The Liturgical Movement in Context of Secularization: Late Modern Developments

Abstract

The article highlights secular influences in contemporary understandings of liturgical participation by exploring the relationship between visions of the early modern liturgical movement and contemporary ways of understanding participation in the Church of Sweden. The constructs opine, understand, and do are used in the comparison as are the concepts participatio plena, participatio conscia, and participatio actuosa in Sacrosanctum Concilium. An overall reflection based on the analysis is that secular ideologies and trends not only influence liturgical form but tend to erode theological language itself. Religious individualism, combined with “internal ecclesial secularization,” tends to imbue the very understanding of church and of liturgy. A new phase in the liturgical movement called the “late modern liturgical movement” is discussed. The church appears here as the “church of the individual” and the liturgy in the sense of ordo is seen as an “open” order and framework, rather than as juxtaposition and sacramental event.