"Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground"
About this Quote
Paul VI reaches for an image that quietly disciplines both sides of the Church’s most persistent argument: change versus continuity. A “strong tree” is not a museum piece; it lives by shedding and regrowing. Yet it is not a weed, either, free to reinvent itself every season. The metaphor makes reform feel not merely permissible but biologically necessary, while also setting a hard boundary: renewal must draw sap from an inherited trunk.
The specific intent is pastoral and political at once. In the wake of Vatican II, “liturgy” had become a battleground where Latin gave way to vernacular languages, altars turned, music shifted, and the faithful argued over what counted as authenticity. Paul VI’s line tries to lower the temperature. It grants the reformers their main point - the leaves must renew - but refuses the premise that the past is disposable. Strength, he insists, is not found in novelty but in accumulated, embodied practice: the “old trunk,” the “solid roots.”
The subtext is a warning against two temptations that look like opposites but share a contempt for patience. One is antiquarian rigidity, treating the liturgy as a fossil to be preserved. The other is aesthetic or ideological improvisation, treating worship as a stage for whatever a given moment finds meaningful. By choosing a tree, not a blueprint, Paul VI frames tradition as organic authority: it grows, but it grows as itself. Renewal is real, yet accountable - an ecology rather than an experiment.
The specific intent is pastoral and political at once. In the wake of Vatican II, “liturgy” had become a battleground where Latin gave way to vernacular languages, altars turned, music shifted, and the faithful argued over what counted as authenticity. Paul VI’s line tries to lower the temperature. It grants the reformers their main point - the leaves must renew - but refuses the premise that the past is disposable. Strength, he insists, is not found in novelty but in accumulated, embodied practice: the “old trunk,” the “solid roots.”
The subtext is a warning against two temptations that look like opposites but share a contempt for patience. One is antiquarian rigidity, treating the liturgy as a fossil to be preserved. The other is aesthetic or ideological improvisation, treating worship as a stage for whatever a given moment finds meaningful. By choosing a tree, not a blueprint, Paul VI frames tradition as organic authority: it grows, but it grows as itself. Renewal is real, yet accountable - an ecology rather than an experiment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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