Kevin W. Irwin
Critiquing Recent Liturgical Critics, pp. 2 - 19.
Summary. Kevin Irwin observes that the liturgical reforms brought about by Vatican II were accompanied by an enthusiasm and excitement in both pastoral and academic circles. However, in Irwin's estimation, rather than experiencing the enthusiasm and excitement when celebrating liturgy pastorally or studying it academically, we often find ourselves engaged in "liturgy wars" over the very things that were set in place to make the liturgy more accessible, including vernacular texts, Masses facing the people and the proliferation of liturgical ministries.
Irwin expresses concern about the assessments of the reformed Roman liturgy which have come from virulent critics whose language neither respects nor countenances the fact of the reform and its important value in the life of the church today. He comments that some critics of the reformed liturgy do not appreciate an integral notion of what the act of liturgy is a theological and spiritual reality whose history and ritual aspects help us appreciate its richness, depth and full spiritual meaning. Rather, in Irwin's opinion, recent exaggerated criticism is matched by exaggerated exultation of the pre-Vatican II Tridentine liturgy, and an historical study of a pluriform series of rites is replaced by an ahistorical lens through which to view the liturgy.
Irwin evaluates four recently published critiques of the revised Roman liturgy, namely, Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, Adrien Nocent's A Rereading of the Renewed Liturgy, Aidan Nichols' Looking at the Liturgy, and Catherine Pickstock's After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. Irwin pays particular attention to these writers' appreciation of the study of liturgy as reflection on the liturgical actio, that is, the "event-character" of liturgy. He contends that when liturgy as actio is not fully appreciated then critics can try to remake the liturgy into inappropriate images and likenesses.
Bruce T. Morrill
Liturgical Music:
Bodies Proclaiming and Responding to the Word of God, pp. 20 - 36.
Summary. Bruce Morrill comments that the serious consideration pastoral staffs in many parishes assign to the role of music in Sunday liturgies indicates their engagement with the central but also most challenging mandate of Vatican II's constitution on the liturgy: "the restoration and promotion" of the people's "full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations." Morrill also notes that the Council placed "sacred music" in highest esteem, referring to it as a "necessary and integral part of the solemn liturgy."
These assertions of the Council provide ready analysis for why some people in American parishes resist the use of music while far more others use music as a major criterion in choosing which Sunday Mass to attend. The author believes that what is at stake in all cases is people's understanding of and degree of commitment to the reform and renewal of the liturgy.
After making a case for the importance of liturgical music, Morrill proceeds to discuss the recent contributions of scholars who have addressed the "why" of liturgical music. He contends, however, that the question of "how" remains at issue. The "how" of liturgical music about which Morrill speaks relates to how human beings breathe, sense vibrations as sounds, and produce sounds of our own. The essay addresses the psychological process of sensing and producing music, as well as the spiritual and mental role of intention in these bodily processes. In particular, Morrill discusses the research being done in the field of sound healing and music therapy and the implications of this research for pastoral music.
Patrick T. McCormick
Sacred Space:
Balancing the Sanctuary and Commons, pp. 37 - 51.
Summary. Patrick McCormick assesses the American sense of sacred space. He comments that Americans have tended to see and value space primarily as private property. Consequently, what is considered sacred about places is the capacity to dispose of them as we wish. At the same time, McCormick notes that Americans have long sensed the sacred character of place in both our reverence for home and our awe of wilderness.
The author suggests that while Americans focus on home and wilderness as sanctuaries, they tend to overlook the notion of sacred space as a "commons" connecting us with the larger human community and with the "homes" of our towns, nation, and world. McCormick proposes that the danger of our obsession with sanctuary (distorted by our perception of all space as private property) is undermining our capacity to create and sustain the sorts of spaces and places we need to be human, and ultimately holy.
McCormick then discusses three ways in which this danger manifests itself: 1) the disintegration and disappearance of public space in our cities and towns overrun by suburban sprawl; 2) the increasing segregation of our society into separate and unequal communities divided along hardening lines of class and race; and 3) the degradation and deteriorations of soulful or life giving space for all of us. McCormick concludes with a discussion about the need to recover a sense of the sacredness of the common space and suggests that our Christian tradition can help us do that by balancing the place of the sanctuary and the "commons" in our shared lives.
William Skudlarek
Forum: The Liturgical Homily, pp. 52 - 55.
With respect to the first criticism, Skudlarek agrees with Foley that FIYH says little about texts other than the Scriptures as resources for the Sunday homily; however, Skudlarek points out that the document does not advocate a narrowly conceived principle of sola scriptura. He comments that the intention of the authors of FIYH was not to confine liturgical preachers to scriptural texts, but to orient them toward a hermeneutic appropriate to the preaching of a homily.
Skudlarek finds Foley's second point difficult to understand, given the emphasis FIYH places on the assembly as the starting point for the eucharistic homily. He adds that the committee which authored the document made a deliberate decision to begin its treatment of the liturgical homily by speaking of the assembly, rather than of the preacher or of the homily itself. It did so out of the conviction that if the homily is to make connections between life as it is experienced here and now and the saving word of God, the preacher needs to speak of the human condition in such a way that people can recognize themselves and their lived experience in what is preached.
Gerard S. Sloyan
"The Wall Was of Jasper, the City Pure Gold,
Clear as Glass," pp. 55 - 59.
Summary. Gerard Sloyan speaks in praise of those contributors to the worship act who make the Church's public prayer a scene of delight: architects, church designers and artists, as well as sacristans, dusters of pews, and custodians. Christian folk, Sloyan says, delight in beauty if they are acquainted with enough of it. They are proud of their churches the good ones. The buildings make their prayer that much easier. They are not "houses of God" but houses of God's people.
Sloyan concludes that buildings are for people. The LORD wants only the best, as the Hebrew Scriptures never tire of saying, as symbols of the people's faith. When Christians are assembled for the Church's prayer, nothing is quite good enough to engage all their senses in that holy act.
Nathan Mitchell
The Amen Corner, pp. 59 - 68.
Summary. Nathan Mitchell asks, what does liturgy and ritual have to do with life? In response, Mitchell proposes that the liturgy of the church exists for the sake of the liturgy of life, not vice versa. Ritual, he says, is reading (a way to "read" the world), rehearsal (practice), and performance (repeatable deed). He adds that in the liturgy of Christians, ritual rehearses not beliefs, disciplines, or dogmas, but life itself.
Mitchell suggests that the crisis in modern American culture is a crisis of ritual a refusal to recognize that our dignity as human beings and our existence as human community arises from holy rite. According to Mitchell, what makes ritual so essential to human life is not its perfection but its repeatability. Time and again we turn to ritual in order to respond to the mandates of touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, the passion for justice.' This is the liturgy that rises from the human condition itself, and it is the liturgy for whose sake the liturgy of the church exists.
Finally, Mitchell addresses what he calls "coming to grips with modernity." He says that ours is a church bewildered by the "liturgy of the world," especially when it appears in the guise of modernity. Mitchell believes that "modern" Freudian pessimism what is "real" is the bad and that the best life can offer is common unhappiness has colored much of the church's reaction to modernity. He further opines that while the church repudiates modernity as a "culture of death," it has often succumbed to the very modernity it seeks to eschew. Mitchell illustrates his point with a discussion of the politicization of Catholic worship.
Music Reviews
Glory & Praise: Second Edition. Oregon Catholic Press, Portland, Oregon. Assembly edition ($10.50) ISBN 0-915531-65-8, Choir/Cantor edition ($19.95) ISBN 1-57992-011-X, Keyboard accompaniment books, three volumes ($69.95) ISBN 1-57992-004-7, Guitar accompaniment books, two volumes ($44.95) ISBN 1-57992-005-5, Solo instrument books ($29.95) ISBN 1-57992-012-8, 20-CD recording library ($159.95), 1998. Review by Judith M. Kubicki, pp. 69 - 72.
New Song from Old Hymns. Alice Parker as Songleader and Commentator and David Anderson as Organist. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications 1998. Cassette, $10.95. Review by Judith M. Kubicki, pp. 72 - 74.
A Hymn Tune Psalter. By Carl P. Daw, Jr. and Kevin R. Hackett. Book One: Gradual Psalms Advent through the Day of Pentecost (Spiral bound $18.95); Book Two: Gradual Psalms: The Season after Pentecost (Spiral Bound $18.95). New York: Church Publishing Incorporated 1998. Review by Judith M. Kubicki, pp. 74 - 77.
Book Reviews
Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. By Judith Maltby. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. New York: Cambridge University Press 1998. Pages, viii + 310. Cloth, $64.95. ISBN 0-52145313-5. Review by Ruth A. Meyers, pp. 77 - 78.
Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images. By David Morgan. Berkeley: University of California Press 1998. Pages, xviii + 265. Cloth, $35.00. ISBN 0-520-20978-8. Paper, $17.95. ISBN 0-520-21932-5. Review by Mark A. Torgerson, pp. 78 - 80.
Reconciling Embrace: Foundations for the Future of Sacramental Reconciliation. Edited by Robert J. Kennedy. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications 1998. Pages, x + 126. Paper, $12.00. ISBN 1-56854-114-7. Review by Daniel P. Grigassy, pp. 80 - 82.
Introduzione alla teologia liturgica. Approccio teorico alla liturgia e ai sacramenti cristiani. By Andrea Grillo. Padova: Edizioni Messaggero/Abbazia di Santa Giustina 1999. Paper, 35,000 Lire. Review by Kevin W. Irwin, pp. 82 - 84.
The Antenicene Pascha: A Rhetorical History. By Karl Gerlach. Leuven, Belgium: Uitgeverij Peeters 1998. Pages, 453. Paper, 1570 BEF. ISBN 90-429-0570-0. Review by Martin Connell, pp. 84 - 86.
Calvin's Doxology: Worship in the 1559 "Institutes" with a View to Contemporary Worship Renewal. By Pamela Ann Moeller. Princeton Theological Monograph Series 44. Allison Park, Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications 1997. Pages, viii - 186. Paper, $25.00. ISBN 1-55635-035-X. Review by Geoffrey Wainwright, pp. 86 - 87.
Text and Psyche: Experiencing Scripture Today. By Schuyler Brown. New York: Continuum 1998. Pages, 141. Cloth, $18.95. ISBN: 0-8264-1111-8. Review by Luke Timothy Johnson, pp. 87 - 89.
Christ in the Early Christian Hymns. By Daniel Liderbach. New York: Paulist Press 1998. Pages, vii + 153. Softback, $14.95. ISBN: 0-8091-3809-3. Review by Martin Connell, pp. 89 - 91.
Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year. By David Ewing Duncan. New York: Avon Books 1998. Pages, xix + 328. Paper, $13.50. ISBN: 0-380-79324-5. Review by Martin Connell, pp. 91 - 93.
A Spirituality of Everyday Faith, A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner. By Declan Marmion. Louvain: Peeters Press; Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans 1998. Pages, 372. Paper, $30.00. ISBN: 90-6831-988-4. Review by James J. Bacik, pp. 93 - 94.
Sacraments of Freedom: Ecumenical Essays on Creation, Sacrament-Justification and Freedom. By Martien E. Brinkman. Utrecht: Interuniversity Institute for Missiology and Ecumenics 1999. Pages, 216, 45. Review by Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., pp. 94 - 96.