Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America, 1926-1955, The

The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States Of America, 1926-1955. Keith F. Pecklers, S.J. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998. xvii + 333pp. $24.95 (paper).

William Ralph Inge, the "Gloomy Dean" of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, was once asked if he considered himself a liturgist. His response, "No, and neither do I collect stamps," epitomized the thoughts of many this century that liturgical renewal is little more than window dressing. Keith Pecklers's recent volume provides ample reason for us to reconsider the Dean's dismissal of liturgy and liturgical renewal as tangential to the life of the Church.

Pecklers's book focuses on a fairly narrow band of the liturgical movement, though arguably a central band. His work examines the liturgical movement in the Roman Catholic Church in the States for a scant three decades: from Virgil Michel's return to the United States in 1926 to Pius the XII's restoration of the rite of the Triduum, including the Easter Vigil, in 1955. Within this narrow focus Pecklers unveils a beautiful tapestry of theological, social, and artistic themes which interwove in these years, creating the contemporary liturgical scene in North American Catholicism today.

Pecklers's study begins with the origins of the Catholic liturgical movement in Europe. He then appropriately singles out Virgil Michel as the most vital link between the movement in Europe and its inception in the United States. Michel, a Benedictine from St. Benedict's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, can be credited with beginning the program of liturgical studies at St. John's University, starting the Liturgical Press, and founding the journal Orate Fratres, now known as Worship. Pecklers then surrounds Michel with an extensive cast of colleagues who accompany Michel on his quest for "full, conscious, and active participation" in the liturgy.

This work is successful both in painting a picture of the variety of American Catholicism in this period as well as in describing the background of American cultural issues encountered by the liturgical reformers. Pecklers is able to highlight the various fabrics comprising the liturgical movement-social justice, catechesis, and liturgical arts-without unraveling the overall tapestry. Pecklers is to be commended for rooting the liturgical movement in the recovered emphasis on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. For Michel and the other reformers social justice and liturgy are inseparable because they are both expressions of the Mystical Body of Christ, a proposal Pecklers argues must be recovered.

Pecklers's work has its limitations. It says little of simultaneous expressions of the liturgical movement in other churches, including Anglican reforms in England and the United States. It also fails to give significant attention to any of the annual Liturgical Conferences save the inaugural conference in 1940, Further, it assumes a certain familiarity with the liturgical. movement which may further limit its audience even among Catholics.

For a more general background on the Catholic liturgical movement one is best served by James White's Roman Catholic Worship: Front Trent to Today (New York, 1995). But for those interested in gleaning more of the theological impetus behind liturgical renewal and its many manifestations in the ministry of the Church, this book has no peer.

TODD E. JOHNSON

Institute of Pastoral Studies Loyola University Chicago Chicago, Illinois

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 2000
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