“Not a fully homogeneous grouping”: Forming an Office of Worship in the Archdiocese of Seattle

When the Archdiocese of Seattle considered the question of forming a new office to coordinate liturgical efforts in 1976, it consulted extensively with local laity and clergy about the project. The proliferation of liturgical reforms and the increased media attention directed at Catholics and their liturgy following the Second Vatican Council influenced that consultation process as did local preferences for geographic and institutional decentralization. The small task force charged with conducting research discerned a range of ways Seattle Catholics imagined a potential office with some envisioning an aid to local autonomy and others a source of binding norms. In their recommendation for the office’s formation, the task force proposed a model that balanced a strategy for collaboration with one for forming local Catholics into communities who could engage in that collaboration. They hoped to form parishes into homogeneous groups, minimizing liturgical conflict and maximizing common worship.