A Chestertonian view of Christmas. “… there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.”
Read moreAuthor: David Fagerberg
I am associate professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy. My interest in liturgical theology was shaped by work in the thought of Alexander Schmemann under Aidan Kavanagh. I've tried to understand how the Church’s lex orandi grounds the Church’s lex credendi.
On a Lapsed Symbol
DF: They won’t understand your intention.
DWF: But it’s not complicated. I just have a question. Questions are what academics do.
DF: But it’s a politicized issue, and people will think you’re advocating one thing or denying another thing.
DWF: But surely I can raise an observation.
DF: It’s your skin. Go ahead.
DWF: Well, all I said was it dawned on me one day that in the twenty years since I became a Catholic I’ve only seen the rite of purifying the vessels about half a dozen times.
Summer “What We’re Reading” Wednesday II
August 15 is my birthday. When people ask why I became Catholic I reply “Because Jesus still can’t refuse his mother anything.”
Read moreBenedict on the new liturgical movement
The prescient John Allen says a moto proprio on marriage is forthcoming, in which the Holy Father will comment also on liturgy, if briefly.
Read moreFinger and a face
Two years ago I committed one of the more heroic acts in my life. I drove in Italy. To locate my valor more precisely, I drove through Pisa to take my family to see “The Leaning Tower Of.” Until that trip, my wife and children did not know my head could rotate so nimbly, or that a Fiat Punto could downshift from fourth to first gear at that rpm, or that the laws of physics could be flexed slightly in the cause of fitting a parking space.
Read moreNotes from abroad
My wife and I are just recently back from two weeks in Poland and Ukraine. I would like to share some impressions cursorily, and one at some greater length.
Read moreUnfolding the Mystery of Christ: Exploring Liturgical Time
Here is a moment, and on the surface it doesn’t last any longer than any other moment. But the same length of time can sometimes be filled with a content that is bigger than the moment that contains it. Its inside is bigger than its outside.
Read moreSacramentalism and Brights
It’s tough to be a sacramentalist in a world of brights.
Read moreJob Description for Liturgical Musicians
My interest here is to share one passage which shakes up our notion of temple musicians.
Read moreIdlers at Liturgy
It is easy enough to find historical examples of chaotic liturgies, but that is not my main point here.
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