THERE ARE TWO musical situations on which I think we can be confident that a blessing rests. One is where a priest or an organist,

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Although Lewis writes about the use of the vernacular for the Church of England, his insight is helpful for Roman Catholics, too.

As to the words of the service – liturgy in the narrower sense – the question is rather different. If you have a vernacular liturgy, you must have a changing liturgy: otherwise it will finally be vernacular only in name. The ideal of “timeless English” is sheer nonsense. No living language can be timeless. You might as well ask for a motionless river.

I think it would have been best, if it were possible, that necessary change should have occurred gradually and (to most people) imperceptibly; here a little and there a little; one obsolete word replaced in a century – like the gradual change of spelling in successive editions of Shakespeare.  from The Joyful Christian

EVERY SERVICE is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best – if you like it, it “works” best – when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it.  Continue reading