Author: Bruce Morrill
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Too Many Masses? Pastoral-Liturgical Practice on Ash Wednesday
Given the history of Ash Wednesday’s emergence and various morphings over the centuries as a ritual-symbol inaugurating a season of penitence, I simply do not see why, in the Roman Catholic Church, at least, the most apt liturgy would not be based on the sample penitential services (basically, liturgies of the word) found at the…
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Chauvet Newly Translated in German
Nearly thirty years since its original publication in France (June 1987) and twenty years after its English translation (December 1994), Louis-Marie Chauvet’s Symbole et Sacrement has just been released in German (Symbol und Sakrament, Pustet-Verlag, January 2015).
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A Homely Reminder of How Rote Ritual Is
So much of the analysis of liturgy remains focused on the words in the books or even the words recited or repeated in assemblies, and this with an uncritical, unarticulated assumption that the discursive content of those texts impact/shape the ideas or imaginations of most of the participants. The individual performances and ongoing practices of…
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Reviewing Louis Bouyer Ten Years Later
My own impression of the purpose of [the increasinlgy speculative, abstract] development in his work was that it served to support the practical, clerical, highly conservative ecclesiology he promoted in his writings, lectures, and not least through his formative influence on an inner circle of students he nurtured in 1970s Paris, including (the later cardinals)…
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Community as Communio?
“Community is not formed by fellowship, familiar faces, and coffee and doughnuts after Mass; community is formed when all of the congregation lifts up our hearts and voices in praise of God. That is the deep and timeless fellowship that the Mass offers to each of its participants. Through the action of the Mass, the…