After reflecting on my personal experience with the new translation of the mass,\u00a0I wanted to write a little about research on liturgy within sociology.\u00a0 While changes in Catholic liturgy following Vatican II led to much discussion about the relative merits and demerits of liturgical change, I am aware of surprisingly little systematic research on this topic within sociology–at least in the US.<\/p>\n
One place to start is Nathan Mitchell’s concise, Liturgy and the Social Sciences<\/a>.\u00a0 Importantly, despite its broad “social science”\u00a0title, it focuses almost entirely on anthropologists.\u00a0 This illustrates the relative absence of sociological work in this area–and what sociological research has been done is often theoretically rooted in cultural anthropology.\u00a0 Thus, sociological studies of liturgy to date have been more focused on field research and ethnographies than survey research, which explains why liturgical research using large scale representative samples is so hard to find.<\/p>\n Mitchell’s small book highlights three meta-theoretical approaches that have linked liturgy and social science, and the first of the three, which Mitchell associated with the High Church camp, can be readily found across disciplines.\u00a0 Highlighted in the work of anthropologists such as Douglas and liturgists like Aidan Kavanaugh, Mitchell suggests that critique of liturgy in this mode is linked to critique of culture more generally (especially modern individualism and secularism)\u00a0and focuses on the way in which liturgy should shape culture, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n One relatively well-known sociologist, Peter Berger, in a piece called “the vernacularist illusion” had this to say about the liturgical changes that followed Vatican II.<\/p>\n “As a sociologist of religion I was already struck at the time of the Second Vatican Council by the fact that there was little if any empirical evidence to indicate that ordinary Catholics found the Latin mass remote or difficult to understand (especially with English missals in hand). The remoteness and the incomprehensibility were posited a priori by theologians and prelates. The same lack of evidence pertains to all the other programs of vernacularization. I’m not aware of any studies showing that ordinary people in England or in the United States had problems with the language of the old Book of Common Prayer.”<\/p>\n This is a good example of a sociologist employing insights from the first of Mitchell’s meta-narratives, and the piece is both insightful and thought provoking (and worth a full read<\/a>).\u00a0 Yet, despite his castigation of the empirically limited view that preceded Vatican II changes, Berger’s own article doesn’t explore actual data or refer to specific sociological articles that utilize empirical data.<\/p>\n Still, one insight from this piece is worth exploring further.\u00a0 Berger writes,<\/p>\n “Vernacularism, as it has come to be widely established in the churches, may well be described as a subtle and yet very damaging heresy. It is fundamentally misguided to use linguistic means to deny the transcendent remoteness altogether, to pretend that we can speak of God as we speak of politics or commerce, to try to conceal the divine otherness.”<\/p>\n Here we see a critique (made by a sociologist) suggesting a tension in liturgy between the transcendant and the immanent–between God’s otherness and God’s manifest presence.\u00a0 Interestingly,\u00a0Berger alludes here to the remoteness of Latin (which he had earlier disparaged as lacking empirical validity), but recast in positive terms.\u00a0 Its very remoteness expressed a religious sensibility and truth.\u00a0 Berger is suggesting that in making liturgy “accessible,” we may have removed a signficant symbolic means of expressing God’s transcendance.<\/p>\n In discussions of the new translation, I have heard people speak of the beauty of the new translation and heard them emphasize that God cannot\/should not be discussed in mundane terms Regardless, Berger highlights some clear potential benefits from examining liturgy and liturgical change as an actual reality with real consequences (which\u00a0can be empirically measured–however imperfectly).\u00a0 In my next post, I will discuss at least one empirical study of implementation of Post-Vatican II liturgical change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After reflecting on my personal experience with the new translation of the mass,\u00a0I wanted to write a little about research on liturgy within sociology.\u00a0 While changes in Catholic liturgy following Vatican II led to much discussion about the relative merits … Continue reading associated with\u00a0profane\u00a0activities such as politics and business<\/del>.\u00a0 At the same time, I have heard others speak of the inaccessibility of the new language and\u00a0the way in which it\u00a0can be\u00a0off-putting\u00a0to\u00a0parishioners and priests, alike, who have become accustomed to the previous language.\u00a0\u00a0 In different ways, Berger’s piece can be read as providing support for both sides–with his discussion of the importance of symbolizing transcendence, on the one hand, and his distrust of changes made by prelates and liturgists from apriori assumptions on the other.<\/p>\n