Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan told the Liturgical Conference at Kansas City last week that “it is time to create in the liturgy” before unrest withers into alienation.

The text of the archbishop’s statement follows:

“It is time to create in the liturgy. The time to recover the past must go on, the true restoration of our full liturgical heritage must continue. But parallel to it, the Church should listen to and speak to contemporary man in the accents of a new, creative open spontaneity.

“Let us together, priests, laity and bishops move up to the present, this to create. It cannot be deferred for 20 years, or 10 or 5 or 1. It must begin at once, or the unrest will wither into alienation.

“No competent liturgist wants to descaralize the ways and worlds of our worship. Neither can he isolate it from life. There are no officially sacred words or rites. The danger today is that the conscious action of the community will be absorbed or even crushed by the heavy secularity or current life.

Liturgy leaders, especially bishops, cannot spend time curbing and repressing. Although sometimes authority is necessary, our role of leading is far more vital.

“We must listen. Unless we hear the anonymous sounds of today’s unrest, the hopes, the frustrations, the anger of our society, we will not have the authentic voice of the world or the Church in our ears. We must be turned to 1967, not to 323 A.D.

“We must move, increasing our sensitivity to the urgency of new works and actions, new moods and approaches. Then, we must move through those ready and willing to share this urgency with us—young priests, religious and laity, Newman and other university personnel, high school students. Diocesan commissions must reflect not just the bishop; they must reflect the people in the pews, in the market place and the United Nations.

“Finally, we must lead, it is our task to take initiative, to open up our priests and people the rich opportunities of the present, and to push forward on every front for the flexibility so ardently called for in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

“Experimentation is a two way street. Rome to Jonesville is a route already in good use (concelebrations, new funeral rite, etc.). But we must attend to the other route—Jonesville to Rome—spontaneous and well-prepared proposals coming from priests and people through our bishops.

Could we not also extend these ‘grass roots’ experiments to a few highly qualified centers like our universities and even to local diocese or parishes where the local bishop would authorize the proposal, the controlled experiment, the testing and reporting to the Holy See?”