Thornton's 'Return to Tradition': Ressourcement as Mainly Liturgical in Concern

In the margin of this blog, David has put the anthology, Return to Tradition, which J. Nickelsen has addressed in a comment box below. I own a copy of this reprint. I bought it because I was curious to see the awareness of Ressourcement theology in the English speaking world in 1948 (the editorial statement for Eerdman's Ressourcement Series highlights the first half of the twentieth century). I was very disappointed with it at first, but I am glad that I have a copy (paid $35).

One reason that I like it is that it does offer in one volume introductory excerpts from Peguy, G.M. Hopkins, Cdl. Newman, Bernanos, Mauriac, Maritain, Gilson, Therese of Lisieux, Leon Bloy, Francis Thompson, Christopher Dawson, etc, and a host of lesser lights that I find interesting mainly because other, more prominent authors refer to them.

The collection is arranged according to the following sections: the English Revival, the French Influence, the Irish Revival, the American Revival, and the Liturgical Revival. These sections do offer a kind of schoolboy introduction to the breadth of modern Catholic literature.

What is most striking about this book is the lack of awareness of the theological renewal, which instead has been reduced entirely to a "liturgical renewal," taking up about 46 pages. The authors listed here are: Karl Adam, Ildefons Herwegen, Pius Parsch, Romano Guardini, William Busch, Virgil Michel (much cited by Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker Movement’s recovery of the tradition of Benedictine hospitality), Garard Ellard, and Paul Bussard. Adam and Guardini, in particular, go well beyond the liturgical in their concerns, but in this anthology they are considered mainly with an eye to the liturgy.

In the dissertation, Jubilee MAGAZINE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A VATICAN II ECCLESIOLOGY, Rivera also examines the influence of Ressourcement theologians on Catholicism in the United States exclusively under the heading of “liturgical renewal.”

I believe that this limited awareness of ressourcement theology shaped the perception and reception of Vatican II in the English-speaking world.