Primary Sources Of Liturgical Theology

The voices of liturgical theology in the twentieth century are many and varied. Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology brings together in one volume the representative writings of scholars throughout the Euro-North American context whose insights have shaped our understanding of liturgy today. The selections in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology are arranged around nine seminal questions which students of liturgical theology need to engage. Each selection is introduced and contextualized by another liturgical theologian. Through this first-hand encounter with primary sources readers will develop a sense of the broad range of writings available to them. Chapters are What Is Liturgical Theology?" "What Is Liturgy?" "How Can We 'Do' Liturgical Theology?" "How Are Theology and Liturgy Related?" "How Does Liturgy Embody Theological Themes?" "What Is the Theological Function of Liturgical Language and Ritual?" "What Is the Role of the Word in Liturgy?" "How Do Liturgical Theologians Engage Cultural Diversity?" "How Are Liturgy and Life Related?" Includes an alphabetical list of primary contributors and a chronological index of major entries by date of original publication. Contributors to Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology are Peter Brunner; Odo Casel, O.S.B.; Louis-Marie Chauvet; Anscar J. Chupungco, O.S.B.; Mary Collins, O.S.B.;Irenee Henri Dalmais, O.P.; Ruth C. Duck; Justo L. Gonzalez; Romano Guardini; Angelus A. Häussling, O.S.B.; Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P.; Lawrence A. Hoffman; Paul Waitman Hoon; Aidan Kavanagh,O.S.B.; Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J.; Gordon W. Lathrop; L. Edward Phillips; David N. Power, O.M.I.; Gail Ramshaw; Don E. Saliers; Alexander Schmemann; Robert F. Taft, S.J.; Harold Dean Trulear; Evelyn Underhill; Dwight W. Vogel; Jean Jacques von Allmen; Geoffrey Wainwright; and Joyce Ann Zimmerman, C.PP.S. Dwight W. Vogel is professor of theology and ministry and dean of the chapel at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary where he coordinates the doctoral program in liturgical studies.

The fundamental intuition of this essay is that liturgical theology does not simply deal with Christian rituals, festivals and sacraments, but with the core of faith itself: God, world, the Christ event, tradition, Church, and redemption.

Nearly everything that theologians write on liturgy, Father Kavanagh notes, is often called liturgical theology, although on closer examination such works appear to be either dogmatic theologies about the liturgy or systematic theologies making use of liturgical data. None truly reflects how liturgy shapes theology or is theology or even relates to theology. This work is Father Kavanagh's effort to substantiate the existence of a truly liturgical theology. It will raise almost as many questions as it answers, but it will also further insight into theology and liturgy as it assays their relationship.

One of the most influential works in the debate over the concept and definitions of liturgical theology, Context and Text by Monsignor Kevin W. Irwin is now available in a completely rewritten, new edition. In light of the historical, theological, and pastoral mandates of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Context and Text is both a proposal for and an example of an investigation of the Church's liturgical praxis from a liturgical-theological perspective. This second edition, which includes an expanded introduction, covers: · new liturgical and ecclesial contexts resulting from newly promulgated liturgies · further research in methodfor liturgical studies · consideration for changes in the cultural contexts in which people celebrate the liturgy. Besides brand-new chapters on time and sacramentality, and additions to the chapter on the arts, this edition also considers the “ongoing ‘texts and contexts’ of the liturgy as always a new event in the life and ongoing discussion of liturgical theology within Christianity.

While only rarely reflecting explicitly on liturgy, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) gave sustained attention to several themes pertinent to the interpretation of worship, including metaphor, narrative, subjectivity, and memory. Inspired by his well-known aphorism, “The symbol gives rise to thought,” Liturgical Theology after Schmemann offers an original exploration of the symbolic world of the Byzantine Rite , culminating in a Ricoeurian analysis of its Theophany “Great Blessing of Water.” . The book examines two fundamental questions: 1) what are the implications of the philosopher’s oeuvre for liturgical theology at large? And 2)how does the adoption of a Ricoeurian hermeneutic shape the study of a particular rite? Taking the seminal legacy of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) as its point of departure, Butcher contributes to the renewal of contemporary Eastern Christian thought and ritual practice by engaging a spectrum of current theological and philosophical conversations.

In this volume, Fr. Francis Quoëx responds to Joseph Ratzinger's call for a renewed appreciation of liturgical rite. A student of Pierre Gy, OP, he brings to this study of Aquinas's liturgical theology a rare combination of expert knowledge of liturgical sources and history and the best of mod-ern historical-critical research guided by sound theological judgment. Fr. Quoëx frames his study with an overview of the problem of rite in modern theological-anthropological discourse, before turning to Aqui-nas' theory of worship in the treatise on the virtue of religion. He then explores Aquinas' doctrine on the cultic dimensions of the Eucharist and other sacraments in his sacramental theology more broadly, finishing with a close study of the mass commentary of the Tertia Pars Although there has been increasing attention to Thomas's treatment of religion as a virtue, none have approached him from an anthropolog-ical angle with a focus on the nature of liturgical rite, or fully exploited the perspectives of liturgical scholarship to shed light on sacramental theology. Quoëx's work, as the work of a Thomist, liturgist, and medi-evalist well versed in medieval liturgical development and in the genre of often-allegorical liturgical commentary, opens up this crucial but ne-glected facet of Aquinas' theological synthesis. Few books have been pub-lished on Aquinas's liturgical theology. Now that interest in Aquinas's vir-tue theory and sacramental theology is growing rapidly, Quoëx's studies are an invitation to further reflection on the topic of Aquinas's liturgical theology with its manifold ramifications for and connections with other theological topics in his Summa, including his theological anthropology, his soteriology, his treatment of the Old and New Laws, and his account of the virtue of religion in connection with the other virtues.

This Is the Night is a work of "liturgical theology," understood as a theology inspired or informed by the liturgies of Christian Holy Week. In the context of modernity in crisis, it is an attempt to think with the principal liturgies of the "PaschalTriduum" - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter - about human suffering. The author works from an analysis of the structure of the Christian paschal liturgies to offer an account of suffering that is more compassionate and honest than that of western modernity. Moreover, this account is the theoretical correlate of an ethic performed by the paschal liturgies: their structure and rhythm give rise not only to an account of suffering and its remedy, but to a compassionate practice into which Christians are called. In both the philosophical and the popular imagination, modernity is a context in which "progress" is the defining human telos. Because of this commitment to progress, modernity is often allergic to the concrete pain and horror of suffering. Modernity sidelines suffering as an unfortunate but necessary moment in the course of human progress, not infrequently because it is a byproduct of our "progress" - our technical mastery of nature and leadership of global capitalization. In this context, suffering is more a concept than an existential fact or experience. Yet downplaying human suffering in this way creates even greater suffering, by anesthetizing us to its effect on human beings. Some of the critics of modernity also criticize Christianity as a religious version of the modern myth of progress, or even as its very source. Inspired in part by the political theology of Johann Metz and by the liturgical scholarship of Don Saliers, Robert Taft, and others, the author argues instead that in the liturgies of Holy Week, the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ form a context in which Christians recognize human suffering not as an unfortunate moment on the way to salvation but as the very field of God's saving activity. That divine activity is saving precisely as we enter into it by practice. To be saved - to enter into an abundant and vigorous human life - is to become a priestly people, orienting ourselves toward suffering in the same way that Jesus Christ did, facing it with courage where necessary and resisting its ravages where possible.

What is the relationship of liturgy to theology? The author describes the economic nature of liturgy in order to reimagine cosmology, sacrifice, the figural reading of Scripture, and metaphysical realism where liturgy itself enacts an apocalypse of transcendent realities.