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Document Details :

Title: Christian Initiation in Early Christianity
Author(s): ROUWHORST, Gerard
Journal: Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy
Volume: 87    Issue: 1-2   Date: 2006   
Pages: 100-119
DOI: 10.2143/QL.87.1.2017748

Abstract :
The twentieth-century reform of Roman Catholic liturgy has been largely determined by the rediscovery of the Early Church and by the ideal of returning to important principles underlying those traditons that have been forgotten or replaced in later periods. This is true of the liturgical reform carried out during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council as well as of the Liturgical Movement which developed during the twentieth century and deeply influenced that reform. One of the major items that practically all reformers had in common, although they may have differed in other respects, was a strong interest in the liturgical traditions of early Christianity, in particular of the so-called golden, patristic era (roughly the fourth century). As a result of their fascination for that period they questioned liturgical practices that had grown over the centuries, in particular during the Western Middle Ages. Conversely their dissatisfaction with many existing liturgical practices stimulated their interest in the liturgy of the early Church still further.

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