Bouyer and Aristotle on the effects of the liturgy on the worshipper

Candelit Mass for the Epiphany in Oxford

A great bugbear of Fr Louis Bouyer, which emerges from the article by Dr John Pepino I referred to the other day, was didacticism: the view that the liturgy ought to teach people things. This is despite the fact that he agreed with the Liturgical Movement in general that it was important for people to understand the liturgy, and participate in it. Bouyer argued, furthermore, that it was a fundamental error to think of the liturgy as a tool for evangelisation. This latter is a popular idea today, so it is well to pay attention to what he has to say.

On the question of evanglisation, his point is simply that the liturgy is directed to the Church's members, not to the unconverted. He attacked the idea that

the liturgy that used to nourish the lives of Christians no longer interests us; what we need is liturgy that is pure and simply an instrument for Christianising modern pagans. (Memoirs, p382)

Again: 'What shall we give others if we have nothing left ourselves?'

Louis Bouyer on the liturgical reform

Fr Louis Bouyer

Louis Bouyer was one of the key thinkers of the Liturgical Movement, and was invited to contribute to the preparations of Vatican II (the draft schema on Universities, whose subsequent rejection by the Council gave him some satisfaction, since he didn't like it), and was a member of the 'Consilium', the commission given the extraordinary task of creating a new liturgy for the Catholic Church, between 1962 and 1969.

A certain amount has already been made of his posthumous memoirs, which have been published in French. They'll be available in English soon, I hear. Here is a taster, translated as part of an article (in the journal Antiphon, Vol 18.3 2014) by the redoubtable Dr John Pepino, the Patrologist at the FSSP seminary in the USA, Our Lady of Guadaloupe. It is from pp197-8.

I should not like to be too harsh on this commission's labours. It numbered a certain number of genuine scholars and more than one experienced and judicious pastor. Under different circumstances they might have accomplished excellent work. Unfortunately, on the one hand a deadly error in judgment placed the official leadership of the committee in the hands of a man who, though generous and brave, was not very knowledgeable: Cardinal Lercaro. He was utterly incapable of resiting the manoeuvres of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapoltan Vincentian, Bugnini, a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be.

Even besides this, there was no hope of producing anything of greater value than what would actually come out of it, what with this claim of recasting from top to bottom and in a few months an entire liturgy it had taken twenty centuries to develop.