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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
In a rather bleak essay, Charles Davis observed in 1970 that ‘the general verdict upon liturgical reform is that it has failed to solve the problem of worship in a secular age’ and ‘that the chief effect of the reforms has been to uncover an insoluble problem’. Any sociological response to liturgical renewal came after the late sixties as a critical reaction to changes implemented as a result of Vatican II. There was certainly no sociological participation in the demands for liturgical change prior to 1963. As a result the Conciliar reforms did not so much answer a sociological scepticism as generate one that has developed increasingly since. The attempt to relate the shape of rite, to what were perceived as the cultural and social needs of a secular modem society, merged with a wish to maximise the active participation of the laity in the liturgy, whose simplicity and clarity of form, would enable a worshipping community to develop as a witness to an increasingly sceptical society.
Pre-Conciliar forms of rite were rigid in shape, objectively secured in complex rubrics, but were considered as implausible and irrelevant to contemporary needs. The tenor of the new rites was a mixture of looser simplified rubrics, in the General Instruction ol the Roman Missal, 1969, matched to a sensitivity to pastoral and cultural needs. But this wish for some degree of adaptability (that satisfied neither radicals nor conservatives) pre-supposed some criteria of assessing changes in form as affecting local situations. If indigenization was to occur some form of systematic evaluation seemed desirable. Initially, the changes were met with indifference by sociologists of religion, who have displayed little interest in the social nature of liturgy since.
1 Davis, Charles, ‘Ghetto or Desert: Liturgy in a Cultural Dilemma’Studia Liturgica, Vol 7, 1970, p 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Seasoltz, Kevin, ‘From Liturgical Reform to Christian Renewal. Unfinished Business: I The Clergy Review, Vol LXVII, No 3, March 1982, 92.Google Scholar
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4 Holmes, Urban, ‘Liminality and Liturgy’Worship, Vol 47, No 7, 1973, p 386Google Scholar.
5 Turner, Victor, ‘Ritual, Tribal and Catholic’Worship, Vol 50, No 6, 1976, 524Google Scholar.
6 See Hornsby‐Smith, Michael, ‘The Statistics of the Church’ and Antony Archer ‘The Church and Social Class’ in Cummings, John and Burns, Paul, eds The Church Now, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1980, pp 55‐65 and pp 157‐16Google Scholar0. See also evidence in Hornsby‐Smith, Michael and Lee, Raymond, Roman Catholic Opinion: A Study of Roman Catholics in England and Wales in the 1970s, Guildford: University of Surrey, 1979, pp 71‐74 and 127‐128Google Scholar. It must be admitted that evidence to support this point is only suggestive, but this is an issue that requires urgent sociological study.
7 Maldonado, Luis, ‘The Church's Liturgy: Present and Future’ in Tracy, David, Kung, Hans, and Metz, Johann, eds Towards Vatican III. The work that needs to be done, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1978, p 232Google Scholar.
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10 See my essay ‘Competitive Assemblies of God: Lies and Mistakes in Liturgy’, Research Bulletin, University of Birmingham: Institute for the Study of Worship and Religious Architecture, 1981, pp 20‐69. Some elements of the above response are further explored in ‘Liturgy, Silence and Ambiguity: The ritual management of a real absence’.
11 Leeuwen, T M Van, The Surplus of Meaning. Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1981, pp 110‐116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Rappaport, Roy, ‘Sanctity and Lies in Evolution’ in Ecology, Meaning and Religion, Richmond, California, North Atlantic Books, 1979, p 226Google Scholar. This essay taken with ‘The Obvious Aspects of Ritual’ represents the most sophisticated sociological approach to the operative aspects of liturgy.
13 Ladriere, Jean, ‘The performativity of Liturgical Language’ in Liturgical Experience of Faith, Concilium, New York, Herder & Herder, 1973. pp 59‐60Google Scholar.
14 Skorupski, John, Symbol and Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp 102‐103Google Scholar.
15 Ibid. p 114.
16 Quoted in Tambiah, S J, A Performative Approach to Ritual, London, British Academy, 1979, p 150Google Scholar.
17 Ibid. p 131.
18 Ibid. p 149.
19 Lewis, Gilbert, Day of Shining Red: An essay in understanding Ritual, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960, Chapter 2, pp 6‐38Google Scholar.
20 Casel, Odo, The Mystery of Christian Worship, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962, p 163Google Scholar.
21 Finnegan, Ruth, ‘How to do things with words: performative utterances among the Limba of Sierra Leone’Man, N. S. Vol 4, No 4, December 1969, pp 537‐552CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Ian Hamnett, ‘Pelagianism and Idolatry’ Paper read to the Sociology of Religion Conference of the British Sociological Association, Bristol, 1982.
23 Roy Rappaport, ‘The Obvious Aspects of Ritual’op. cit. p 217.
24 Berger, Peter and Kellner, Hansfried, Sociology Reinterpreted, London, Penguin Books, 1982, p 13Google Scholar.
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