The liturgy and life collection was compiled by Father William J. Leonard, SJ, to document the liturgical reform movement in the American Catholic Church from 1925 to 1975, when the Second Vatican Council's reforms were fully implemented. Inspired by his friend Philip J. McNiff, then director of the Boston Public Library, Leonard sought to collect the raw materials that would allow liturgical scholars to adequately study the full impact of the Second Vatican Council.

The liturgical movement, which sought to renew worship in the daily lives of Catholics, began in the United States in the 1920s and peaked after World War II. Laypeople were becoming more involved with the Church, and the ecumenical movement sought to reconcile the Catholic Church and other Christian churches. Although the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had seen pervasive Anti-Catholicism in the United States as a response to the influx of immigrants from Catholic countries, by the 1940s Catholics were increasingly part of the mainstream. Pope John Paul XXIII called the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) to renew the Church and engage with the modern world, bringing many of the concerns of the liturgical movement to the fore.

Leonard, a Boston College theologian and liturgical reformer, was one of the theological advisors invited to the Council. Although he had been active in the liturgical movement and fought for reform, he nonetheless wished to preserve evidence of pre-Vatican II devotional practice. In 1978, he placed a call for donations in Catholic periodicals, seeking any form of material culture that expressed private and public devotion. The scope for donations was necessarily wide, as liturgy was inextricably interwoven with nearly every aspect of life, hence the collection’s name. The collection here assembled reflects several decades of collecting and is widely considered the most comprehensive archive in the United States on the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church.

Sources

O’Neill, Robert K. “Safe Deposit.” Boston College Magazine, Summer 1992: 36-47.

Rahner, Karl, and Adolf Darlap. "Vatican Councils: Vatican II." In Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Lindsay Jones. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Accessed October 22, 2014.

Sullivan, Mark. “Author and Curator Fr. Leonard Dies.” Boston College Chronicle, February 17, 2000.