The Organic Development of the Liturgy, by Alcuin Reid

I just completed this book and thought it was a well-thought-out historical assessment of the issues concerning liturgical development in the Latin Mass. Alcuin Reid begins his historical assessment with the Middle Ages and progresses through the Liturgical Movement to the moments leading up to the liturgical revolution of Vatican II. He finishes his book there not wanting to make too controversial an assessment on the subject of the issues regarding the fall-out of the still controversial Council. As a Byzantine Catholic, I was intrigued by what he writes about and also a little baffled about how the Latin Mass develops compared to how the Byzantine liturgy develops. Reid also discusses what constitutes a legitimate development and legitimate change in liturgical practice in contrast to what constitutes an invalid change in liturgical development. That the liturgy has changed over the years can be seen throughout the history of the Divine liturgy, both in the East and in the West. I approach this book as a Greek Catholic.

There was call for reforms of the liturgy during the Protestant Reformation and that was when Cardinal Quignonez suggested certain changes in the liturgy. A significant portion of the first part of the book deals with Quignonez's efforts to change the liturgy with a discussion as to their legitimacy. The key in Reid's assessments is to investigate whether a change can be deemed organic or artificial. For instance, a practice could develop among the people which is deemed beneficial to the Divine liturgy and that would constitute a valid liturgical development that is organic, not imposed, contributes to the growth of the liturgy. It could also arise from a pastoral necessity. Quignonez's liturgical changes did not succeed in this. They were artificial, provided no benefit overall to the development of the liturgy or enhancement to the Mass, and were detrimental to the growth of the liturgy.

Throughout this work, Reid emphasizes the character of the liturgy as one like unto that of a garden. A garden, as it grows, will need pruning, and it will need direction in its growth. It will need water and sunlight, and the plants that are beneficial to the growth of the garden. The growth is tended by humans, this is the pastoral care that is involved. Pastoral necessities is another key point in determining the legitimacy of the organic nature of the liturgical development. If something is deemed to be pastorally detrimental to the Church, then the pastoral care needs to be taken to weed the garden and make certain the practice does not change. This prevents the arising of liturgical abuses to spread throughout the liturgical garden.

One of the things condemned by Alcuin Reid in the liturgical development is the desire for liturgical antiquarianism. It is the idea of trying to seek out what the most ancient usage of the liturgy was and insisting that the most ancient practice of the liturgy is the best. This is problematic because as the liturgy develops overtime, certain abuses cannot be allowed to stand. Further, certain liturgical practices that have been abolished were usually deemed harmful to the faith and substance of the liturgy. One practice I've read about is the usage of the deacons' hands to form an altar for the priest. Nobody would insist that it would be beneficial to go back to such a practice. Or the house churches that the early Christians gathered in is another issue that comes to mind. No one would insist that we ought to continue the practice of gathering in our own homes as opposed to a church that can gather more of us together on a given Sunday. Such desire for liturgical antiquarianism often times leads to the clinging onto of harmful traditions, though it may seem sound at first. Ironically, it is also very Protestant as it was the Protestant doctrine to dig through and try to find the most ancient form and practice of the faith, wasn't it?

Alcuin Reid seems to be a strong Traditionalist, favoring the Traditional Latin Mass. He speaks negatively of the vernacularisation of the liturgy. One thing that I have always found convincing in the arguments of the Latins for the Traditional Latin Mass is the argument against the vernacularisation of the liturgy. Many Easterners assume that the vernacular liturgy is an inherent part of Eastern spirituality, but the language of Church Slavonic became bound to us through a natural process to unite the Slavic peoples together. The vernacular ends up dividing us. It is no wonder when the Orthodox abandoned the usage of Church Slavonic in the Divine liturgy that they started to divide themselves along the lines of ethnophyletism. I have never been convinced of the insistence upon the vernacular among the East. That said, there is one major issue I point out.

Despite all of this, I find that Alcuin Reid's assessment of the organic development of the liturgy is wanting in one key area. There seems to be so much allowance of pruning in the Traditional Latin Mass that there is a danger for Traditionalists to fall into a trap of favoring the ideas of the bare minimum over and above all else. It is one divergence between East and West. In the Byzantine rite, when we find a hymn we like, we typically tend to throw it into our liturgy and build upon it. The Byzantine liturgy is an organic growth that flourishes on its own without a gardener. Whereas the Traditional Latin Mass prunes out what it determines bad growth or excess growth and contains the plant artificially. Both are capable of being beautiful in their own rights. For instance, a sycamore tree isn't going to gain much from the excess pruning. There comes a time when the tree simply must be left to be and contribute to the domain of the forest. It is an entirely natural growth. But if you are tending a garden, you need to prune back the plants so they don't cover so much area as to present themselves ugly and unattractive. Catholics should be grateful that both liturgies are accepted in our Holy Tradition.