Now Happening: North American Academy of Liturgy

The North American Academy of Liturgy is meeting these days in Houston, Texas.

The Catholic Academy of Liturgy met, as always, the day before the opening of the NAAL meeting, Thursday. The morning presentation was by Bruce Morrill, SJ, on “Liturgy and Healing: Service from and to Christian Poverty of Spirit:

The Year 2015 was charged with poignant recognition of the great challenges and deep divisions persisting across societies and the church. We Roman Catholics need only recall such events as the promulgation of the encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s visit to Cuba and the United States, and the Synod on the Family to recognize the range of marginalization and division people are experiencing. These “signs of the time” warrant renewed consideration of certain theological, ritual, and pastoral aspects of liturgical ministry as sacramental and prophetic service to the people of God.

Here is this year’s schedule of the NAAL meeting.

NAAL began in 1973 with a meeting organized by two Jesuits, Frs. Walter Burghardt and John Gallen. It was officially founded in 1975 at Notre Dame, and the first meeting was at Loyola in Louisiana. Its ecumenical membership numbers somewhere around 500 members, of which a bit less than half are Roman Catholic.

The NAAL meeting this year includes an address by the incoming vice-president (next year’s president), Joyce Ann Zimmerman. At the banquet Saturday night, Marjorie Procter Smith will be presented the academy’s esteemed Berekah award, and she and Janet Walton will give an address.

The real work of NAAL is done in seminars. A conference participant typically participates in four lengthy seminars lessons on Friday and Saturday morning and afternoon. The established seminars meeting this year are: The Advent Project, Christian Initiation, Ecology and Liturgy, Emerging Critical Resources for Liturgical Studies, Environment and Art, Eucharistic Prayer and Theology, Exploring Contemporary and Alternative Worship, Feminist Studies in Liturgy, Formation in Liturgical Prayer, Historical Research: 16th Century to the Present, Issues in Medieval Liturgy, Liturgical Hermeneutics, Liturgical Language, Liturgical Music, Liturgical Theology, Liturgy and Culture, Liturgy and Spirituality, Problems in Early History of Liturgy, Queering Liturgy, Liturgical Theory  and Performance, Visual Arts and Liturgy, and The Word in Worship.