ABSTRACT
Kieran Flanagan is a Reader in Sociology at the University of Bristol. His publications and research so far have been about various aspects of the sociology of religion, particularly liturgy, ethics and identities, but also the presentation of religions in visual media. Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a tendency amongst theologians and liturgists to give modern culture a benign, undifferentiated "reading", one innocent of the sociological complications such a view poses. A stress on incarnational theology gave a blanket blessing to culture, that was not offset by an awareness of the degree to which it has ambiguous, limited qualities that beg questions of meaning. Within an inductive approach to liturgy, the implications of a virtuous dissimulation emerge. The actor confronts particular dilemmas in practice that require regulation and disguise, if the social act of worship is to be accomplished in an authentic and intended manner.
