Liturgical Movement

Liturgical Movement. A movement aimed at restoring the active participation of the laity in the official worship of the Church. In the RC Church the revival may be traced to P. L. R. Guéranger, but its main impetus came from Pius X's direction relating to Church music (1903) and his promotion of frequent Communion. It was fostered by certain Benedictine abbeys. At about the time of the Second World War in France and slightly later in Germany the momentum of the movement spread beyond the monastic centres into the parishes. The attempt to restore the scrupulous observance of the liturgy in the form in which it had developed was joined by pressure for the reform of the rite itself, in order to bring it more into line with earlier liturgical practice and with contemporary pastoral needs. Pius XII began a reform of the liturgical rites with the revision of the Holy Week liturgy in 1951 and 1955. The Second Vatican Council encouraged the participation of the laity, and legislated for the use of the vernacular and the reform of the rites (a new Ordo Missae, lectionary, and calendar appeared in 1969 and a definitive new Missal in 1970; for the new rites of Baptism, Confirmation, etc., see s.vv.). More recently consideration has been given to the possibility of adapting liturgies for use in different parts of the world where different cultures prevail.

In the C of E the Ritualist Movement, inaugurated by the Tractarians to give a central place to sacramental worship, developed in the early 20th cent. Subsequently there have been changes in the pattern of Sunday worship, with a tendency to replace the various morning services with one ‘Parish Communion’; ceremonial designed to stress the corporate aspects of the liturgy has been widely taken over from the RC Church. In other Churches there has been a similar reaction against individualism.