Q. What has changed since the late 60s and early 70s, when the liturgy was reformed?

A. Quite a lot. As a culture we have largely grown out of the shallow optimism of that period. Many of us are more realistic, more aware of danger, of fragility. We've had time to repent of the disastrous mistakes of that period: the wreckage of the family, the ugliness of the architecture. We are more capable now, I think, of seeing why it was a mistake to strip down the liturgy in the name of "noble simplicity". If you peel the bark off a tree, you don't renew its youth as a sapling; it just dies.

In the last few decades, there has also been a vast explosion of interest in prayer, in contemplation, in the interior life.People are looking for rituals that will support them in their inner quest.Unfortunately, much of that energy gets channelled into the New Age movement. Clearly, the feeling is widespread that our whole culture has become too externalized, too focused on activity. The liturgy should not have been allowed to go the same way. 

The rediscovery of beauty is part of that. In the Mass, we are asked to "lift up our hearts".Beauty helps one to do that. We find it hard when the church, the music, the vestments, the words of the Mass are ugly and flat. Of course, we also find it hard when the celebrant is cold, self-righteous or aggressive! But it is certainly harder to pray in an airport or underground car park - or a church that looks like one - than in a place designed for prayer.

Some people criticized the Oxford Declaration  for its emphasis on beauty, as though that was elitist. Aesthetics isn't elitist. Everyone needs beauty: it is food and drink to the soul - "psychic nutrition". 

We find nourishment for the soul in nature; in trees and mountains and rivers. But we should also be able to find it in art, in clothes, in music, and especially in churches and in the liturgy. A particular aspect of this kind of nourishing beauty is what could be called its symbolic quality. In the liturgy, there is great simplicity but also a profusion of detail, of ornament, of repetition and variation. Each detail is a symbol, a reminder of some aspect of God's grace. It leads you through earthly beauty to a sense of divine glory. 

So in a liturgy that respects the principle of beauty and that of symbolism, the mind and the heart are given something to work on. The eye can gaze into the liturgy every day and not get bored. That means you can't simply construct a liturgy; it has to be allowed to grow organically out of the Incarnation, out of history, out of tradition. Of course it can be trimmed, weeded, trained. But liturgical reformers ought to be gardeners, not engineers.

Without the "tension" created by the liturgical arts, the sacred collapses into the everyday, and the energy to change the world is lost. There is an alternative source of energy: it is the saints. But saints are rare, and in any case the liturgy is where the saints come from. It is the culture that forms them, the atmosphere they breathe, the rhythm they live by. You could say that each saint is a kind of walking liturgy.

I would go even further on this line. I would say that in a sense the whole secular sphere has constantly to be smashed against the rock of the saints and remade, smashed and remade. Nothing that is not compatible with love must, in the end, be allowed to stand. Certainly God will not allow it to stand for ever. In the liturgical action we express our love of God, and out of this attitude flows naturally a respect for man and for the integrity of God's creation.

Fr Dominic Jacob, the chaplain to our conference, made this point about the care they devote to liturgy in his community, the Oratory. He said that the way we worship should be a sign of the way we relate to one another; that is, with reverence and attention. These attitudes can only spring out of a living prayer life. 

If we learn to behave with dignity in the Mass, and to listen to God's voice in Scripture, we will be better able to bear ourselves with dignity in the world, and respect the dignity of others. Destroy the liturgy, on the other hand, and you destroy man. The more you put into the liturgy, the more you build the foundations of a true culture of life.

Q. "Culture of life" is a phrase of Pope John Paul II. Do you see the work of the Forum as in some way following his lead?

A. The Pope has made evangelization a major theme of his pontificate - and by this he does not merely mean preaching, he means the conversion and transformation of our whole society. Now, liturgy is at the very heart of the Church, and it is always the heart of a person that reaches out to touch others, to communicate faith, hope and love. 

The liturgy in this sense is where the Church is most intimately herself, in her marriage with Christ. If that intimate love is allowed to shine out, then others will sense it, and be drawn to it like thirsty travellers to an oasis. Where reform is still needed is in helping that light to shine out.

Words do not express and communicate truth simply by being informative and accurate. Information may be enough for a computer, but what we human beings need is something that will stir our imagination and attract our will, giving us a reason to be interested. Words that are perfectly true may still fail to do justice to the truth if they are dry, dull, insipid. They only "do the truth justice" if they are poetic, lyrical, inspiring - when they flow like living waters and irrigate the soul. 

From it flows everything else that is is worth doing. This is true artistically, because the art that is done purely for the service of God, though it is not necessarily appropriate for the street or shopping mall, is indirectly an inspiration for secular art - a kind of ultimate measure or reference point that frees art to be itself. It is true, also, in the spirituality of a civilization. If the prayer of the Church is able to communicate, educate, inspire and radiate, then it will penetrate the walls of our sacred spaces and begin to heal the world outside.

[From an interview with Stratford Caldecott for Inside the Vatican magazine.]