AT Saint Bridget’s we aim to be a community united in faith and love. However, as elsewhere, we have a struggle to hold our young people and increase the number of young families.
This is, in part, demographic. Young families cannot afford to buy or even rent in the Eastern suburbs. However, it is also cultural and liturgical. Australia’s increasing ethnic diversity means that more traditional cultures are more likely to attend church.
The renewal of the liturgy at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was widely welcomed in this country. It has certainly improved our capacity to read and pray the Scriptures during the Liturgy of the Word.
The homily has motivated most priests to sharpen their communication skills and familiarise themselves more deeply, through prayer and meditation, with the scriptural texts.
The Liturgy of the Eucharist is now a dialogue between priest and people with the aim for a “full active and conscious participation” of the people.
However, these changes, and the valuable contribution that they have made to the celebration of the Eucharist have, in some instances, lost the aesthetic dimension of Mass.
This is sometimes identified as ‘mystery’ but I prefer ‘aesthetic’ because this involves the feelings and the celebration of Mass is as much about feeling as thinking. In fact, religious feelings, which can rightly be called piety, are perhaps a big casualty of the liturgical renewal. At least in part, recovering this sense of beauty and religious sentiment is a yet to be realized part of the liturgical renewal of Vatican II.