Pope: Vatican II liturgical reform 'irreversible'

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church must continue to work to understand the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council and why they were made, rather than rethinking them, Pope Francis Pope told participants in Italy’s National Liturgical Week.

“After this magisterium, after this long journey, we can affirm with certainty and magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible,” Pope Francis said.

The pope’s speech to the 800 participants Aug. 24 was the longest and most systematic talk he has given as pope on the theme of the liturgy since Vatican II.

Instead of reconsidering the council’s reforms, he said, priests and liturgists should work on “rediscovering the decisions made” in reforming the liturgy, “internalizing its inspirational principles and observing the discipline that governs it.”

The week was sponsored by the Liturgical Action Center, which organizes liturgical training as well as national, regional and diocesan conventions to “disseminate and promote liturgical pastoral guidelines proposed by the Italian bishops’ conference,” according to its website.

After congratulating the organization on its 70th anniversary, Pope Francis said the Church has lived through “substantial and not superficial” events throughout its history, including with the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent liturgical reform.

Citing the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” the pope said the reform responded to “real needs and the concrete hope for a renewal,” which would offer a living liturgy where the faithful were no longer “strangers or silent spectators.”

For this reason, he added, the Church must continue to rediscover the reasons for the reform and “overcome unfounded and superficial readings, partial revelations, and practices that disfigure it.”

The liturgy, he continued, unites church members through prayer, and it “gathers in prayer all those who seek to listen to the Gospel without discarding anyone; it summons the great and small, rich and poor, children and elderly people, healthy and sick, just ones and sinners.”