“Whenever and wherever the eucharistic action is changed, i.e., whenever and wherever the standard structure of the rite has been broken up or notably altered, there it will be found that some part of the primitive fulness of the meaning of the eucharist has been lost. And–in the end–it will be found that this has had equally notable results upon the Christian living of those whose Christianity has been thus impoverished. It may sound exaggerated so to link comparatively small ritual changes with great social results. But it is a demonstrable historical fact that they are linked; and whichever we may like to regard as the cause of the other, it is a fact that the ritual change can always be historically detected before the social one.”

Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, London: Dacre Press, 1945, p. xii.

This presents congregations that engage in thorough reconfigurations and prunings of the classic liturgy of the Church with a testable hypothesis. It may take the span of decades for the evidence to become clear, but it would be a novelty if this moment in history were to prove to be the exception to the pattern, rather than merely, and tragically, a further confirmation of that pattern.