Substantially dependent on an exhaustively close reading of the editio typica of three mid to late 20th century magisterial texts on the liturgy, in From Passion to Paschal Mystery Fr Langevin has produced what is, by any standards, an impressively dense and painstaking work. In its precision and concentration on textual analysis, it bears the hallmarks of its origins as a doctoral thesis, but it is a more engaging, and – in the best sense of the word ‐ provocative text than this description would perhaps initially suggest. It would consequently repay careful study not only by historians of the development of the modern Catholic liturgy, but also by all those interested in the nature of the relationship between liturgy and doctrine.
The structure of the text ‐ clearly signaled in a brief and lucid introduction – is bipartite. In the first part, Langevin deals in turn with Pius XII's 1947 liturgical encyclical Mediator Dei, with Vatican II's 1962 Constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and finally with material drawn from the sections of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church devoted to the Profession of Faith and the Celebration of the Christian Mystery. His intention is to provide a historical survey of textual evidence for the shift he identifies between an almost exclusive emphasis on the sacrificial death of Christ as that which is re‐presented liturgically in immediately pre‐conciliar Catholic sacramental theology, and a later stress on the ‘entire paschal mystery’, by which fundamentally he understands the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (and less assuredly the Ascension or Pentecost) as the foundation and, in a certain sense the content, of the sacraments.
Having established that such a shift can indeed be discerned, Langevin goes on in the second part to assess its significance for the systematic connection between Christology, soteriology and sacramentology, and to sketch the Catholic theological cultural background of the earlier 20th century in which the rise to prominence of the concept of the Paschal Mystery is set. He considers four distinct though not unconnected contributory factors here: the pre‐conciliar liturgical movement, an increased interest in the Resurrection in Catholic New Testament studies, advances in Patristic scholarship and an increased awareness amongst Thomists of Aquinas's indebtedness to the Fathers and to his own liturgical formation. This last point is especially suggestive. As Langevin points out, the relationship between 20th‐century Thomism and the theology of ressourcement is not infrequently read in too relentlessly dichotomous a light. In fact, as at least some scholars of Aquinas came to an increased awareness of his indebtedness to the Fathers and to his own liturgical formation, a kind of Thomist ressourcement took place, in which Aquinas's own work was reappropriated in a way both duly cognizant of its own historical setting, and potentially newly fruitful for dialogue within the living tradition of Catholic theology. Unashamedly ‘Thomist’ in tone and inspiration as it is, then, Langevin's own work is resistant to facile caricature as an exercise in a‐historical abstraction, and raises questions of theological method with significant implications beyond the particular question under consideration in the text itself.
There is much else to admire in From Passion to Paschal Mystery, not least its potential to inject a little irenicism into the kinds of intra‐Catholic debate about the liturgy which regularly generate more heat than light. The subtlety and thoroughness of Langevin's exegesis of the magisterial texts means that his interpretation of encyclical, constitution and catechism cannot easily be pressed into service by those who would deny – or deplore ‐ the development of an explicit emphasis on the liturgical and sacramental significance of the resurrection from Sacrosanctum Concilium onwards. Nor, however, does it provide much by way of comfort to those who would resist the notion of an embryonic and implicit presence of this theme either in the pre‐conciliar liturgy itself or in contemporary magisterial reflection on liturgical themes. To this extent, Langevin's is unabashedly an exercise governed by the so‐called hermeneutic of continuity. But it is one which refuses to diminish the genuine freshness of approach to be found in the documents of Vatican II and consequently in the liturgical and sacramental material contained in the Catechism. Both liturgical ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’ might benefit from a careful study of Langevin's case.
The text is also replete with detail which, though at first sight perhaps of more exclusive interest to the liturgical historian, in fact also provides valuable material for reflection by the practitioner of liturgical theology. One such is the intriguing speculation that it was the distinctive form of the suscipe in the Dominican rite of Mass, which, in contrast to the Tridentine equivalent, eschews all reference to the Resurrection and Ascension, that led to a certain characteristic caution among Dominican conciliar participants about the desirability of a pronounced emphasis on the entirety of the paschal mystery in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Langevin rightly acknowledges that it is impossible unassailably to demonstrate causal connection here, but he is also surely correct to point out that the coincidence at least suggests a richly symbiotic connection between liturgical formation and doctrinal affiliation.
There is a sense in which From Passion to Paschal Mystery raises more questions than it answers, but this is a source of theological stimulation rather than frustration. It would, for example, be fascinating to trace the distinctive contribution made by popular piety alongside that of the liturgy to the development of mid‐20th century consciousness of the significance of the Paschal Mystery ‐ a question present to the minds of at least some contributors to the pre‐conciliar liturgical movement. There is also much more to be explored and said about the relationship between liturgy and ecclesiology as this was conceived by Pius XII: as Langevin observes in his final footnote, Mediator Dei and Mystici Corporis Christi would richly repay comparative study. In many such projects on the boundary of liturgical theology and the theology of the Church, Langevin's text might prove a valuable resource.
