The Post-conciliar
Reform
and the Mistaken
Sense of Creativity and Adaptation
Prof. Gary Devery –
1. One of the refrains coming out of the post-conciliar reforms of the liturgy was ‘active participation.’ This has commonly suffered a mistaken interpretation and consequent implementation. Active participation is deeply rooted in the key concept of ‘communion’ – that fundamental reality deriving from our one faith and one baptism enabling us to participate in the paschal mystery. We actively participate in the liturgy from the dignity of being a priestly, prophetic and kingly people. Misunderstood active participation has often deformed this dignity into a patronising activism of keeping as many of the assembly as busy as possible, for as long as possible.
2. ‘Inculturation’ has emerged after the Council as another important element to the reform of the liturgy. God continues to dialogue with humanity in time and place. It is within the liturgy that this dialogue unfolds in a unique way and the transmission of the event of the Paschal Mystery takes place. When a mistaken understanding of inculturation enters into the equation then liturgy is reduced to being a cultural self-expression of a particular people through their architecture, art and music. Inculturation becomes an absolute value rather than the experience of a people in a particular time and place in dialogue with the living Tradition in which the liturgy transmits the Paschal Mystery.
3. The hierarchical nature of the assembly has also suffered from a mistaken interpretation. It has become obscured by primary emphasis being placed upon social values and theories as the hermeneutical keys for its interpretation. The liturgy, and particularly its essential expression of the hierarchal nature of the Church in the assembly, becomes the vehicle to advance values and theories of democratization, feminization, tolerance and equality, social justice and so forth.
4. The above three mistaken interpretations mixed together has left us at times with a strange combination whereby the liturgy is put at the service of democracy, inculturation and art. The manipulation of the liturgical signs is indicative of an inadequate mystagogia, both liturgical and sacramental.
5. Where this malady exists the road to recovery necessitates a mystagogical catechesis. Through a sound, life related catechesis the believer is initiated into the language of the liturgy whereby the content of liturgical symbols and their meanings is understood and experienced as the ‘language’ of Revelation. The believer is catechised to understand that the liturgy is art but at the service of mystery, rather than mystery at the service of art.