This work argues that the liturgical reforms initiated by the second Vatican Council may have seriously undermined contemporary Roman Catholic worship. Drawing on work by Durkheim, Bauman, Foucault, Turner, Duffy, Flanagan and Pickstock, David Torevell focuses on the most crucial element of Catholic worship - the experience of the sacred - and examines how it has been eroded since pre-modern times, largely due to the marginalization of ritual expression, and its consequences. This interdisciplinary study is a call for revitalization of Roman Catholic liturgy through a "reform of the reform" and the reclamation of the importance of the body in ritual expression.

Table of Contents

Ritual's form; the body, ritual and liturgy in the premodern world; modernity and disembodiment; modernity and liturgical reform; "Sacrosanctum Concilium" - a critical evaluation; forgetting how to remember.

Author Biography

Dr David Torevell is Senior Lecturer in Theology, Liverpool Hope University College.