Summary of the April 2021 issue of Worship
Worship is a peer-reviewed, international ecumenical journal for the study of liturgy and liturgical renewal. Founded in 1926 by Virgil Michel, OSB, and the monks of Saint John’s Abbey, Worship is published quarterly in Collegeville, Minnesota. Subscribe to Worship here.
THE AMEN CORNER
Implementing Synodality: Reflections on Two Recent Contributions
Richard Gaillardetz
ESSAYS
Worship beyond Boundaries
Janet Walton and Troy Messenger
Since March 2020, a global pandemic and weeks of protests following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police have added layers of challenges to our ways of worshiping. Virtual worship replaced in-person gatherings. Communities demanded we address systemic racism in life and in liturgy. In response, congregations across the country and around the world are exploring ways to reach beyond boundaries of space and race. The examples we present in this article emerged from our own struggles to worship beyond a variety of boundaries at Union Seminary. What we have done builds on principles, modes and practices that model ways to move beyond critical boundaries today. By probing at the cracks, fissures give way to possibility. What we do and know through worship provides resilience “for the long haul” and compels us to act.
Assembly: A Biblical-Liturgical Reality We Will Need Again
Gordon Lathrop
The corona virus pandemic has interrupted the gathering of the assemblies of the churches or transformed them into at least partly electronic events. But the biblical definition of “church” as first of all an in-person gathering in a place and the fruit of the liturgical movement that found a participating assembly to be a major characteristic of Christians and the “primary sacrament of the risen Christ” still stand, calling us and challenging us. As we return to the assembly with care, we will need to yet more clearly teach and yet more richly practice the fundamental meaning of this gathering.
“For Many” Or “For All” In The Words Of Consecration? Respecting A Hebrew Idiom
Richard J. Clifford, S.J.
The current translation “for many” for pro multis in the consecratory formula of the eucharistic prayer ignores its idiomatic character. The idiom, which involves the words or the concept of “one” and “many,” expresses the benefit that one individual brings to the group, “many” in this case referring to everyone in the group, not to only some or many. The idiom occurs in the Psalms and underlies the Fourth Servant Song, Isa 52:13-53:12, which influenced the words of institution in the New Testament. New Testament authors were well aware of the idiom so that “for all” is an accurate translation of the consecratory formula, not an interpretation of it.
Persons, Freedom, and Ministry: Seminal Ideas from Yves Congar
Thomas F. O’Meara, OP
Yves Congar published a number of articles and books considering the baptized as persons and as ministers in the church empowered by the Holy Spirit. Three lectures translated in Laity, Church and World remain of interest today, lectures the theologian gave (in German) in 1958 at meetings of clergy, pastoral workers, theologians, and members of Catholic Action in Southwest Germany. The time of these talks is four years after the Vatican’s refusal to allow the Dominican to teach or publish – in France. The lectures stress the coming of the Spirit to the entire church and the empowerment of all the baptized for ministries. Ministry flows from being a baptized Christian. This basic and Pauline theology of Spirit, community, and ministry will enable the church, the Body of Christ, to be reborn from its foundations. A consequence of the time around Vatican II has been the expansion of ministries in dioceses and parishes throughout the world.
Poor Historical Methodology in Traditionalist Liturgical Studies
Leon Strieder
One of the phenomena of some young priests, and some seminarians, is their desire to celebrate the Extraordinary Form with its ad orientem position. While these desires can be fulfilled under certain circumstances, there seems to be a lack of both historical and theological foundation for the defense of their personal positions, making any discussion of the normal Novus Ordo to be difficult, ideological, and even ad hominem. This article is an attempt to give a reasonable foundation to these issues, critiquing the very sources often used to defend their positions. Without a proper historical understanding of liturgical development, there can be no unity even in the proper variety acceptable by our rituals.
BOOK REVIEWS
Elyse Raby reviews Women Deacons? Essays with Answers, edited by Phyllis Zagano. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016. 252 + xvii pages. $24.95. ISBN: 978-0-8146-8312-5.
Bernard Evans reviews Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence, by Joanna Brooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. 232 pages. $34.95. ISBN: 978-0-19-008176-8.
Arman Gregory Shokhikyan reviews Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’s Call to Theologians, by Thomas O’Loughlin. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019. 174 pages. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-8146-8458-0.
Stephen Schloesser, SJ, reviews The Holy Name: Art of the Gesù; Bernini and His Age, by Linda Wolk-Simon, ed. with Christopher M. S. Johns and Bellarmine Museum of Art, Fairfield University. Exh. Cat. Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts 17. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2018. 640 + xvi pages. $50.00. ISBN: 978-0-91610-100-8.
Michael S. Driscoll reviews The Prayed Francis: Liturgical Vitae and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Marco Bartoli, Jacques Dalarun, Timothy J. Johnson, and Filippo Sedda. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2019. 231 pages. $49.95. ISBN: 978-1-57659-433-9.
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