Do You Worship the Liturgy?
It’s a criticism I’ve heard in one form or another for years:
“You’re more concerned with the niceties of the rubrics than with saving souls.”
“You’ve made the liturgy an idol.”
“You’re a liturgical obsessive, an elitist.”
“You care more about Gregorian chant than about people.”
The implication is clear: reverence for the liturgy is suspect. To care about form, beauty, discipline, or precision is to be spiritually cold, or at the very least, out of touch with the “real” mission of the Church.
So let me respond plainly.
No, I do not worship the liturgy.
But I do refuse to treat it like a hobby, an instrument, or a backdrop.
The liturgy is not God. But it is where God meets us. And how we treat that space says something about what we believe about Him. The rubrics are not divine, but they are not arbitrary either. They are the accumulated wisdom of a Church that once understood that our bodies, words, and gestures all participate in worship. When those things are treated lightly, something deeper begins to unravel.
I care about the liturgy because I care about truth.
And the liturgy is where doctrine becomes visible, audible, tangible.
If the liturgy is malformed, eventually, the faith will be too.
The irony is that the charge of “elitism” is often leveled by people who have no problem with emotional manipulation, doctrinal vagueness, or aesthetic banality, so long as the Mass feels friendly. In that world, liturgical discipline is a threat, not because it’s cold, but because it resists improvisation.
But the truth is this: the people deserve more than emotional uplift.
They deserve form. Form that doesn’t shift depending on the personality of the celebrant or the preferences of the music team. They deserve the Mass in its depth, its integrity, its otherness.
I did not become a liturgical musician because I wanted to nitpick.
I did it because I believed the Mass was the most important thing that happens on earth.
And I still believe that.
Of course, charity matters. Of course, the poor matter. But to set charity against liturgy is to split the Body of Christ. The same Jesus who is present in the Eucharist is present in the hungry. But He is not present in the same way. The Eucharist is not a metaphor. It is God. And if we treat His presence casually in the sanctuary, we should not be surprised when we lose sight of Him in the streets.
So no, I don’t worship the liturgy.
But I refuse to offer God something careless and call it love.
I refuse to pretend that vagueness is pastoral.
I refuse to accept that reverence is elitism.
I do not need the liturgy to be trendy.
I need it to be true.
And if that makes me an elitist, so be it.
This post is part of Sacred Withdrawal: reflections on Catholic liturgy, sacred music, and the cost of fidelity in an age of forgetting.
Email: sacredwithdrawal@gmail.com