I am sure that our readers will enjoy this interview with the liturgical scholar Fr Uwe Michael Lang of the London Oratory, which was recently published on the YouTube channel of the Totus Tuus Apostolate. It covers a wide range of subjects: Pope Benedict’s teaching on the liturgy, the liturgical abuses in the post-Conciliar period and our own time, some of the historical problems behind the creation of the reform, the use of Latin in the liturgy, etc.
In addition to his other scholarly work, Fr Lang has recently published two very useful volumes on the history of the Roman Rite. The more recent one, A Short History of the Roman Mass (Ignatius Press, 2024), a survey of the fixed parts of the Roman Rite (Canon, Offertory prayers, etc.) is an abbreviation of his 2022 volume The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He currently lectures at St Mary’s University and Allen Hall Seminary in London, and serves inter alia as an editor of the liturgical journal Antiphon. From 2008 to 2012, he was a staff member of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and from 2008 to 2013, was a consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.
