The field of tension between liturgical restoration and reform

Abstract

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a movement that would have far-reaching consequences for the Christian ritual. In Christian churches, and especially in the Catholic Church, there was a growing awareness of the unique place of the liturgy and of the fact that it had degenerated into a mysterium depopulatum, a ritual in which the congregation hardly participated. Liturgy had become the exclusive affair of the priest, leaving no room for believers to contribute: they were only passive spectators, mere consumers of the ritual. This Liturgical Movement gradually grew into a widespread Church faction which, in the middle of the 1940s and 1950s, also had an important influence on the centre of the Church. Under Pius XII, the first tentative revisions in the liturgical books were made.