A Guest Article by the Reverent Liturgy Project
Last fall, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco launched a new reverent liturgy project, asking priests interested in reverent liturgy to contact reverentliturgy.org. To date, more than 350 priests have joined the network.
Bishop Michael C. Barber, the Bishop of the diocese of Oakland, California, was supportive of this initiative, commenting: “When I heard about the Reverend Liturgy Project, I said, ‘This is what my pastors, my parishes need right now.’ Because as I travel around my diocese, I have 84 churches. Sometimes when I go to Mass, I say, ‘I don't want really want to come back here…we could do so much better.’ And then I realized why people aren't coming to church. But with the reverent liturgy project, once you restore reverence in a reverent architecture, a reverent sanctuary, reverent music, reverent celebration of the Mass, then it draws people.”This is especially the case with young people Bishop Barber points out:
“Please, pastors, we need to keep offering these things that bring our young people back, especially through reverent celebration of the liturgy and our classic devotional practices.”Monsignor Tom Cook of the diocese of Winona, Minnesota, further testified that “this is the heart of evangelization: reverent sacred liturgies according to what the Church asks. Just look at those parishes that are thriving. They have reverent sacred liturgy.” Father Chris Masla is a young priest in the Southwest Virginia part of the Richmond Diocese who recently joined the Reverent Liturgy project network; he offers Mass in a building that from the outside resembles nothing more than a ski lodge. Built in the 1980s, the church was falling apart by his arrival in 2023. Collection plates were deftly passed around the buckets collecting water leaking through the roof. The liturgy was in a similar state of disrepair, despite the best efforts of a predecessor. Today, the building still looks like a ski lodge on the outside, but inside, Fr. Masla’s reverent and beautiful Masses are more like the classical Catholic Masses that formed souls for generations. Uninspiring banners have been taken down and replaced with reverent and beautiful art, new vestments have come to furnish the sacristy, and an ever-evolving music program incorporating chant is now in place. Father Masla told us how reverent liturgy affected one young couple who grew up in the Baptist tradition:
“They said the first time they attended a Catholic mass, the bells when the priest elevated the Eucharist sent chills down their spine. Hearing the bells was what sent a strong message and had a profound impact on them. Something as small as that.”
Fr. Masla said wonderingly:
“If we could recover even more of the beauty of our liturgy. What impact would that have on people who are coming to the church for the first time?”More than 350 priests have now joined the Reverent Liturgy Project, a process that begins by scheduling a 45 minute interview to share the priests’ insights – some priests share how they moved to one or more reverent liturgical practices, such as celebrating ad orientem, incorporating more silence into the Mass or developing a better sacred music program. Many younger priests today, just like younger churchgoers, are drawn to reverent liturgical practices, but they tell us they lack the resources and mentorship needed to implement them properly on their own in their own parishes. The Reverent Liturgy Project exists to create links between priests who have made these changes themselves and those who wish to make the same changes, drawing on their experiences. This project supplements those hands-on experiences by providing resources, from bulletins and homilies to mentorship meetings and online fellowship, giving these priests the tools and knowledge they need to make these changes more confidently, in ways that unify rather than disrupt parishes and thus draw more people to their pews.
“Priests today, especially younger priests today are looking for something like [the Reverent Liturgy Project],” Father Masla told us. “I was very excited when I first learned about the project, and the more I learn about it, the more excited I become. It does make me feel less alone to be a part of something like this.” If you are a priest and Archbishop Cordileone’s Reverent Liturgy Project is of interest to you, you can join your fellow likeminded priests at reverentliturgy.org.
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