The Liturgy Documents : A Parish Resource, Vol.1

Rating:
Summary: Good resource for documents, not for introductions.
Review: The Liturgy Documents, edited by Elizabeth Hoffman et al, presents twelve documents pertaining to the liturgy of the Roman rite of the Catholic Church. These documents include Vatican II's Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), the U.S. Appendix to the General Instruction, the Directory for Masses with Children, and others. For those who need to look up these documents and what they say, this is a valuable resource. However, there are a few caveats that need to be made.

First, the documents vary wildly in their importance and legal status. Some are legally binding, such as GIRM, its U.S. Appendix, and the Directory for Masses with Children. Others are not legally binding themselves but provide valuable perspective, such as the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, which set guidelines for the liturgical reform of the 1960s and 1970s but which is not itself a legal text. Others have zero authority (and in the opinion of some, zero worth), especially the document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (EACW), the hammer used by liturgical dissidents to wreck church art and architecture in America. This brings us to the second caveat.

The authors of the introductions in this book have a definite agenda. They are on the "progressive" end of the spectrum and in the introductions they "spin" the documents in favor of their agenda--for example, by calling inadequate attention to the fact that EACW has no authority whatsoever. In using the work, therefore, one must think critically about the nature of the documents one is reading. The basic rule is this: If the Holy See has approved the document, it's official; if it hasn't, it's not.

A third and final caveat is that the translations of those documents not written in English were prepared by the International Commission on English in Liturgy (ICEL). As a result, they will not always be accurate and may have in them deliberate mistranslations ("special minister" for "extraordinary minister"), inclusive language, and things made up by ICEL without the Holy See's approval (something for which the Holy See subsequently called ICEL to task).

Despite these formidable caveats, The Liturgy Documents is a valuable resource that is worth having if you need to work with these documents. You just have to use it in a critical, discerning manner.