I have waited 35 years for a document like Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Desiderio Desideravi to emerge from the Vatican. Since 1986, when I read Romano Guardini’s 1964 letter to the Mainz Liturgical Conference, I have considered the question of whether the contemporary Church is capable of “the liturgical act”, the key issue for liturgical renewal.

The Traditional Latin Mass folk have, I think, intuited the problem, but have been misled in their way of going about addressing it. The rest of us have fiddled around the edges, trying to find the right music, repackaging the ritual elements in new and inventive ways, but never able, as Guardini said, to “relearn a forgotten way of doing things”. As Iain McGilchrist in The Matter With Things would suggest, our left hemisphere has dominated our approach, while our right hemisphere, with its openness to the world of symbol, has atrophied. Pope Francis has now described the issue at the magisterial level. Perhaps there is at last a chance for authentic post-conciliar liturgical renewal.