On the Rebuilt Liturgy post, Tony Phillips commented:
Clearly there’s a demand for a place like this–a market, if you like–while (as several commenters pointed out here) it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But that’s exactly the point–different people respond different to different types of liturgy. We need to recognise that the hierarchical church’s post-V2 strategy of “one-size-fits-all” has failed. The typical NO parish addresses one mindset (well represented on this blog), but others are alienated and have been for years. Hence the empty pews.
The link to the Old St Pat’s (Chicago) video was instructive too–some people drive miles, past other churches, to find the parish that works for them. EF parishioners have been forced to do that for years.
Not that parishes should have to do this in isolation. Dioceses and deaneries should work with parishes to ensure that a variety of worship styles are available to the people, and not serve them all the same bland vanilla liturgy in the interests of ‘unity’. I wonder how many bishops are up to that task. Never mind the professional musicians, sounds like we need to start making an MBA a prerequisite for becoming a bishop!
I’m all for letting a thousand flowers bloom.
My response, in part, was:
I’d note that your proposal is an innovation, from the perspective of the history and tradition of the Church. While there was diversity in premodern liturgy, it was dictated by the diversity of local traditions, not by the diversity of individuals’ taste and preference. So maybe the idea of offering an array of different liturgical “styles” for people to choose from is the most fundamental inculturation we have done to postmodern consumer culture.
I thought the issues raised by Tony’s post merited a thread of it’s own. Expanding a bit on my response, I think it is wrong to speak of “the hierarchical church’s post-V2 strategy of “one-size-fits-all’,” if, by that, one means something unique to the post-Conciliar Church. Apart from Masses with music and those without (itself a post-millennium innovation), the pre-Conciliar Church’s approach was also one-size-fits-all, at least after Trent. Indeed, it was far more so. And, as I noted, prior to Trent (and even more prior to Charlemagne) there was considerable liturgical diversity, but this was not an appeal to different preferences; rather, it was a reflection of the diversity of ways in which local communities had preserved and adapted the liturgical tradition. In 800 AD there weren’t parishes that offered the Roman Rite at 8:00, the Gallican Rite at 9:30, and the Byzantine Divine Liturgy at 11:00 in order to appeal to differing tastes. Aachen Abe (the 9th century equivalent of Timonium Tim) simply went to the liturgy that was on offer, a liturgy to which he sought to conform his sensibilities, not one that was conformed to his sensibilities.
Perhaps those advocates of the 1962 Missal who appeal to liturgical diversity and the right of folks to have the kind of Mass that they like are people have a well developed ironic sense and recognize just how untraditional such a view of liturgy is. Of course, liturgical diversity rooted in the preferences of churchgoers is a reality in the post-Conciliar scene and one that is not going away any time soon. And, to be honest, most of us would be willing to see it go away only if the type of liturgy we preferred were the one to prevail.
So my question is: is it a benign form of inculturation to the modern consumer culture of the West that we offer different liturgies for different tastes, or is this something that should be resisted?
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