Balancing liturgical needs seen as post-conciliar challenge

Published: 2003-12-04

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Forty years after the Second Vatican Council ordered a reform of Catholic liturgy, the church faces the challenge of balancing an individual's need for a sense of devotion with the liturgy's role as the prayer of a believing community, a Claretian priest said. Father Matias Auge, a consultant to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, told a Vatican conference that "putting in harmony the needs of the individual and those of the community" would solve many of the tensions currently surrounding the liturgy. The priest spoke Dec. 4 at a daylong conference sponsored by the congregation to mark the 40th anniversary of Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the 100th anniversary of Pope Pius X's document on sacred music. The reforms of liturgy, while disconcerting to some people and taken as a license for unbridled experimentation by others, have increased Catholics' knowledge of and participation in the Mass, speakers said.

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