The Liturgy Wars You Will Always Have with You

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 15, 2025

Advent afficionados likely have heard Creator of the Stars of Night on recording or at a concert, or perhaps read it in a prayer book. Translated into English by the Anglican clergyman J.M. Neale in 1852, the original hymn entitled Conditor Alme Siderum, composed in the seventh century, had dominated Advent hymnody for nearly a millennium—until a small committee in Rome consisting of four Jesuits and four other priests, at the behest of Pope Urban VIII, decided revision was needed.

Conditor’s shortcoming, in the mind of this committee still in the throes of the late Renaissance, was that its Latin lacked the purity of antiquity. For these cognoscenti, using vocabulary unknown to Virgil and Cicero was a venial sin; employing the most gauche of all poetic techniques—rhyming—was grave matter. No longer able to tolerate such infidelity, the committee, with the direct involvement of Pope Urban, took up its hammer. It destroyed all but the original hymn’s second line to express a similar Advent theme but with “authentic vocabulary” and a true classical meter.

Never mind that the newer yet retro version, now retitled Creator Alme Siderum and included in Urban’s reformed breviary of 1632, used pagan words to render the uniquely Christian idea of original sin with “the common abomination of the world” (commune mundi nefas). What matters is not the theology as much as the ancient vocabulary with vowels alternating according to proper quantities. Catholic opponents of the new hymn clearly perceived what was most important to these laudatores temporis acti: “Accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas. / Latinity approached, piety retreated.”

In fact, borrowing a term from today’s discourse, Urban’s new hymn was not received by the faithful. Changes to a well known and popular hymn, not surprisingly, frustrate singers. Monasteries that had their own breviaries refused to replace the older Conditor. The Creator was inserted into the Roman Breviary, where it remained for centuries to the chagrin of many. Father Adrian Fortescue, the historian of the liturgy, passed on English understatement in registering his critique: “No one who knows anything about the subject now doubts that that revision of Urban VIII was a ghastly mistake, for which there is not one single word of any kind to be said.”

History does not repeat, but as Archduke Eduard Habsburg has noted—though not with apologies to lovers of classical poetry—it rhymes.

Sure enough, in the century-long crescendo to the liturgical reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council, liturgists became enamored with ancient forms of the Mass and desired a return to them. After the council, a committee commissioned by the pope—this time, without his direct involvement—scrapped the Roman Rite codified over a millennium earlier in favor of a new order of the Mass that was allegedly closer to the original. Once again, some Catholics did not receive the new version with joy, though, unlike in the seventeenth century, Rome was keen to see nearly every church and monastery adopt the new order.

What accounts for this historical rhyme? Its beat could be extended with similar disputes over reform efforts to the Mass, the breviary, and hymnody over the centuries, and even to the new English translation of the Mass that debuted in 2011. It seems that when handling liturgical ritual, which is supposed to be fixed by nature, men cannot resist tinkering. Of course the vernacular Novus Ordo is the proof in the pudding. To name but one example, how many priests have concocted their own insertions into the fixed text—think of how many “introductions” to the Mass’s opening “In the name of the Father” you have heard over the years—because, in their humble estimation, the printed words just aren’t good enough.

Receiving ritual requires humility, yet the pride baked into each of us by the Fall can pop up in the most unlikely moments—even when considering liturgical ritual. Instead of offering God our best, which is the received form of worship initiated by Him and promulgated by the Church, we find ways subtle and grotesque to project our own egos into the action. And where there are egos, there is argumentation, fighting, and even bitterness.

Though to a lesser extent, we can even see streaks of pride breaking into disputes over variations in the Traditional Latin Mass: Should the priest remove his maniple for the homily or keep it on? Should the second Confiteor be said, and if so, should it be sung in a high Mass? Partisans of each appeal to some past practice or other to justify their approach, yet, in the end, its really one present-day preference fighting another under the guise of tradition.

Today’s burning disputes over the status of the Traditional Latin Mass within the Church are neither unique nor novel. They are the latest installment of the Liturgy Wars, which, due to our stubborn pride, will always be with us. This fact does not render past, current, or future controversies unimportant. But it does put them into context.

No liturgical dispute is zero sum. Each one wraps expressions of eternal truths into the particular sensibilities of an age, place, or group. Changes to the latter are inevitable, and not necessarily for the worse. For one, I will happily take today’s opportunity for regular, private confession of sins over the ancient Church’s yearly public practice of ritual penance in Lent.

Proper discernment is critical. The Church’s approbation is what counts in the end, but the experiences of Urban and Vatican II’s reforms teach that the reasonable expectations and piety of the faithful must also be thoughtfully considered. When they express a strong preference for an authentic and long-standing form of liturgical prayer, we would do well to recall the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.”