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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
The Twentieth Century is witnessing the rapid growth and development of two world-wide movements within the Catholic Church — the Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action. The close connexion between these two movements is not always appreciated, for both of them have been considerably misunderstood. The authentic Liturgical Movement is not just a rampage for quilismas and outsize chasubles; nor is authentic Catholic Action just a drive for Clean Films, still less a pretext for an intensified campaign of what has been called ‘ecclesiastical ballyhoo.’
On closer acquaintance it will be found that both these movements are instinct with the same idea—the renewal and increase of active participation by the laity in the life and work of the Church, the utilization to the full of the power conveyed by the Character of Baptism and, especially, of Confirmation. The chief objective of the Liturgical Movement is active lay participation in the Church’s worship; it is a revolt from the lamentable state of things which tended to make the layman little more than a passive spectator of the public worship of God. in favour of a return to the corporate congregational worship of the primitive Church. Catholic Action is formally and authoritatively defined by the Holy Father as (active) lay participation in the apostolate of the Hierarchy. It may be regarded as a revolt from the tendency to consider the layman as existing to be ministered unto but not to minister, a reaffirmation of his right and duty to take an active part in the Church’s official mission of salvation.
1 For a full discussion of the conception of the Apostolate in the New Testament, see I J . Dieckmann, S.J., De Ecclesia, Vol. I , pp.197 -285.
2 Cf. P. Dabin, L’Apostolat Iaïque, p. 19. ‘ We do not think it extravagant to see in this successful mission of the Seventy-two the glorious firstfruits of Catholic Action.’
3 Cf. Dabin, op. cit., pp. 17-53.
4 For fuller treatment see especially the brilliant and profound (but spirited and thoroughly readable) essay of Dr. Rudolf Graher : Die dogtnatischen Grundlagen der katholischen Aktion. (Haas und Grabherr, Augsburg, I Mark.) See also Dabin op cit. passim, and the article L’Action catholique et l’enseignement dogmafique by P. Glorieux, in La Vie Intellectu - elle, May, 1934.
5 The oil at least, least he consecrated by a Bishop.
6 The philosophical notion of participation which, as Aristotlc remarked, is vague and undefined in Plato, becomes a definite concept in St. Thomas and subsequent Catholic theologians. ‘To participate signifies, as it were, partem capere. Hence when anything receives according to measure what belongs to another in its entirety, it is said to participate it.’ (Comm. in De Held. 2.) ‘Apostolate’ is predicated primarily and in all its fullness of the Hierarchy, analogically of the laity. Not, howevrr, by mere attribution or extrinsic denomination, for the laity receive intrinsically according to their own proper measure what belongs in its fullness to the Apostles supra modum, the Hierarchy. P. Dabin's treatment of this important point (op. cit. p. 83) could be bettered.
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