A letter on Catholic Liturgy

Liturgy doesn’t need improvement

Dear Editor:

Catholics need worship, as Jesus said, “in spirit and in truth.” We need the liturgy celebrated rightly, where we meet Christ and offer true worship. We do not need innovations and creative improvements.

The liturgy is not the property of any individual — not the pope, not the bishop, not any priest nor liturgy committee. The liturgy belongs to the church and is to be passed on, not “improved,” not modified. It does not belong to any man; it belongs to us all. In “The Spirit of the Liturgy” (Ignatius, 2000), then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote strongly against liturgical improvisations. The liturgy is not subject even to the pope. Even he is the servant of Sacred Tradition: “The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition. Still less is any kind of general ‘freedom’ of manufacture, degenerating into spontaneous improvisation, compatible with the essence of faith and liturgy. The greatness of the liturgy depends - we shall have to repeat this frequently —on its unspontaneity” The pope reminds us of the power of the liturgy: it is of God. The most any man should do is to be faithful to the gift: to trust its power from God. Innovation will only muddy the pure living water that is the right of every Catholic. The pope wrote:
“This kind of creativity has no place within the liturgy The life of the liturgy does not come from what dawns upon the minds of individuals and planning groups….. Yes, the liturgy becomes persona],true, and new not through tom-foolery and banal experiments with the words, but through a courageous entry into the great reality that through the rite is always ahead of us and can never quite be overtaken.”
Many Catholics do not understand the liturgy. This is the problem that needs to be addressed: not by reducing the liturgy to something understandable and shallow, not by making it “entertaining,” not by speeding through its mysteries and dwelling on its human dimensions, but by rightly forming and educating the people.

Thomas Richard
Lady’s Island

Written to Catholic Miscellany - Printed on April 6, 2006