.’ This bracketing out of religious or transcendental goals for human existence, and exclusive focus on human flourishing, are characteristic of what Taylor calls ‘exclusive humanisms.’
11
Charles Taylor, Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 2011), Chapter 11: ‘The Future of the Religious Past,’ 262–64. Taylor cites here Davie’s Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994) and Europe: The Exceptional Case (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002).
13
With reference to inclusive language, LA states that: ‘Just as has occurred at other times in history, the Church herself must freely decide upon the system of language that will serve her doctrinal mission most effectively, and should not be subject to externally imposed linguistic norms that are detrimental to her mission’ (LA 30). One may legitimately respond that the reassertion of exclusive language is, in many instances, itself gravely detrimental to the Church’s mission to women. As Casanova notes in his ‘The Contemporary Disjunction between Societal and Church Morality,’ Chapter VII of Charles Taylor, José Casanova, and George F. McLean, eds., Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age (The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012, open access at ; accessed November 13, 2012), ‘feminism appears to have replaced communism as “the spectre” haunting all religious traditions. In turn, the discourses of feminism and secularism have become intertwined today in the same way as communism and atheism became intertwined in the nineteenth century’ (131). In Casanova’s judgement, ‘one can observe throughout the Catholic world a dual process of female secularization and erosion of the Church’s authority on sexual morality.’ For Casanova, it is of great significance how many women are leaving the Church, perhaps for the first time on such a large scale, especially in Europe, but also in North and South America: ‘indeed, female secularization may be the most significant factor in the drastic secularization of Western European societies since the 1960s and in the radical rupture of European “religion as a chain of memory”’ (133). For a discussion of some of the key questions relating to recent developments in liturgical translation, in particular, exclusive/inclusive language, see Clare V. Johnson, ‘At the Crossroads of Change: Theological Ramifications of Liturgical Translation,’ Lutheran Theological Journal 45/1 (2011), 51–59.
14
Liturgiam Authenticam argues that ‘If indeed, in the liturgical texts, words or expressions are sometimes employed which differ somewhat from usual and everyday speech, it is often enough by virtue of this very fact that the texts become truly memorable and capable of expressing heavenly realities’ (LA 27), and also, in LA 47, that
‘Liturgical translation that takes due account of the authority and integral context of the original texts will facilitate the development of a sacral vernacular, characterized by a vocabulary, syntax and grammar that are proper to divine worship, even though it is not to be excluded that it may exercise an influence even on everyday speech, as has occurred in the language of peoples evangelized long ago.’
It cannot be denied that language different from the everyday (which is itself a multivalent term) can sometimes be more appropriate for religious worship, but perhaps the more vital question is whether or not a translation which rejects the principle of dynamic equivalence can use the vernacular in creative ways, and thereby become ‘truly memorable’ or indeed enrich a vernacular, as Luther’s translation achieved for the German language and the King James Bible for English. In Chapter 20, ‘Conversions’, in A Secular Age, Taylor reflects, inter aliis, on Gerard Manley Hopkins and his poetry, especially on the ways in which his highly creative use of the English language transcended the ‘immanent frame’ (755–65). For a detailed analysis of the Eucharistic Prayers in the new English translation of the Mass, in comparison with the Latin text and the 1973 translation, see Nicholas King SJ, ‘Lost, and found, in translation,’ The Tablet (19 November, 2011), Special Supplement, 1–12. In King’s concluding judgement, ‘the new version is not a success, even on its own terms, but, on the other hand, we can acquit it of any systematic attempt to roll back the advances made for the Church by the Holy Spirit in the Second Vatican Council’ (12).
15
In his ‘The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms,’ in Rethinking Secularism, Casanova remarks on the highly selective historical memory of most Europeans, who continue to highlight religion as a source of conflict despite the fact that it was political ideologies, rather than religious conflict, that were responsible for the catastrophic loss of life in Europe in the immediate past. As Casanova notes, in reference to this emphasis on the post-Reformation conflicts in the early modern period, rather than on the political violence of the 20th century: ‘One may suspect that the function of such a selective historical memory is to safeguard the perception of the progressive achievements of Western secular modernity, offering a self-validating justification of the secular separation of religion and politics as the condition for modern liberal democratic politics, for global peace, and for the protection of individual privatized religious freedom’ (70).
16
Casanova, ‘The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms,’ 55. See also Casanova’s extended discussion of secularization theory in his Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), Chapter 1, where he argues that there are three theories of secularization—as religious decline, as privatization and as differentiation—and that only the differentiation thesis is sustainable. David Martin, in his The Future of Christianity: Reflections on Violence and Democracy, Religion and Secularization (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) also strongly supports an analysis of secularization ‘based on social differentiation rather than rationalization and privatization. Social differentiation refers to the clearly identifiable process whereby social spheres, such as the state, administration, welfare, education and the arts, are no longer under ecclesiastical oversight or governed by the deliverances and modalities of theology’ (26).
17
Taylor, Dilemmas and Connections, Chapter 13: ‘What Does Secularism Mean?’ 309.
18
Charles Taylor and Jocelyn Maclure, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
19
Taylor and Maclure use the term ‘secularism’ here to refer to a political philosophy affirming the ideological neutrality of the state, rather than to an ideology which seeks to minimize religion’s public role.
20
Taylor and Maclure, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, 105.
21
Ibid., 5.
22
Ibid., 15–16.
23
Ibid., 29.
24
Ibid., 31.
25
Ibid., 34.
26
In his ‘Proclamation as Dialogue: Transition in the Church-World Relationship,’ Theological Studies, 70 (2009), 875–903, James McEvoy argues, drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, that in Gaudium et Spes the Catholic Church came to grips with a ‘new social imaginary’ which marked its recognition that the era of Christendom had ended and that the Church’s relationship to the world must now be understood in terms of dialogue (886).
27
Ibid., 319. Rawls’s conception of the development of an ‘overlapping consensus’ of ‘comprehensive doctrines’ in a pluralist society is developed in his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) and The Law of Peoples with ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Pope Benedict XVI’s recent speeches to parliamentary audiences in Britain and Germany are important reflections on these fundamental questions concerning the moral sources for public life, in particular, the relationship between faith and reason in a secular and pluralist political order. In his Address to Representatives of British Society, Westminster Hall, 17 September 2010 (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20100917_societa-civile_en.html; accessed November 13, 2012) and his Address to the German Bundestag (Federal Parliament) on 22 September 2011 (; accessed November 13, 2012), Pope Benedict affirmed the primary importance of the dialogue between faith and reason for the health of democratic political life and expressed his concern at attempts to marginalize religion in public life. In both addresses, he emphasized the importance of natural law as the basis for political principles, a law that is rationally available to both believers and non-believers. Arguing that a purely positivist conception of reason cannot sustain the natural law, and therefore threatens to impoverish the ethical substance of public life, the Pope’s Bundestag address praised the German ecological movement, which had resisted the imposition of what Taylor calls the ‘immanent frame,’ breaking out into a more transcendent understanding of nature:
‘In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world. And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world, we are still covertly drawing upon God’s raw materials, which we refashion into our own products. The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this.’
28
Reforming the Liturgy, 150. Baldovin continues:
‘Given the fact that so much of postindustrial society is consumer oriented, it is only natural that many (if not most) people have come to expect “what they want” out of liturgy. I am convinced that this factor, rather than some romantic dream of a once-satisfying pre-Vatican II liturgy, is what accounts for the steep decline in church attendance among Roman Catholics. Combined with the loss of the conviction that the vast majority of people are going to hell (and I might very easily be one of them), a consumerist mentality toward religion accounts for many people simply opting out of faithful or regular churchgoing’ (151).
29
Collegeville, MN: Pueblo, Liturgical, 2000.
30
Exemplified by the finding that many parishioners consider the sign of peace to have greater significance for them than the Eucharistic Prayer. These criticisms relate to some of the findings presented in The Awakening Church: Twenty-Five Years of Liturgical Renewal, ed. Lawrence J. Madden (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1992), a wide-ranging study of parish liturgical life in the USA, undertaken as a co-operative study by four centres for liturgical studies (Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory, 6, 14). See also Nathan Mitchell, Real Presence: The Work of Eucharist (Chicago: Archdiocese of Chicago, Liturgy Training Publications, Revised edition, 2001), esp. 5–8, for a discussion of and response to this set of criticisms of contemporary parish Eucharistic celebration.
31
Ibid., 16.
32
Ibid., 58.
33
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2009.
34
Divine Worship and Human Healing, 17.
35
Ibid., 20.
36
Studia Liturgica 38, 1 (2008), 31–52, at 44–45. I would like to thank my colleagues Clare Johnson and James McEvoy for their kind assistance with this article, through both bibliographical advice and their helpful comments on an earlier draft.