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The vacancy at the head of the Vatican’s congregation for worship is an opening for a liturgical overhaul in the Church, a Jesuit commentator believes.
Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, Fr Thomas Reese, SJ, stated that liturgical reform was stalled by the papacies of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
True liturgical reform aims to “revise liturgical practices to allow people to celebrate their Christian faith in ways that better fit contemporary culture”, Fr Reese said.
The former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, has been appointed Archbishop of Valencia in Spain.
The greatest challenge facing the new prefect is to develop a new way of managing liturgical change in the Church, Fr Reese said.
He proposed a “more intelligent and pastoral approach to liturgical change”.
This would involve centres for liturgical research and development, market testing, and enculturation.
“What is needed are centres for liturgical R&D where scholars and artists can collaborate with a willing community in developing new liturgical practices,” Fr Reese said.
“Seminaries and universities with liturgical scholars are obvious places for this, but some parishes might be willing to be beta sites for new practices, especially if they were allowed to give feedback.”
“Once new liturgical practices are developed and accepted by Church officials, they should be market tested in a variety of pastoral settings before being offered to the rest of the Church,” he added.
Fr Reese acknowledged the difficulty of achieving encultured liturgy in a multicultural setting.
Multiple liturgical forms to serve multiple cultures might be needed, he suggested.
“Enculturation is easier to talk about than to do, which is why we need centres for liturgical research and development,” he said.
Fr Reese also called for the development of common liturgical texts with other churches.
He said the Vatican’s worship congregation should function as a midwife to liturgical renewal and “stop playing liturgical cop”.
“This means more consultation and entrusting more liturgical changes directly to episcopal conferences, which was the original intent of Vatican II, rather than micromanaging things from Rome.”
While Pope Francis has no qualms about breaking liturgical rules for pastoral reasons, Fr Reese noted, “the bad news is there is no indication that liturgical renewal is a major priority [for him]”.
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