The other day I tweeted something which was, admittedly, somewhat snarky. I was commenting on all the self appointed laymen who are liturgical experts and wondered why, if they were so scrupulous about “proper liturgy” they didn’t become priests so they could ensure the liturgy was celebrated correctly just the way they like it.The puzzling thing is that I came to the Novus Ordo mass from the Episcopalian 1979 Book of Common Prayer and Rite Two, which was clearly inspired by Vatican II, so I have absolutely no problem with a reverent OF mass. When I see women lectors and EMs or altar girls, it just strikes me as how things are and always have been, at least since I seriously started going to church. Fr Longenecker had to make a greater stretch, since he came from the Church of England and the 1662 BCP, but clearly the OF mass doesn't bother him.. . . [M]ost often [the lay liturologist] is driven by an ideal in his own mind of what “proper liturgy” should look like, and this can become an ideological position cut off from reality. He argues for this position or that position based on his research, his theological reading, his historical understanding and a whole range of arguments about what is “proper” with little understanding or concern not only for the needs and spiritual growth of the people, but also for the reality of parish life.
Yet we see Alastair-Ian, who at least recognizes the crazy conundrum of an OF liturgy with phony archaisms emended into it, about as authentic as the ports on a three-hole Buick. Of the "liturologists" I've found lately, they seem to be about evenly divided between those like the one I cited last week who feel the DW mass is "very traditional and not too dissimilar from the TLM" (but the Latin is easier for them to understand, I guess) and those who, like Alastair-Ian, want an even more Baroque fantasy.
Fr Lengenecker concludes,
It seems to me therefore that a “proper liturgy” is what works. The high ideals should be balanced by practicalities, and a completely utilitarian approach should be balanced by high ideals of worship. The universal is balanced by the local and the local elevated by the universal. The unity can exist within the diversity and the diversity can be fulfilled in the unity.My regular correspondent frequently adds that those who may be enthusiasts for liturgical "purity" are overcompensating for some other shortcoming, which is often echoed by Fr Ripperger, whose experience with traditionalists leads him to believe that many are overcompensating for issues of sexual purity.Is such an approach neat and tidy and always just the way we want it?
No. It is messy.
I guess if you want a church that is neat and tidy and always just the way you want it you had better join a sect or a religious commune.
And good luck with that. . .
But the encouraging thing is the DW mass has almost universally failed to catch on, appealing only to a tiny minority of fantasists.
