A Mighty Fortress

It wasn’t long, however, before I heard of “the spirit of Vatican II” and, to my chagrin, the Liturgy Wars. I started to hear similar arguments for unprecedented changes to the liturgy. Apart from the “thus saith Rome” appendage, the arguments sounded strangely familiar: this is what people want; this is the new, inevitable thing. We need to get with the times. Just wait for the old fogeys to die off, and then we can have our glorious, hip services. And I wondered how far I had really come. ...As I got to know a new world of liturgy, and of liturgical life, I began to wonder at the peculiarity of timing. My Baptist church might have gone through a musty stage, but instead of revivifying it by singing better hymns, drawing on the rich tradition of English hymnody and American spirituals—instead of a Protestant ressourcement, even what we had was steadily stripped away, until there was scarcely anything left but what the Sixties bequeathed us: soft rock and skinny jeans.