Against Arbitrary Liturgy

Now, while this was done for what may be considered defensible reasons, it did establish a sort of precedent. By the time World War II ended, there was a sort of malaise detectible in the Catholic Church. Obviously, the experience of two World Wars and the occupation of half of Europe by the Soviets were all rather unpleasant. But there was a feeling, partly fueled by those experiences, that there was something deeply wrong in the Church—a lack of enthusiasm, a feeling of irrelevance of the Church on the part of many—especially in the light of totalitarian horrors on one side and technological advances on the other. Where, between the possibility of a man-made apocalypse on the one hand and seemingly miraculous advances in medicine and psychiatry on the other, was there room for the Church and her God?