NCR's wish list for the new Prefect of the CDW
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    This article by Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, has been percolating in my consciousness for the last two days.

    It's fascinating to me to see what innovations our liturgical masters have on the drawing board, esp. since I'm in the midst of reading Dom Alcuin Reid's The Organic Development of the Liturgy. Fr. Reese's description of "centers for liturgical R & D" strikes me as the exact opposite of the process Dom Alcuin Reid describes in his book:

    Every successful business does research and development on new products. While there are liturgical scholars who do research, they are forbidden to take the next step in developing and trying out new liturgical practices . . .

    What is needed are centers for liturgical R&D where scholars and artists can collaborate with a willing community in developing new liturgical practices . . .

    Bishops should be allowed to set up centers for liturgical R&D, operated by creative experts with appropriate supervision and review. Once new liturgical practices are developed and accepted by church officials, they should be market tested in a variety of pastoral settings before being offered to the rest of the church. Only the most arrogant business rolls out a new product everywhere in the world at the same time without market testing it.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    Treating the Church as a corporation. Isn't that the sort of thinking that created a lot of the mess we're in?
    Thanked by 1rich_enough
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    1. The Church is not a business.
    2. Liturgical research is for preserving tradition, not creating new practices.
    3. R&D centers for creative experts would put more misfits and hard-core unemployables either in charge or on a payroll.
    4. The Church markets salvation, not new products.
    5. Fr. Reese drank the wrong Kool-Aid and therein lies the problem.
  • bonniebede
    Posts: 756
    This article made me shudder, having been subjected to that sort of experimentation in the liturgy in college days. One concept that seems to escape them is the concept of validity - part of what the church is safeguarding by going slowly is ensuring that when you receive the sacraments they are valid.
    One only has to consider how the changes in Vatican 2 drove some people to abandon unity because they (mistakenly) felt that the Eucharist was no longer valid, or the recent baptisms done without a valid formula which had to be repeated.
    Does he think people don't know or don't care about these issues? Leave it to the experts - and long live Fr Reese's clericalism.
    Want liturgy that has been tried and tested for a long time? Want liturgy that has been beloved of any cultures? Try Gregorian chant. In Ireland it was so influential that all Irish traditional music is modal, long after other cultures had changed.
    Sing the black, do the red.

    It's really not that hard to follow the rubrics.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    I have to laugh. When I first read Fr. Reese's article, I mistook it for satire. When I realized that he was serious, I wondered, to borrow the image, what Kool-Aid he had drunk. Then I considered that, aside from the echo chamber which so often represents NCR's thought, there might be people influenced to agree with Fr. Reese. For these souls we must pray. For Father Reese, too, we must pray. Cooperate with him? That's laughable.

    Thanked by 2tomjaw CharlesW
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Yes, indeed, and I will be praying for Fr. Reese as well. If I remember correctly, he was removed from his post as editor of America magazine by Cardinal Ratzinger at the end of Pope St. John Paul II's pontificate.

    What I find most astonishing is the incredibly audacious attitude of progressive liturgical reformers and periti. One can only marvel at how they have been enabled to create this strange niche which allows them to operate with complete freedom, beyond all considerations of current liturgical legislation, Catholic tradition and respect for others' sensibilities.

    They believe they are somehow free to experiment at will upon the Catholic liturgy and may tweak, snip and cut and paste the prayers and rituals of the Mass with complete impunity. I guess that should come as no surprise since they are merely following the lead of Arbp. Bugnini who once famously stated, "I AM the liturgical reform!"---like Louis XIV's proclamation: L'État, c'est moi!
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