This is the first of four posts on the approaches to the liturgy that liturgical studies uses and on how they are integrated into one discipline. I see there being three main divisions to the field of liturgical studies, each of which can be approached according to multiple methods of its own. Each impinges on other fields of study and there is also a considerable amount of overlap between these divisions.
Read moreCategory: Teaching Liturgy
Disagreeing and questioning…in union with the Pope and bishops
Bishop Kicanas: “Clearly there needs to be room in an academic community for disagreement, debate and a clash of ideas even in theology. Such debate and engagement can clarify and advance our understanding.”
Read moreA second look at the Directory for Masses with Children
Let us not forget that children are natural mystics. Developmentally, children experience a profound sense of identity in and through ritual.
Read moreSummer “What We’re Reading” Wednesday
The largest pile of books has to do with my current (almost completed) research project. Tentatively entitled Lifting a Veil on Liturgy’s Past: Gender, History, and the Making of Liturgical Tradition, the book is an inquiry into the writing of liturgical history: what we think we know, what we can know, and what, at this point in time, we ought to know…
Read moreWhat Liturgists Read in Summer
As we work to determine appropriate implementation strategies for the new translation of the Roman Missal, I am studying The Change Handbook.
Read moreOrganic Development
What’s all this “organic development” stuff that people are talking about in the comments to Fr. Anthony’s post “What Can the Middle Ages Do For Me?”
Read moreProblematisch, n’est ce pas? An appeal to editors and publishers
My students have had to read the following: Baptism is to be in ‘ύδωρ ζων. Several documents “are classified with the vague Sammelbegriff ‘Gallican missals’.” The Bobbio Missal has a rite “ad christianum faciendum.” A canon from a council “…signifie donc que l’intervention personelle de ’évêque est limité…”
Read moreHow, Pray Tell, Did We Name Our Blog?
Lex orandi lex credendi, the slogan goes. The law of prayer is the law of faith. The way we pray determines what we believe. Liturgy comes before doctrine. Here in Collegeville we’ve long supported the vernacular. Already in 1951 we renamed Orate Fratres, our liturgical journal, Worship. And now we’d like to think…
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