{"id":32724,"date":"2016-04-14T08:39:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T13:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=32724"},"modified":"2016-04-14T08:41:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T13:41:57","slug":"the-liturgical-reform-and-the-political-message-of-vatican-ii-in-the-age-of-a-privatized-and-libertarian-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/14\/the-liturgical-reform-and-the-political-message-of-vatican-ii-in-the-age-of-a-privatized-and-libertarian-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"The Liturgical Reform and the &#8216;Political&#8217; Message of Vatican II in the Age of a Privatized and Libertarian Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editors note: <\/em><em>This article originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.journalworship.org\/\">Worship<\/a><em>. Reprinted with the permission of the author and <\/em>Liturgical Press<em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>by Massimo Faggioli\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What happened in these last few years in the Catholic Church\u2014especially with the new translation of the Missal, a \u201cLatinized\u201d English\u00a0version that, in 2011, was imposed on English-speaking Catholics\u2014told us very clearly that the meaning of the liturgical reform for Vatican II and for modern Catholicism goes well beyond the technical revision of the liturgical books and rituals. It is fair to say that the challenges to the liturgical reform in these last few years forced Catholic theologians to rediscover the key role of the liturgical constitution in the history and theology of Vatican II and for the history of post\u2013Vatican II Catholicism. The liturgical unity of the Catholic Church has been damaged, but now, as a church, we have a clearer sense of\u00a0the importance of the liturgical reform for the catholicity of the church.<\/p>\n<p>It had been almost forgotten that the liturgical reform of Vatican II is one of the most important\u2014if not the <em>most <\/em><em>important<\/em>\u2014reform in the history of modern Catholicism. Now, fifty years after Vatican II, we are at the beginning of the rediscovery of the theological meaning of this reform and of its potential for the future of the Catholic Church. For Catholics who still had doubts about this, Pope Francis made very clear in his interview with the Jesuit magazines (published in English by <em>America <\/em>on September 19, 2013) how he sees the liturgical reform: \u201cVatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy.<\/p>\n<p>The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation.\u201d(1)<\/p>\n<p>Pope Francis\u2019 words signaled a shift in, among other things, the Vatican\u2019s liturgical policy in comparison with the decisions of his predecessor. In light of this changed situation, it is necessary to focus once again on the liturgical reform, but with a less defensive approach and a more future-oriented view. The focus of this essay is the relationship between the liturgical reform of Vatican II, its core theological ideas, and the idea of the \u201ccommon good\u201d in the contemporary Catholic Church. To set out this relationship, I will address,\u00a0<em>first<\/em>, the relationship between Vatican II and the liturgical reform; <em>second<\/em>, the \u201cpolitical culture\u201d expressed by Vatican II concerning the idea of \u201ccommon good\u201d; and, <em>last<\/em>, the connections between the ecclesiology of the liturgical reform and the idea of \u201ccommon good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. THE LITURGICAL REFORM AS A TEST FOR THE RECEPTION OF VATICAN II<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Theologians and historians have taken for granted a few elements of the liturgical reform:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the long history of the liturgical movement before Vatican II;<\/li>\n<li>the fact that Vatican II was the first council in church history to approve a doctrinal document on liturgy;<\/li>\n<li>the undeniable truth that \u201csomething happened\u201d for liturgy at Vatican II;<\/li>\n<li>the connections between the liturgical reform and the ecclesiological issue;<\/li>\n<li>the patent fact that the liturgical reform of Vatican II is the last vast <em>reform <\/em>within the post-Tridentine Catholic Church after the reform of church discipline between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both historians and theologians have been inclined for a long time to forget the tight associations between the liturgical debate at Vatican II, the reform of the liturgy, the striving for <em>aggiornamento<\/em>, and the updating and reform of the Catholic Church. But most of all, in some interpretations of the documents of Vatican II, the fact that Vatican II has a deep, internal coherence, as John O\u2019Malley has stressed,(2)\u00a0seems at times to be lost. The sometimes self-referential\u00a0debate about Vatican II sidestepped and obscured the profound significance of\u00a0<em>Sacrosanctum Concilium<\/em>. The connections between liturgy and Vatican II,\u00a0understood not as a collection of documents but as a coherent reality, must emerge if we want to understand the council\u2019s impact on global Catholicism.(3)<\/p>\n<p>Therefore it is clear that the reception of the liturgical reform is an eminently important test for the reception of Vatican II and, especially, of its ecclesiology. The <em>reception <\/em>of <em>Sacrosanctum Concilium <\/em>includes reception of the ecclesiology of the liturgical constitution and its ecclesiological consequences; vice versa, the <em>rejection <\/em>of <em>Sacrosanctum Concilium <\/em>is a rejection of both the liturgical constitution and its ecclesiological consequences. Regarding this, the case of the Lefebvrists is particularly significant. The Society of St. Pius X has always looked\u2014from their perspective, coherently\u2014at the liturgical reform not as a problem <em>as such <\/em>but as the gateway for Vatican II and the \u201cdiscontinuities\u201d that the ultra-traditionalist schismatic community has always rejected: the vision of the Church and in particular the Church and ecumenism, the Church and the Jews, and interreligious dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>Now, it is clear to everyone that dividing the Catholic Church into \u201cconservatives\u201d and \u201cliberals\u201d is a nonscholarly way of understanding the ecclesial situation: these labels, which come from the tradition of political language, have lost some of their meaning even in politics. But there is no doubt that, as divisions based in ecclesiology, the divisions that have coalesced around the liturgical reform derive from different \u201ccultures\u201d in the Catholic Church that are also related to the \u201cpolitical views\u201d\u2014broadly speaking\u2014of some Catholic groups. The liturgical reform addresses issues in the life of the Church that have institutional and political elements, such as the issue of centralization and decentralization of and in the Church, the role of the clergy and of the hierarchy, the relationship between the Church and the world, and the understanding of history and its relationship with theology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. VATICAN II AND\u00a0 THE\u00a0 COMMON GOOD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Both in its documents and in the event, Vatican II is the expression of a set of \u201cideas\u201d and of \u201ccultures\u201d of Catholicism in a given moment in church history\u2014including political ideas and cultures. Vatican II did not send a\u00a0politically <em>partisan <\/em>message; that would have been impossible in an assembly of more than 2,500 bishops from the five continents. Nevertheless, there are ideas typical of the culture of Vatican II that say something about how the ecumenical council sees the world, society, and the role of politics.(4)<\/p>\n<p>The Second Vatican Council took place <em>after <\/em>World War II. The discontinuities of the council\u2014in the Church\u2019s relationship to democratic culture, in the appreciation of the modern liberties rejected by Pius IX\u2019s <em>Syllabus <\/em>in 1864, in collegiality and co-responsibility, in the commitment to ecumenism and to interreligious dialogue, and so forth\u2014have had a political impact. At the same time, these discontinuities underscore the \u201cconstitutional core\u201d within the council.(5) It is thus evident that the epoch-making changes wrought by Vatican II have had an impact far beyond the Church\u2019s inner life. They established the Catholic Church as a community in the modern world, where it is <em>also <\/em>recognized as a political-cultural agent, considered integral to her very identity.<\/p>\n<p>At the dawning of a globalized world, the Second Vatican Council made of the Catholic Church a global citizen that perceives the world and modernity differently: the Church no longer intended to dominate the world but rather wishes to serve it. Vatican II is something like a \u201cguarantee of citizenship\u201d for the Catholic Church in today\u2019s global world. Public opinion has identified this \u201cguarantee\u201d with the definitive rejection of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism as elements of a premodern and antidemocratic political culture, and with other specific elements of the council\u2019s break with the Catholic Church of the \u201clong nineteenth century\u201d: religious freedom and freedom of conscience, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, collegiality and co-responsibility in church government. It is no coincidence that these core elements in the \u201cpolitical reception\u201d of the council are exactly the ones that the Lefebvrites rejected as the heresies of the council\u2014a council whose gateway is the liturgical reform.<\/p>\n<p>These changes in the Church\u2019s position in the globalized world have a lot to do with the Catholic understanding of the \u201ccommon good.\u201d For a long time, especially during what John O\u2019Malley called the \u201clong nineteenth century,\u201d(6) Catholic Magisterium saw only the Catholic Church and particularly the Magisterium as able to define, superintend, and direct the common good.<\/p>\n<p>It substantiated this claim by directly accusing \u201cpolitics\u201d of being the Church\u2019s illegitimate successor in taking care of the common good.(7)<\/p>\n<p>Until the twentieth century, in the vast world outside of the United States of America, there was a long history of the relationship between Catholic Magisterium and the \u201cpolitical issue.\u201d After the shock of the revolutions of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, politics was regarded as <em>the <\/em>fruit of the separation of the modern world from the moral guidance of the only true church. Catholic politicians were allowed to entertain commerce with the modern world only as a practical necessity, because the hierarchy was too embarrassed to be involved directly with a political realm whose legitimacy they did not acknowledge. Only during Vatican II do we see this scenario change with the acknowledgment that modernity \u201cexists\u201d and that Catholics live both in the Church and in society, in a political community that had recently become democratic\u2014one of the \u201csigns of the times\u201d that the Church had to confront. A fundamental call to unity\u2014ecumenical and interreligious unity\u2014inspired Vatican II, and its fathers and theologians saw in modernity a moment of advancement toward unity and saw the Catholic Church as one of the promotors of this unity: \u201cThe Church recognizes that worthy elements are found in today\u2019s social movements, especially an evolution toward unity, a process of wholesome socialization and of association in civic and economic realms. The promotion of unity belongs to the innermost nature of the Church\u201d (<em>Gaudium et Spes <\/em>42).(8)<\/p>\n<p>The shift was not just from rejection to <em>recognition <\/em>of the legitimacy of the secular realm; it was also a shift to including new values and ideas as part of\u00a0Catholic tradition. One of the elements of the importance of Vatican II most forgotten or sometimes taken for granted \u2014especially in this <em>Zeitgeist<\/em>\u2014is that at the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church elaborated a set of principles that Catholics must represent in the public arena\u2014a public arena that can be called a \u201csocial democracy\u201d: a democracy whose goal is not procedural but must be measured by its ability to meet the demands of the human dignity that the Church proclaims as closely connected to the \u201csocial nature\u201d of the human person (<em>Dignitatis Humanae <\/em>3).<\/p>\n<p>Vatican II\u2019s perspective on the Catholic understanding of the relationship between the individual human person and social-political reality, that is, the \u201cpolitical culture of Vatican II,\u201d draws not only on the recent experience of the Christian-Democratic parties in post\u2013World War II Europe and the Catholic Church\u2019s social doctrine but also on the thinking of early canon lawyers from the beginning of the second millennium.(9)<\/p>\n<p>That the tradition of the Church\u2019s social doctrine was a changing tradition becomes clear if we remember that Vatican II\u2019s social and political message to the world is contained between its first and last documents. John XXIII\u2019s opening speech, <em>Gaudet Mater Ecclesia <\/em>(October 11, 1962), and the \u201cMessage to the World\u201d approved by the council fathers (October 20, 1962) spoke of two urgent issues facing the world to which the Church was particularly attentive: peace and social justice.(10) As the council drew to a close, the last document it approved, the pastoral constitution <em>Gaudium et Spes <\/em>(December 7, 1965), employs the expression \u201ccommon good\u201d thirty times. Of these, eighteen are found in chapter 4 on the life of the political community and chapter 5 on the community of nations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. LITURGICAL REFORM AND THE COMMON \u00a0GOOD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An analysis of the roots of the idea of \u201csocial justice\u201d and \u201ccommon good\u201d in the documents of Vatican II would require another essay. But it is clear from the outset that the documents of Vatican II make no direct and explicit connection between the liturgical reform and the social message of the council: there is no link between the first document of Vatican II, <em>Sacrosanctum Concil<\/em><em>ium<\/em>, and the last document, <em>Gaudium et Spes<\/em>, nor with other documents (for example, the declaration on religious freedom, <em>Dignitatis Humanae<\/em>) that represent a perceptible shift in Catholic social teaching. In other words, it seems that the liturgical debate at Vatican II took place too early (1962\u20131963), before the council turned its attention to the <em>ad extra <\/em>issues (1964\u20131965), and that the debates on the floor and in the commissions at Vatican II between 1964 and 1965 never really tried to incorporate the liturgical reform into the picture of the new stance of the Catholic Church on social and political issues.<\/p>\n<p>In my book <em>True Reform<\/em>, I focused on both the reception and the lack of reception of the liturgical constitution by the rest of Vatican II: this is clearly one\u00a0of the council\u2019s limitations, which derives from Vatican II\u2019s periodization (the Vatican II of 1963 being somewhat different from the Vatican II of 1965).(11) But the council\u2019s silence on the connection between liturgy and Catholic social doctrine is perhaps due not only to a lack of or premature understanding of the issue but also to the awareness of the problematic and sometimes controversial nature of the relationship between the liturgical movement and the social and political culture of the Catholic Church <em>before<\/em> <em>the<\/em> <em>time<\/em> <em>of Vatican II<\/em>. The history of the liturgical movement in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century often showed the features of a Catholicism whose goal was to rebuild a \u201cCatholic society\u201d shaped by intransigent and antimodern social and political cultures as well as the \u201cpoliticization of Catholic worship\u201d vis-\u00e0-vis the \u201cpolitical religions\u201d of the period between World War I and World War II.(12)<\/p>\n<p>By the time of Vatican II, it had become impossible to use some of the elements of the liturgical movement of the preconciliar era. It had not been forgotten that in Germany of the 1930s, for example, the liturgical movement had become part of the call for a renewed national community (<em>Volksgemeinschaft<\/em>) that also spoke powerfully to Catholics and became part of the appeal of\u00a0Nazi totalitarianism.(13)<\/p>\n<p>Retrieving this history helps us defragment the narrative about Vatican II as the captive of a clash between conservatives (opposed to the liturgical reform and to political liberalism) versus liberal-progressive Catholics (who found in the liturgical reform an expression of their views both theological and political). History paints a complicated picture of the fault lines that liturgical reformism and political ideologies created within twentieth-century Catholicism. Since Vatican II, many Catholics, especially in the United States, have been accustomed to think of reform as signifying a renewed awareness of the social dimension of the faith and to assume that this awareness would naturally have \u201cprogressive\u201d political consequences. That is not necessarily the case. Abbot Hildefons Herwegen at Maria Laach was a patron of reactionary Catholicism. Maria Laach, a center for the liturgical movement ever since Abbot Herwegen had invited it to make the abbey its home, was capable of more disquieting political expressions. In his welcoming address to the attendees at a special conference of the Catholic Scholars Association convened at Maria Laach the day after the signing of the Concordat of 1933, Abbot Herwegen delivered his oft-quoted statement, \u201cIn the religious sphere, for the past twenty years it has been the so-called liturgical movement that acted as a counterweight against an ever more unrestrained and lunatic individualism; [now] in the political sphere <em>it is Fascism<\/em>.\u201d(14)\u00a0There was a direct parallel between the pre\u2013World War II liturgical movement in Europe and Fascist political culture, since one of the central goals of the liturgical movement was a restored communal and corporate sense\u00a0of the Catholic Church as the Body of Christ. For the liturgical movement, already almost a generation old in Germany in the 1930s, this meant a special relationship with the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the cases of Dom Lambert Beauduin and Virgil Michel are quite different. For Dom Lambert Beauduin, an ecumenical theology was an integral part of his ecumenical movement from the beginning, different from the calls for the \u201creturn\u201d of non-Catholics to Rome, even though that ecumenical aspiration was still encompassed by an ecclesiology of the \u201cmystical body.\u201d(15)\u00a0Virgil Michel\u2019s work in the liturgical movement became part of his ecumenical engagement, especially during the final years of his life, between 1936 and 1938.(16)<\/p>\n<p>This indicates that the relationship between the liturgical movement and political cultures is far from simple. Sometimes incorrect assumptions about the obvious and natural \u201cprogressive\u201d or \u201cliberal\u201d character of some theological ideas still obfuscates it. A second fact to remember is that at the Second Vatican Council the liturgical movement became something different from that of previous generations. Why? Because it was in touch with Vatican II both as ideas expressed in <em>documents <\/em>and as an <em>event<\/em>, and it followed World War II and the new awareness of the limitations and consequences of Catholic social doctrine focused on Pius XI\u2019s idea of the \u201csocial reign of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it seems to me that if we want to understand the \u201csocial message\u201d of the conciliar liturgical reform, we must pay attention to the differences between the various periods of the liturgical movement in the twentieth century, and especially to the differences between the ideas of the liturgical movement before Vatican II and the ideas expressed by the liturgical reform of Vatican II\u2014which to date have been seen too frequently as inseparable.<\/p>\n<p>The liturgical constitution of Vatican II contains elements from the preconciliar and pre\u2013World War II ideas of the liturgical movement. For example, the statement in the introduction to <em>Sacrosanctum Concilium <\/em>that the Church is a \u201csign lifted up among the nations\u201d (SC 2) shows its awareness of the \u201cpublic- political\u201d character of the liturgy. Although the constitution does not mention the council\u2019s \u201cpolitical culture,\u201d it develops a discourse on the Eucharist for the Church that lives on earth. Politically \u201cmilitant\u201d language is absent from <em>Sacro<\/em><em>sanctum Concilium <\/em>mainly because \u201cthe liturgy constitution proceeds from a society that is strongly marked by an ecclesiastical and Christian culture.\u201d(17) This <em>Kulturoptimismus <\/em>of the early phase of Vatican II, which included the liturgical constitution preparing the liturgical reform, is an essential element that must be considered if we want to frame the debate about liturgy,\u00a0Vatican II, and its political culture correctly.<\/p>\n<p>But other elements from the theology of Vatican II and various theological movements permeated the ideas at the basis of the liturgical reform. The relationship between revelation, tradition, and history, and the idea of the Catholic Church as communion on the path of ecumenical union with other churches and the human community, has political meaning because it starts from an acceptance of the basic ideas of the biblical, patristic, liturgical, and ecumenical movements that fed into Vatican II and accepts the fact of history as a \u201ctheological source\u201d in the idea of liturgy as \u201csource and summit\u201d of\u00a0the church.(18)<\/p>\n<p>That is, Vatican II provided something new and changed something vis-\u00e0-vis the preconciliar liturgical movement: this belongs to the larger picture in the relationship between \u201corganized religion\u201d and politics in the world of these last fifty years. The link between politics as the \u201cidea of the polis,\u201d on one hand, and liturgy as an \u201caction of the people,\u201d on the other, applies not only to theologies of liberation or revolution, and not only to political Islam, but also to Catholicism, which is not a politically neutral form of religion. Vatican II\u00a0had a \u201cpolitical culture,\u201d a view of the modern world that many documents <em>ad extra <\/em>(the documents on ecumenism, on religious freedom, on non-Christian religions, and the pastoral constitution) expressed. But ultimately this political culture and its connection to the longing for <em>rapprochement <\/em>was also expressed by the documents <em>ad intra <\/em>(on the church, on revelation), and first and foremost by the Constitution on the Liturgy, and first and foremost <em>through its ecclesiology<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Here, already in 1962 and 1963, Vatican II substantially distances itself\u2014though in a nondramatic and understated way\u2014from the previous traditions of \u201cpoliticization of the liturgical movement.\u201d Vatican II resists the temptation to use Catholicism ideologically as a \u201ccivil religion,\u201d that is, a belief that cements the civil and political cohesion of a people around certain beliefs, values, rituals\u2014regardless of the religion professed by individuals and communities.(19) While the weakening of the social fabric of the European Church has led some to see civil religion as the remedy that would hijack Catholicism to the service of identification between nation and religion, the liturgical ecclesiology flowing from the reform launched by Vatican II radically contradicts such a possibility. The idea of civil religion is so far removed from the vision of the liturgy that the Catholic Church set out at Vatican II. The basic ideas of the conciliar liturgical reform are closely linked to the understanding of the Church of Vatican II that Georges Dejaifve summarized in five characteristics: the distinction between Church and kingdom, the idea of communion, the sacramental aspect, catholicity, and its political character.(20) Vatican II ecclesiology is not antipolitical, but it presents the political nature of Catholicism in tension with the value of communion, the distinction between Church and kingdom, and a catholicity that has a deep antinationalist character.<\/p>\n<p>The liturgical reform of Vatican II is based on certain theological and cultural insights that are substantiated in the movement toward a reform of the Catholic Church in the ecumenical sense of <em>rapprochement<\/em>, made possible by a\u00a0conversion to <em>ressourcement<\/em>, the sources of the church and the theological and spiritual reflection of early theologians. John O\u2019Malley\u2019s lesson on the \u201cstyle of Vatican II\u201d as \u201cexpressive value\u201d is of great importance in understanding the relationship between liturgy and politics at the Vatican II.(21)<\/p>\n<p>The beginning of the liturgical constitution establishes in fact the pragmatics of Vatican II, not through a theoretical description of the liturgy, but through a narrative of the relationship between God and his people that offers a distinct flavor of \u201cCatholic\u201d as \u201cuniversal,\u201d and presents Christ and the Eucharist as the center of gravity in a clear return to the patristic idea of the Eucharist as <em>sacramentum unitatis<\/em>.(22)<\/p>\n<p><em>Sacrosanctum Concilium <\/em>aspires not to a purely aesthetic purification of the liturgy but to a refocusing on the Eucharist and the liturgy within the Catholic Church, with clear implications for the self-understanding of the community praying <em>in space and time<\/em>. This refocusing on the eucharistic liturgy has consequences for the way Christians look to the <em>polis <\/em>as a community in which to incarnate the Gospel, proclaim it, and live it well through prayer and liturgy.The liturgy reformed by the council expresses a clear vision of the Church and its worldview: \u201cThis sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church\u201d (SC 1).<\/p>\n<p>It is no coincidence that the liturgical constitution was the first document to be debated and approved at the council, after the \u201cMessage to the World,\u201d which expressed the council\u2019s determination to be of comfort to the anxieties that plague humanity in the present tense. The commitment to universal <em>rapprochement <\/em>envelopes the entire liturgical constitution, so that chapter 5 on the liturgical year encourages the narrative of reconciliation through a\u00a0universal salvific will of God, without excluding any category of humanity or any part of the world.(23) In this sense, the liturgical constitution constitutes an act of reception of two major ideas in John XXIII\u2019s plan for his pontificate and for the ecumenical council: unity and peace.(24)<\/p>\n<p>The liturgical life of the Catholic Church, therefore, has a \u201cpolitical\u201d side that does not abstract from the <em>polis<\/em>: \u201cLiturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the \u2018sacrament of unity,\u2019 namely, the holy people united and ordered under their bishops. Therefore liturgical services pertain to the whole body of the Church; they manifest it and have effects upon it; but they concern the individual members of the Church in different ways, according to their differing rank, office, and actual participation\u201d (SC 26). The preference for communal celebration (SC 27) is rooted in an understanding of church as communion and as a people of God, which diminishes a purely hierarcological ecclesiology.<\/p>\n<p>The liturgical reform and the council are inextricably linked, because all the major theological ferments of Vatican II have left traces on the liturgical constitution: the rediscovery of the Word of God, ecclesiology, ecumenism, relations with Jews, the Church and the modern world. Together with the pre-conciliar renewal of pastoral theology, the liturgical movement was able to bring to the council the need to develop new instruments that could show the bonds of earthly realities with liturgical prayer. Consider the retrieval of the prayer of the faithful: \u201cTo pray for real needs of the church and the world is to show that one is intimately concerned with political realities, that the word and the sacramental point to the salvation of the world in which we live.\u201d(25)<\/p>\n<p>But if it is clear that genuine inculturation of the liturgy is crucial for reconciliation among all Christians and between Christians and contemporary men\u00a0and women, the relationship between liturgy and the <em>common<\/em> <em>good <\/em>is more problematic. This pertains not just to the effects of the liturgical reform. If it is true that liturgy is a public act by definition, then the liturgical constitution\u2019s \u201crehabilitation\u201d of the idea of change also has an impact in the polis where liturgy is celebrated. In this sense, the liturgical reform is a concrete phenomenon that deeply influences both society and Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>The transition from early Christianity to the Imperial Church, and from there to the \u201cnational Churches\u201d after the Reformation and the Peace of Westfalia in 1648, seemed destined\u2014at least back in the 1960s\u2014to make way for a decidedly post-Constantinian \u201cworld-church.\u201d The picture now seems more fragmented: if the council had anticipated the success of a democratic and participatory culture in the world to come,(26) now it seems the culture of antipolitics weakens some aspects of the relationship between liturgy and <em>polis<\/em>, in a postmodern society where the very idea and experience of \u201cparticipation\u201d (included liturgical participation) is in deep crisis.(27)<\/p>\n<p>The forms of liturgical celebration are not \u201cindifferent\u201d to the world in which the contemporary Catholic Church lives. As the reactions to the schism of Lefebvre, who refused to recognize Vatican II, show, it is evident that there is a direct link between forms of the liturgy, reference to theological culture, and worldview, even for observers apparently more distant from the world church (non-Catholic churches, Jewish communities, political observers, and public intellectuals).(28) The theological content of the liturgical constitution (especially SC 5, 6, and 8) has intertextual connections with other council documents (<em>Dei Verbum<\/em>, <em>Nostra<\/em> <em>Aetate<\/em>) that are crucial for the overall theological balance of Vatican II.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the council, the liturgical celebration gained a new centrality in the proclamation of the Gospel in the world. An undistorted reading of\u00a0<em>Sacrosanctum Concilium <\/em>is not only a prerequisite for any discussion of liturgy and politics but also the first vaccine against any temptation to misuse religion as <em>instrumentum regni<\/em>. This is urgent, especially today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when Roman Catholicism seems to be for some an ideological and geopolitical option rather than a witness to the Gospel call to unity among Christians and between Christians and all of humanity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. THE LITURGICAL REFORM\u00a0AND THE POLITICS OF CATHOLICS TODAY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Almost thirty years ago, the late Kevin Seasoltz, OSB, wrote about the connection between liturgy, justice, and common good:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Any work for the unity of the Church that overlooks the needs of the world is not in the tradition of Jesus. The eucharist is meant to mediate the unity of the Church and the unity of mankind. It builds up the Church but it also gives the Church a missionary task which includes the ethical responsibility of taking liberating actions for justice in the world. The eucharist roots us in the just life of Jesus; it also thrusts us into the future where we will be one not only with him but also with each other.(29)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The political culture of Catholics needs to rediscover this \u201cethical responsibility of taking liberating actions for justice in the world\u201d; the election of Pope Francis is a sign of this rediscovery. However, the very idea of <em>reform <\/em>in theology\u2014and especially in theology dealing with social and political issues\u2014 can be particularly elusive.(30) The connection between the liturgical reform\u00a0of Vatican II and the ideas of the council on the common good, society, and politics is relatively unexplored, just as are the differences between the pre\u2013World War II liturgical movement, the liturgical movement at Vatican II, and the social-political culture in which the liturgical reform was received in the post\u2013Vatican II period.(31)<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that the liturgical reform of Vatican II\u2014and for how it came about in the debates and in the context of the other documents of the council\u2014has a distinctive idea of the \u201ccommon good\u201d that derives from renewed ideas of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the world\u2014the church <em>in the <\/em>modern world, as <em>Gaudium et Spes <\/em>says\u2014which is an ecclesiological idea. It is an idea of the common good that is very different from the dream of restoring a communal and corporate sense of the Church as the Body of Christ. The liturgical reform is part of a Catholic Church that is no longer described by <em>Mystici<\/em> <em>Corporis<\/em>, or by <em>Lumen Gentium <\/em>alone, but also by <em>Gaudium et Spes <\/em>and by the context of Vatican II as the first council of a truly global Catholic Church. This means that there is a connection between the reception of the liturgical reform and of the \u201csocial and political culture\u201d and the idea of \u201ccommon good\u201d expressed by Vatican II in its ecclesiological documents: the spectrum of oppositions to Vatican II (both schismatic and nonschismatic) is clear evidence of that.<\/p>\n<p>However, we need to take a further step in understanding the relationship between liturgical reform, Vatican II, and the common good. It seems to me that in some cases (that of the Lefebvrites, for instance), the rejection of the \u201ccommon good\u201d is part of a larger nonreception of Vatican II, but in other cases the rejection (or the radical reshaping) of the idea of a \u201ccommon good\u201d is leading some quarters of Catholic theology to a quiet and unstated rejection of the social and political message of Vatican II <em>ad extra<\/em>.(32)<\/p>\n<p>This phenomenon presents one of the critical points for the survival of Vatican II in American Catholicism, that is, in a culture that has witnessed many challenges, among them: (1) the rise of a privatized and libertarian culture (a fruit of the triumph over communism) that is indifferent to the idea of a \u201ccommon good\u201d; (2) the growing marginalization of larger portions of the\u00a0population from the political process; (3) the parallel \u201cbig sort\u201d\u2014the clustering of like-minded Americans\u2014in American society as well as in American Catholicism (also called by a new term, homophily, \u201clove of the same\u201d);\u00a0(4) the marginalization of theological studies within American Catholic higher education as the marginalization of an intellectual discipline particularly dedicated to the study of power relations, both power within the Church and social and political power.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is very necessary to recall the origins of the liturgical movement and the fact that the early advocates of the liturgical renewal in the 1920s and 1930s were also strong advocates of the connection between liturgy and social justice.(33) But we must also be aware of the differences between the pre\u2013World War II liturgical movement and the liturgical movement at Vatican II: the criticism of <em>Sacrosanctum Concilium<\/em>\u2019s silence about social justice can also be unfair, because the liturgical constitution must be read in the context of the other documents of Vatican II and of what Vatican II was (for example, the \u201cMessage to the World\u201d of October 1962 and the \u201cCatacomb Pact\u201d for a poor church made by forty bishops on November 16, 1965, in the Santa Domitilla Catacomb).<\/p>\n<p>From a theological point of view, today it is difficult to utilize the ideas of \u201csociety\u201d in the pre\u2013Vatican II liturgical movement because they lack the whole ecclesiological context of Vatican II, which gives the idea of the liturgy and its \u201csocial culture\u201d a different flavor. We must restore the link between liturgical reform and social justice,(34) but this is viable only in the context of a theology that does not ignore Vatican II.<\/p>\n<p>If we leave aside Vatican II, one option that results is a restorationist, pre\u2013Vatican II view of the link between liturgical reform and social justice that offers a more communitarian and radical view of Catholicism, embodied, for example, by Dorothy Day and other radical social movements within the\u00a0Catholic Church.(35) This option would lead Catholicism back into what Garry Wills called recently the \u201cDetachment movement [that] was in Minnesota around World War II\u201d and that had four main strands: neo-Medievalism, ruralism, Catholic Workers, and <em>liturgy<\/em>.(36)<\/p>\n<p>Another option, however, more in line\u2014I think\u2014with the intention and the mind of the bishops and theologians of Vatican II, is a reading of the liturgical reform and its social message in the context of a \u201cpublic Catholicism\u201d that does not advocate for a flight from the established forms of presence of the church and of Catholicism in the social and political debate.(37)<\/p>\n<p>In a way, in Catholic theology today (especially in the United States) we are still facing the alternative between \u201csacramental radicals\u201d on one side, inclined to an alternate culture and a strategy of separation, and on the other side an idea of \u201cCatholic social action\u201d or the social ideas of \u201cNew Deal Catholics.\u201d(38)<\/p>\n<p>This issue is at the heart of the future of the public face of Catholicism, with enormous repercussions for the very essence of Catholicism. The recent \u201cliturgy wars\u201d(39) are part of and manifest this dilemma.<\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"s1\">Massimo Faggioli\u00a0<\/span>is associate professor of theology and director of the\u00a0Institute for Catholicism and Citizenship at the University of St. Thomas in\u00a0St. Paul (Minnesota). His publications in English include the books<\/em> True\u00a0Reform:\u00a0Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium <em>(<\/em>Liturgical Press,\u00a0<em>2012);<\/em> Sorting Out Catholicism: A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements\u00a0(Liturgical Press, <em>2014<\/em>); A Council for the Global Church: Receiving\u00a0Vatican II in History (Fortress Press, <em>2015);<\/em> Pope Francis: Tradition in Transition<em>\u00a0(<\/em>Paulist Press, <em>2015);<\/em> The Legacy of Vatican II, <em>ed. Massimo Faggioli and\u00a0Andrea Vicini (<\/em>Paulist Press, <em>2015).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">1 Pope Francis, <em>A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis; Interview by Antonio Spadaro, SJ <\/em>(New York: HarperOne, 2013), 43.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">2 For a thorough appreciation of the intertextual character of the issues at Vatican II, see John O\u2019Malley, <em>What Happened at Vatican II <\/em>(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 309\u201312.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">3 See Massimo Faggioli, <em>True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in <\/em>Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">4 For a comparison with the Council of Trent, see <em>Il concilio di Trento e il moderno<\/em>, ed. Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">5 For the idea of Vatican II as similar to a constitution, see Peter H\u00fcnermann, \u201cDer Text: Werden \u2013 Gestalt \u2013 Bedeutung. Eine Hermeneutische Reflexion,\u201d in <em>Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil<\/em>, ed. Hans Jochen Hilberath and Peter H\u00fcnermann, 5 (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2004\u20132005), 5:5\u2013101, esp. 11\u201317 and\u00a085\u201387.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">6 See O\u2019Malley, <em>What Happened at Vatican II<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">7 See here the fruit of the research by Daniele Menozzi, especially <em>Chiesa e diritti umani. Legge naturale e modernit\u00e0 politica dalla Rivoluzione francese ai nostri giorni <\/em>(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">8 Translations of documents from Vatican II are taken from the Vatican website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">9 See here Brian Tierney, <em>The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150\u20131625 <\/em>(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997); Kenneth Pennington, <em>The Prince and the Law, 1200\u20131600: Sovereignity and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition <\/em>(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">10 See Andrea Riccardi, in <em>History of Vatican II<\/em>, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, English ed.\u00a0Joseph Komonchak, vol. 2, <em>The Formation of the Council\u2019s Identity: First Period and Intersession October 1962\u2013October 1965 <\/em>(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 53\u201354.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">11 See Faggioli, <em>True Reform<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">12 See Maria Paiano, <em>Liturgia e societ\u00e0 nel Novecento. Percorsi del movimento liturgico di fronte ai processi di secolarizzazione <\/em>(Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000), 32\u2013147. See also Emilio Gentile, <em>Politics as Religion <\/em>(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2006) and <em>The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy <\/em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">13 See Michael Hollerich, \u201cCatholic Anti-Liberalism in Weimar: Political Theology and Its Critics,\u201d in <em>The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law<\/em>, ed. Leonard V.\u00a0Kaplan and Rudy Koschar (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 17\u201346.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">14 Cited in Klaus Breuning, <em>Die Vision des Reiches. Deutscher Katholizismus zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur 1919\u20131934 <\/em>(Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1969), 209. On Herwegen, see Hans Rink, \u201cIldefons Herwegen,\u201d in <em>Zeitgeschichte in Lebensbildern<\/em>, ed. Rudolf Morsey (Mainz: Matthias-Gr\u00fcnewald-Verlag, 1975), 2:64\u201374.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">15 See Jacques Mortiau and Raymond Lonbeek, <em>Dom Lambert Beauduin visionnaire et pr\u00e9curseur (1873\u20131960) <\/em>(Paris: Les \u00c9ditions du Cerf, 2005), 145\u201356; for the unabridged version of the book, see Jacques Mortiau and Raymond Lonbeek, <em>Un pionnier. Dom Lambert Beauduin. Liturgie et unit\u00e9 des chr\u00e9tiens <\/em>(Louvain-la-Neuve and Chevetogne: Editions de Chevetogne, 2001), 645\u2013712.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">16 See Jeremy Hall, <em>The Full Stature of Christ: The Ecclesiology of Virgil Michel, OSB\u00a0<\/em>(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1976), 154\u201364.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">17 Benedikt Kranemann, \u201cLiturgie in pluraler Gesellschaft,\u201d <em>Theologie und Glaube <\/em>102 (2012): 541 (translation mine).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">18 See Andrea Grillo, <em>La nascita della liturgia nel XX secolo <\/em>(Assisi: Cittadella, 2003), 123\u201352.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">19 See Robert Bellah, \u201cCivil Religion in America,\u201d <em>Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences <\/em>96 (1967): 1\u201321.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">20 See Georges Dejaifve, \u201cL\u2019ecclesiologia del concilio Vaticano II,\u201d in <em>L\u2019ecclesiologia dal Vaticano I al Vaticano II <\/em>(Brescia: La Scuola, 1973), 87\u201398.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">21 See O\u2019Malley, <em>What Happened at Vatican II<\/em>, 305\u20137.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">22 See Daniele Gianotti, <em>I Padri della chiesa al concilio. La teologia patristica nella \u201cLumen gentium\u201d <\/em>(Bologna: EDB, 2010), 399.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">23 See Giuseppe Dossetti, <em>Per una \u201cchiesa eucaristica.\u201d Rilettura della portata dottrinale della Costituzione liturgica del Vaticano II. Lezioni del 1965 <\/em>(Societ\u00e0 editrice il Mulino, 2002), 49.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">24 About this, see Massimo Faggioli, <em>John XXIII: The Medicine of Mercy <\/em>(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 110\u201312.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">25 Joseph Gelineau, \u201cCelebrating the Paschal Liberation,\u201d in <em>Politics and Liturgy, <\/em>ed.\u00a0Herman Schmidt and David Power (New York: Herder and Herder, 1974), 107\u201319, at 110.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">26 For the relationship between Vatican II and democratization in the non-Western world, see Samuel Huntington, <em>The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century <\/em>(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">27 See Jean Dani\u00e9lou, <em>L\u2019oraison comme probl\u00e9me politique <\/em>(Paris: Fayard, 1965), 23\u201330.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">28 See Massimo Faggioli, \u201cIl Vaticano II come \u2018Costituzione\u2019 e la \u2018recezione politica\u2019 del Concilio,\u201d <em>Rassegna di Teologia <\/em>50 (2009): 107\u201322.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">29 R. Kevin Seasoltz, \u201cJustice and the Eucharist,\u201d <em>Worship <\/em>58 (1984): 525.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">30 See the analogy with the different cultures of \u201cdemocratic progressivism\u201d: \u201cstrong- state liberalism on the one hand and communitarianism on the other\u201d (Mark Thomas Edwards, <em>The Right of the Protestant Left: God\u2019s Totalitarianism <\/em>[New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012], 23).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">31 About this issue in \u201cNorth American middle-class society,\u201d see Bruce Morrill, \u201cThe Promise and Challenges in the Renewal of the Eucharistic Liturgy,\u201d in <em>Anamnesis as\u00a0<\/em><em>Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue <\/em>(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 5\u201318, at 16.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">32 See Massimo Faggioli, \u201cCardinal Bernardin\u2019s \u2018Catholic Common Ground\u2019 Initiative: Can It Survive Current Political Cultures?\u201d (Fourteenth Annual Cardinal Bernardin Lecture, University of South Carolina, October 7, 2013), published as \u201cA View from Abroad: The Shrinking Common Ground in the American Church,\u201d <em>America <\/em>(February 24, 2014): 20\u201323.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">33 See Rita Ferrone, \u201cLiturgy and Social Justice: Fresh Challenges for Today in Virgil Michel\u2019s Legacy,\u201d lecture at Saint John\u2019s Abbey in Collegeville (Minnesota), April 7, 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">34 See Margaret M. Kelleher, \u201cLiturgy and Social Transformation: Exploring the Relation- ship,\u201d <em>S. Catholic Historian <\/em>16 (October 1998): 58\u201370.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">35 For the \u201csocial culture\u201d of pre\u2013Vatican II and pre\u2013World War II liturgical movement (agrarianism, antiecumenism) in the United States, see Virgil Michel, <em>The Social Ques- tion: Essays on Capitalism and Christianity<\/em>, ed. Robert L. Spaeth (Collegeville, MN: Saint John\u2019s University, 1987).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">36 See Garry Wills, \u201cRelicts of a Catholic Renaissance,\u201d <em>New York Review of Books <\/em>(October 10, 2013): 37\u201338 (review of <em>Suitable Accommodation: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life; The Letters of J. Powers, 1942\u20131943<\/em>, ed. Katherine A. Powers [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013]): the contact with Dom Virgil Michel led Detachers \u201cto a monastic ideal in married life.\u201d Wills emphasizes also the impact of Virgil Michel on Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy (1916\u20132005).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">37 See <em>Liturgy and Social Justice<\/em>, Mark Searle (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1980).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">38 See Kelleher, \u201cLiturgy and Social Transformation,\u201d 65.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">39 See Kevin Irwin, \u201cCritiquing Recent Liturgical Critics,\u201d <em>Worship <\/em>74 (2000): 2\u201319.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;From a theological point of view, today it is difficult to utilize the ideas of &#8216;society&#8217; in the pre\u2013Vatican II liturgical movement because they lack the whole ecclesiological context of Vatican II, which gives the idea of the liturgy and its &#8216;social culture&#8217; a different flavor. We must restore the link between liturgical reform and social justice, but this is viable only in the context of a theology that does not ignore Vatican II.&#8221; &#8211; Massimo Faggioli<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1081,619,32],"tags":[980,3036],"class_list":["post-32724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-reform","category-liturgical-movement","category-vatican-ii","tag-massimo-faggioli","tag-worship"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Liturgical Reform and the &#039;Political&#039; Message of Vatican II in the Age of a Privatized and Libertarian Culture - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/14\/the-liturgical-reform-and-the-political-message-of-vatican-ii-in-the-age-of-a-privatized-and-libertarian-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Liturgical Reform and the &#039;Political&#039; Message of Vatican II in the Age of a Privatized and Libertarian Culture - Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&quot;From a theological point of view, today it is difficult to utilize the ideas of &#039;society&#039; in the pre\u2013Vatican II liturgical movement because they lack the whole ecclesiological context of Vatican II, which gives the idea of the liturgy and its &#039;social culture&#039; a different flavor. 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