Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, has called on the 7,000-member Liturgical Conference to come up with concrete proposals for liturgical reform in the United States.

The archbishop’s appeal came in response to a Liturgical Conference letter circulated among the nation’s bishops and criticizing them for their lack of leadership in liturgical renewal.

The Liturgical Conference statement emphasized “serious distress at the continuing absence of significantly open, creative, and vigorous leadership in matters liturgical on the part of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

Especially criticizing the discussions of the liturgy carried on at the bishops’ meeting in Washington, D.C., last November, the statement then warned of the possibility of liturgical disobedience. With obvious reference to “underground Masses” and “agapes” being celebrated around the nation, the statement’s authors predicted:

“There will continue to be an increase in the disregard in which the liturgical authority of the bishops is being met throughout the nation by sincere and dedicated people, both clergy and lay.”

Archbishop Hallinan’s reply, while confirming the Liturgical Conference’s complaint, criticized the conference for concentrating on the bishops. “By speaking of the absence of leadership and creativity in the liturgy, the Liturgical Conference has put its finger on a genuine problem. But it has merely aggravated the problem by criticizing the bishops alone.”

“The fact is,” the archbishop pointed out, “that no one of us -- bishops, priest, laity, the Liturgical Conference itself -- has done as much as we could and should have done in matters liturgical. The responsibility is a shared one.”

“Last October,” Archbishop Hallinan continued, “the Liturgical Conference called for ‘a sense of collaboration and a willingness to consult in an open dialogue of bishops and priests and the whole body of lay men and women; and a generous spirit which will show appreciation for any effort at liturgical renewal...”

“In that spirit I invite the Liturgical Conference to prepare and propose to the bishops concrete programs of liturgical reform while continuing to seek its avowed goals in the fields of liturgical catechumenate and participation.”

Archbishop Hallinan did not respond to a criticism leveled by the Liturgical Conference at the Vatican’s Consilium for the Implementation of the (Second Vatican’s Council) Construction on the Sacred Liturgy. This criticism indicated that:

“The board of directors of the Liturgical Conference can only observe, and this most urgently, that the quality -- pastoral, structural, and linguistic -- of the Consilium’s liturgical products received in this country for testing purposes is less than adequate to contemporary needs; and that these products are quantitatively too little and chronologically too late.”

The statement of the Liturgical Conference’s board of directors “collective conscience” was made at its midwinter meeting in Washington, D.C. The conference is a national organization founded in 1940 and dedicated to the work of continuing education in the liturgical field.