Fortsatt arbeid med liturgien – den må stadig vurderes og reformeres

Dokumentet til erkebiskop Coleridge i Canberra og Goulburn, Australia, har som sitt hovedpoeng at det liturgiske arbeidet etter Vatikankonsilet bare så vidt er begynt. Etter konsilet ble det gjort store forandringer og vi må fortsette å justering vår liturgiske praksis slik at messefeiringa kan bære mest mulig frukt.

Bloggene til Father Z, og NLM har begge skrevt om dette, og leserne har kommet med amnge kommentarer. Slik skriver erkebiskopen:

… the Church is moving into a new phase of the ongoing journey of liturgical renewal, the roots of which reach back to the Second Vatican Council and beyond. In earlier times, it seemed that the process of liturgical renewal begun by the Council was complete. But that is not the case. The journey of liturgical renewal, we can now see, is only in its early phases, and the appearance of the General Instruction is one indication of this. Other still more important indications will be the appearance in the not too distant future of the new translation of the Roman Missal and the new translation of the Lectionary. Now is the time, the Spirit is saying to the Church, to take stock of the liturgical renewal of the last forty years, to discern as clearly as possible what has succeeded and what has failed, and to make adjustments in the light of that discernment.

This means that all of us will have to be open to learn, and that is not always easy. Over recent decades, liturgical habits have taken hold, some of which have been beneficial, others detrimental to the celebration of the liturgy. It is never easy to break the hold of bad habits, especially when we do not see them as bad. … …

Our worship generally has become very chatty, to the point where one of the challenges now is to allow silence to play its part in the liturgy. This might begin with our places of worship. Where once our churches were places of silence for the sake of prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the custom has arisen in more recent years for people to talk freely in the churches, certainly before and after Mass. The same is true of the sacristy: where once silence was the rule (again for the sake of prayer and recollection) often now the sacristy has become a noisy and distracting place. Once was too that the priest was expected to pray the prescribed prayers as he vested for Mass, and this was one factor which contributed to an air of silence in the sacristy.

When the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the use of the vernacular languages in the liturgy, they had no idea of what was on the way. They imagined that some parts of the liturgy would move into English (in our case), but that Latin would remain in general the language of worship. It was up to Bishops’ Conferences to ask the Holy See for permission to use the vernacular at certain points of the liturgy. What happened then was that Bishops’ Conferences generally and spontaneously asked for the entire liturgy to move into the vernacular and the permission for this was given. That is why it seemed that the Church went from Latin to English overnight. ….

Music is another vital element of worship that needs to be revisited as we set out on this new phase of the journey. It is not just a question of having good music, but of having good music which serves prayer and which, in that sense, is not an adornment of the liturgy but integral to it. The music of the liturgy needs to rise from the silence of prayer and create a still deeper sense of that silence. Of course, it has the function of creating a sense of unity as one voice is made of many voices. But it also needs to be music that opens on to the mystery of God, which is what I mean when I speak of serving prayer. Some of the songs used in worship tend to replace or disrupt any sense of silence; they add to the sense that the liturgy is “noisy”.

… …
In this next phase of the ongoing journey of liturgical renewal, some things are clearly important. Among the more important are the following:

◊ a strengthening of the sense of the nature and importance of ritual and symbol and of the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

◊ a deeper inculcation of silence into our worship, so that there is a richer and deeper interplay of silence and words, silence and music.

◊ a right balance between continuity and discontinuity with the liturgical forms and traditions of the past.

◊ a body of liturgical texts which pass on the full wealth of the liturgical, spiritual and theological heritage found in the Roman Missal.

◊ liturgical music which nourishes rather than substitutes for prayer.

◊ an effort to ensure that beauty in worship opens us more deeply to the mystery of God.

◊ a focusing of the different and complementary roles presumed in Catholic liturgy (and ecclesiology), so that the identity and function of the ordained and non-ordained are clearly seen.

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