Over 60 years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, debates remain ongoing within the Catholic Church about whether changes to the liturgy after 1965 have had a net positive or net negative effect on people’s faith.
A faction of Catholics set themselves against these changes: the translation of the liturgy from Latin into the vernacular and the omission or alteration of certain prayers in the Mass. This faction felt that the new liturgy had diluted or even removed meaning from the Mass. Believing that liturgy had a catechetical function, they felt that changes – especially at such scale – could not but obscure the primary, sacrificial nature of the Mass.
