Popular Piety In The Golden Age Of Liturgy

639 Words2 Pages

Popular Piety has seen a transformation in the way that is appreciated now by the Church. Moreover, Liturgy has also been transformed due to the many influences and dramatic context that occurred between the European society and the Church, such as the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, the French Revolution and more. After the Reformation and the Council of Trent, the interest was placed on the purification of worship and devotional life from superstition and error, which resulted with the new arrangement of the Christian life around parishes supervised more carefully by clerics.
The Church in her wisdom, wished to restore the liturgy as the chief source of spiritual life and impetus for social transformation, many of the movements, such as the liturgical movement saw with abhorrence the individualism and lack of social consciousness observed in Popular Piety. Therefore, they desired a complete subordination of popular piety to the official worship of the Church. Traditionally, Catholics have engaged to distinguish liturgy from popular piety. The liturgical movement contributed to that debate:
“In the present-day liturgical movement, primitive Christianity is often held up before our eyes as a model, an exemplar of liturgical observance. We are to believe the Christians of old, contrary to the tendency of modern individualism, …show more content…

The study has shown how since the apostolic age popular expressions of faith contributed to deepen the faith of early Christians. Furthermore, despite a certain idealization of such golden age of liturgy, one can assume that common people approached the liturgy of the Church in pious ways that are not reflected in the official documents of history. For instance, one can recall the informal martyria celebrated outside the city walls to partake of the breaking of the bread by early Christians on the tombs of the

Open Document