Jansenists, strictest of the strict, promoted liturgical reform a la Vatican 2 . . .

Before 20th-century liturgical change agents were 18th-century church people who beat them to it . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

. . . in the 18th century, according to a “non-Tridentine [Trent] model,” say scholars who researched Jansenist liturgical reform. (As cited by Brian Van Hove, S.J. in the American Benedictine Review, “Jansenism and Liturgical Reform,” in 1993.)

An American, F. Ellen Weaver, noted these changes which are familiar to us today:

. . . introduction of the vernacular, a greater role for laity in worship, active participation by all, recovery of the notion of the eucharistic meal and the community, communion under both kinds, emphasis on biblical and also patristic formation, clearer preaching and teaching, less cluttered calendars and fewer devotions which might distract from the centrality of the Eucharist.

Even the “kiss of peace” was practiced at [Jansenist center] Port-Royal, and a sort of offertory procession was found there and elsewhere among Jansenist liturgical reformers.

Their liturgy was to serve the reform which they had in mind. Prayer…

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