This much needed study defines and explains the very many changes in liturgy and worship that have swept Christian churches in the twentieth century. Students of liturgy and church history have hitherto had to search many different sources and tradition in order to gain an understanding of the revolution in worship that has occurred in the church throughout the world. In this work the authors highlight the interdependence of such developments in all the major churches - Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, and Pentecostal - and in places as far apart as Africa, Europe, India, and North America. The result is a fascinating and wide-ranging study of a subject that touches the lives of all Christians.

A historical and a theological analysis of the most important movement in twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology.

How has the Liturgy of the Roman rite developed and changed in history before and after the Council of Trent? What principles have determined the boundaries of legitimate liturgical reform over the centuries? What was the Liturgical Movement? Did Guéranger, Beauduin, Guardini, Parsch, Casel, Bugnini, Jungmann, Bouyer and the Movement's other leaders know and respect these principles? And what is to be said of the not insignificant liturgical reforms carried out by Saint Pius X, Popes Pius IX and Pius XII and Blessed John XXIII in the course of the twentieth century? In The Organic Development of the Liturgy, Dom Alcuin Reid examines these questions systematically, incisively and in depth, identifying both the content and context of the principle of "organic development"-a fundamental principle of liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium-making a significant contribution to the understanding of the nature of the Liturgical Movement and to the ongoing re-assessment of the reforms enacted following the Council.