The Liturgical Movement between the First and the Second Vatican Council

Abstract

Three great movements marked the life of the Catholic Church in the first half of the 20^th century: the Biblical movement, the ecumenical movement, and the liturgical movement. The period between the First Vatican Council (1869/1870) and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was the most eventful period in the liturgical whole, now almost 2000 years, of Church history.

The liturgical movement did not include the whole Catholic Church before the last Council. The liturgical movement had their pioneers and followers, especially in Central and Western Europe, increasingly there were sympathizers in North and South America and in mission lands. The path from the liturgical movement to liturgical renewal through the Second Vatican Council is not rectilinear. There were impatient pressing forward and gently waiting, there was reform thrusts and resistances; there were detours and wrong turns. While the liturgical movement is judged today almost unanimously as a success story, but there are also voices from traditionalist circles who mourn this movement as loss history and blame her for the decline of Church life in much of the Western world. But the root from which the liturgical reform of the Council has grown was healthy and blessed.