Liturgical Spontaneity as Eschatological Rhetoric

Abstract

As a result both of the influence of the Council of Trent, and of certain methodological approaches within the twentieth-century liturgical movement, the idea that Catholic liturgy might incorporate elements of spontaneous behaviour enjoyed at best a very muted acceptance before Vatican II. Moreover, despite its growth in Catholic and other Western liturgies in more recent decades, liturgical spontaneity remains an under-discussed theme in theology. However, there seems to be, profoundly rooted in the human psyche, a relationship between human spontaneity and human engagement with the future. This would suggest that there is a symbolic connection between liturgical spontaneity and eschatology, a connection which could form the basis for a theology of liturgical spontaneity.