Morning and evening prayer Book

Fr. Nichols traces the origins of the Liturgical Movement to moderate elements of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis in the direction of the “anthropocentric, moralistic, voluntaristic, didactic, subjectivist”. I found the style of writing to be annoying at first, and I almost put the book down, but I warmed up to it about half way through the book. Nichol’s analysis was too interesting to let that get in the way.

This book was intended to be a contribution to the liturgical debate of our time and I value the insights Nichols brings together from sociology, anthropology, and other fields. As he says at the beginning of the book, “Liturgy is too important to be left to liturgists.”

I was fascinated to learn how it was actually the liturgists who wanted to reform the liturgy behind closed doors before anyone could intervene to stop it. “The extraordinary thing about these meetings was that with few exceptions they were held behind closed doors, by invitation only [...] Part of the reason for this coyness was, no doubt, fear of adverse reaction by Rome.”

And “One must, I think, conclude that the principal reason for the adoption of an in camera method was that liturgists considered their subject too technical to be safely entrusted, even in part, to the judgment of nonliturgists.”

This is a pretty dense book with a lot to think about. It ends with some proposals of what could be done next. You might agree or disagree, and perhaps Fr. Nichols would have more to say in light of Summorum Pontificum and later developments.