Self-Consciousness and the 'Liturgical Turn'

Over at the church and postmodern culture, Eric Speece asked me to elaborate on what I meant by the ‘self-consciousness’ engendered by attempts to introduce liturgy:

I'll give an example. I grew up in a thoroughly Catholic milieu. My week was built around mass, as were important milestones in the lives of family and friends (baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.).

For me, one of the great things about formal Catholic liturgy was that it functioned much like etiquette – once you’ve internalized the rules, you’re able to interact with others (whether it’s your mother-in-law or God) without thinking too hard about it. You’re able to focus on the persons at hand, without dwelling on details, e.g., correctly identifying the salad fork, or knowing when to kneel. Also, the “rules” were pretty universal, whether in Boston or Chicago or Rome. That’s a powerful experience of catholicity.

When I’ve visited churches that experiment with liturgy (Catholic and Protestant), I find myself acutely self-conscious, the way a working-class kid might feel if he were thrown into a black-tie affair. Some of these churches clearly operate according to “house-rules”, where everybody but outsiders knows what’s going on. Others, however, are so experimental that the congregation doesn’t even know what to do but watch the liturgical “performance”.