Losing the Sacred: Ritual, Modernity and Liturgical Reform

This book argues that the liturgical reforms initiated by the second Vatican Council may have seriously undermined contemporary Roman Catholic worship. Drawing on important works 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. A devastating critique of the loss of the sacred in worship, this striking 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.