Signs of the Times

I woke up yesterday to the news posted on social media by a friend that the liturgical journal Worship, which is published by St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, through their outfit The Liturgical Press, will cease publication after four more issues, ending in October 2026. Both the journal and the press were founded in 1926, so the final, centenary issues will “commemorate and address anew the main trends and impact of the liturgical movement, the post-Vatican II era, and (offer) a ‘whither the liturgical movement 100 years later.’ ” (We have some ideas about that too...)

Screenshot taken today

When it was founded, the journal was called Orate, Fratres, and the majority of the issues published under that name can be found on archive.org (as noted by the ever-diligent Matthew Hazell.) But in 1951 the name was changed to Worship, i.e. from Latin to the vernacular, “as an indication of its stalwart support for the growing interest in the use of the vernacular in liturgical celebrations that would enable participation by the whole body of believers.” (Quoted from the website.) Of course, you already knew that the professional liturgist’s contempt for the faithful, which regards them as too stupid to participate in worship in a sacred language, is not a post-Conciliar phenomenon.

Another part of the journal’s website states, “It would not be an exaggeration to view the liturgical renewal of the Second Vatican Council as a vindication of Worship.” And this sums up the tenor of the journal as a whole, which insists on treating the calamitous failure of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform as an amazingly successful renewal. (In this, of course, it is hardly alone.) St John’s Abbey will not close its doors anytime soon, as it still has over 100 monks, but it is perhaps worth noting, at least in passing, that before the great renewal of the liturgy began, it had over 4 times as many. (The diocese within which it is located, St Cloud, is fairly typical for an American diocese in having about half as many priests as it did in 1966, half as many male religious, and less than one-fifth as many women religious.)

Nothing specific is said about why exactly the journal is ending publication, but its website says that it is done with “a sense of both fulfillment and regret”, language more than a little reminiscent of that used by dying religious congregations when they announce that they are no longer accepting new members, and are making plans to quietly disappear into homes for the elderly. But driven by morbid curiosity, I discovered one of the reasons.

Here is the abstract of an article published in Worship in 2023 by one Isaac S. Villegas, a Mennonite minister and PhD student in religion at Duke Univ., titled “Son of Man … Vindicated by Her (sic) Deeds”. (I use the stars to keep search engines from finding these polluted words on this site.) 

Feminist sensibilities have led to the production of worship resources with g*nd*r*d language that includes masculine and feminine imagery for God. This essay extends this trajectory of inclusion by arguing for the use of multiple g*nd*r*d pronouns for Jesus Christ in our liturgical life in order to break free from the h*t*ronormativ* confines of the male-female binary. My argument follows the lead of the g*nd*rqu**r use of pronouns for Jesus in Matthew 11:19. I turn to the guidance of transg*nd*r insights to reorient our language—a reorientation which involves the empowerment of trans-p*opl* in worship leadership.

Those whom the devil would destroy, he first afflicts with madness. Behold, now the time for destruction is at hand.