From Organic Growth to Liturgico-Plasticity: Reconceptualizing the Process of Liturgical Reform

Abstract

Vatican II introduced the principle of “organic growth” to describe its preferred postconciliar liturgical reform process. Botanical interpretations have dominated scholarly readings of this analogy and restricted the emergence of richer analogies for understanding liturgical change. This article interprets “organic growth” in the liturgy via the analogy of neuroplasticity both to explore historic and prognostic considerations of liturgical changes undertaken in response to internal and external change agents and to advance a fresh perspective on the process of liturgical reform.