Authentic Liturgy: Minds in Tune with Voices

by Nathaniel Marx

Overview

2021 Catholic Media Association Award honorable mention award in liturgy

Authenticity is a value difficult to define but impossible to ignore in contemporary life. The desire for authentic experience pervades art, music, food, dating, marketing, and politics. Worship is no exception: Vatican documents, megachurch websites, pastors, and liturgy planners all make competing claims to offer the genuine article. But what makes liturgy authentic? What distinguishes real celebration from artificial spectacle, heartfelt prayer from empty ritualism, a living tradition from both stagnation and gimmickry? Can today’s Christians perform the liturgy so that it is not a mere performance but a sincere offering of their whole selves?
In this book, Nathaniel Marx argues that the defining characteristic of authentic liturgy is harmony. Authentic liturgy happens when the minds of participants are in tune with their voices. The call for worshipers to harmonize their inward and outward offerings of prayer is discernible in the Bible, in the history of Christian prayer, and in diverse efforts to invigorate communal worship today. Marx’s argument unfolds the meaning of this call to authentic worship through a provocative and wide-ranging study incorporating scriptural exegesis, liturgical history, anthropology of ritual, and philosophy of action. He argues that authenticity is not a modern buzzword but an ancient virtue essential to worshiping in a spirit of communion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814684931
Publisher:	Liturgical Press
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	679 KB

About the Author

Nathaniel Marx is assistant professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. He holds a PhD in liturgical studies from the University of Notre Dame and an MA in social sciences from the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 The Quest for Authentic Liturgy 1

Chapter 2 Authentic Worship in the Bible 33

Chapter 3 Harmony and Authentic Prayer 71

Chapter 4 The Authentic Performance of Prayer 111

Chapter 5 Authenticity and Liturgical Reform 153

Chapter 6 Tuning Adjustments 189

Chapter 7 Authentic Liturgy and the Virtue of Authenticity 219

Bibliography 245

Name Index 260

Subject Index 262

Editorial Reviews

Marx revisits the complex issues of liturgical reform by applying a brilliant new hermeneutical key: authenticity. Everyone wants an authentic liturgy; everyone wants to do liturgy authentically. But what could that possibly mean? Marx tells us in this discriminating book by providing historical and theoretical background and arriving at an irenic conciliation.”
David Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame​

“There is little more delightful than discovering a book that prompts a new way of perceiving and exploring a realm of reality. Nathaniel Marx’s Authentic Liturgy is just such a book. As existentialist philosophers from Kierkegaard through Camus drew our attention to the importance of exploring the nature of existence as perceived by living, feeling, acting (and not merely thinking) human beings, so Marx calls us to move beyond evaluating liturgy in categories such as ‘valid’ and ‘licit’ to explore liturgical celebration in terms of its ‘authenticity.’ Acknowledging that the concept of authenticity has been derided as a ‘thin cover for narcissism and moral relativism,’ the author convincingly argues that ‘authentic liturgical participation requires worshippers to cultivate and enact a duplex virtue … magnanimity and humility.’ Cultivating this dynamic virtue over time and through practice is the foundation for authentic liturgical celebration. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for all those who preach and preside, sing and serve—for all who enact liturgical worship under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
Fr. Jan Michael Joncas, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota

“Nathaniel Marx is an important fresh voice in matters liturgical and theological today. The breadth of his erudition in the sources used, the way he contextualizes such a breadth of them, and the invitational style through which he makes his arguments makes Marx someone to read and savor now, as well as someone to watch and learn from, hopefully for decades to come.”
Monsignor Kevin W. Irwin, The Catholic University of America

“Nathaniel Marx’s Authentic Liturgy could be considered an extended gloss on article 11 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: ‘... in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain.’ At a time when debates about the quality of our liturgical life often degrade into instrumentalizing liturgical styles in order to score ‘traditionalist’ points or ‘progressive’ points, Marx offers us a better way. Through reflections on scripture, the history of the liturgy, the documents of the church, and his own pastoral conversations, he presents a profound exposition of what allows us to engage in worship that is truly ‘authentic.’”
Rev. Mark R. Francis, CSV, President, Catholic Theological Union

“Nathaniel Marx’s Authentic Liturgy could be considered an extended gloss on article 11 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: ‘... in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain.’ At a time when debates about the quality of our liturgical life often degrade into instrumentalizing liturgical styles in order to score ‘traditionalist’ points or ‘progressive’ points, Marx offers us a better way. Through reflections on scripture, the history of the liturgy, the documents of the church, and his own pastoral conversations, he presents a profound exposition of what allows us to engage in worship that is truly ‘authentic.’”
Rev. Mark R. Francis, CSV, President, Catholic Theological Union


"This is a book which, though firmly based in the liturgical debates of the Catholic Church, should command the attention of other ecclesial traditions reckoning with their own liturgical legacies and reforms."
Worship

"This is an especially important study for those still convinced of the secondary importance of the liturgy as a core theological discipline pertinent to the practice of individual and corporate prayer and spiritual formation."
Catholic Books Review

"In this ambitious, well-written, and well-documented work, Marx produces an exhaustive examination of what has proven to be, both in the present post-Vatican II era and throughout Christian history, a neuralgic issue as the core of the church's liturgical worship and, thus, the very life of the church: authenticity."
Theological Studies

 

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