Celebrations in flesh & blood communities

...Fourth, the model provided for a eucharistic prayer is totally out of touch with the tradition of such praying...

...Very little attention is paid to liturgical music and environment, as many of the authors admit while acknowledging that these are important aspects of ritualization...

...At a time when we should be sensitive to over-verbalization in our liturgies, this proposal moves in the opposite direction...

...I have only one general criticism of the rituals offered in this series...

...His book, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, is forthcoming...

...Significantly the strictly cultic aspect of the presbyter-ate is toned down by the omission of a rite of anointing...

...The sixth volume of the series, Leadership in Ministry and Community, goes a long way towards solving the problems that I raised earlier with regard to the Eucharist...

...Second, the reform has not so much failed in many places as not really been attempted...

...Any consideration of the future of worship will have to give them due weight...

...Although the volume is entitled Baptism and Confirmation, there is almost no concern for confirmation...

...It seems to me that the real problem lies in the fact that what we call parishes are much too large and do not provide the context for the social process that the Eucharist implies and is so well spelled out in John Haughey's theological essay in this volume...

...But more of that later...

...One could do without the tawdry didacticism of "a banner or two announcing the themes of Christian marriage," but I applaud the insistence on omitting the giving away of the bride by her father, a holdover from feudalism and certainly inappropriate to contemporary concern for the equality of the spouses...

...It would not take a great number of visits to Roman Catholic churches today to arrive at several conclusions...

...In addition, it seems to me that a future rite of marriage might benefit from the kind of thinking operative in Ram-shaw-Schmidt's ritual for infant baptism in stages...

...As a matter of fact, it seems to be just beginning...

...Duffy's essay is followed by excellent pieces on the social and psychological contexts for liturgical celebration by Michael Cowan and Paul Phi-libert respectively...

...Once again in line with the RCIA, post-baptismal (or mystagogical) rituals are suggested as "baptismal remembrances" for both the church and the home...

...The answer is not to accentuate this unfortunate situation, but to rethink the relation between pastor and community...

...In any case, the idea of collaboration is important to the project as a whole, despite some unevenness and rather different approaches in the individual volumes...

...In addition to two superb essays on the theology and history of this sacrament by Peter Fink and challenging essays on the psychological background and social meaning of reconciliation by Paul Roy and Denis Woods, the four alternative rituals proposed are the best of the series...

...This is a brilliant addition in my opinion, since the tragedy of such situations needs to be ritualized and seldom is...

...As to the weekday gathering of an intentional community, it seems to me that Richstatter falls into a common post-Vatican II trap - trying to make the liturgy do too much...

...The volume is capped by a magisterial theological essay by Edward Kilmartin, which both summarizes from the medieval Scholastics through Vatican II and points out the directions that a future sacramental theology informed by social science can take...

...The ritual seems to cater to the worst aspects of American bureaucratization...

...Posing this question leads to the connection between liturgy and life that needs to be drawn out more and more...

...is dealt with...

...The first goal arises out of the conviction that theology must adapt itself to dialogue with a new JOHN F. BALDOVIN, S.J., is associate professor of historical and liturgical theology at the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, California...

...The recognition that sacramental celebrations are a process and involved with developing life is a key concept for what Ramshaw-Schmidt is trying to achieve...

...I should say clearly here what the editors repeat often - they are not trying to provide underground liturgies but to encourage discussion and further possible renewal...

...It begins well enough with praise and thanksgiving and includes the suggestion of much needed sporadic acclamations by the people throughout the prayer, but is characterized by a lack of imaginative language (even more than the current prayers of the Roman rite) and completely misunderstands the function of the institution narrative ("On the night before he died . . .") in the prayer...

...After all, even in the current Roman rite those ceremonies are the remnant of the ancient catechumenate for adults entering the church...

...What we need, I think, is to rethink even more radically not merely how large it should be, but what the Sunday assembly is all about...

...The first volume of the series serves as a general introduction...

...These criticisms pale by comparison with the difficulty presented by the ritual proposed for the Sunday assembly...

...I will deal with the four remaining volumes more briefly...

...Perhaps the authors felt that confirmation has no future at all, much less an alternative future...

...Its essays take account of the tremendous complexity of contemporary marriage in general, as well as the need to see the "mission" aspect of the sacramentality of married life...

...Four rituals are proposed: the first dealing with anointing of the long-term seriously ill, a second for the healing of the families of the terminally ill, a third for persons in mid-life crisis (to which, I admit, I paid special attention), and finally a proposal for a general annual service of healing in the context of the St...

...Since describing them as they unfold would simply take too long, I will restrict myself to some critical comments...

...handmaid," no longer philosophy strictly speaking but rather the human sciences: anthropology, psychology, and sociology...

...I find both rituals problematic...

...Here we can see what the contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesial situation is doing to us - it is forcing us to abandon the role of the ordained as ritual leaders (and leaders in other ways too, of course) and to make the ordained ministry an exercise of magical power, as it were, dropping into the community from outside...

...This final rite before baptism itself might have been strengthened by the addition of the ceremonies of "naming" and "welcome" that begin the baptismal rite proper...

...In keeping with the RCIA, a rite of enrollment (listing the candidate's name in the parish book during the Sunday assembly) is provided, as well as another domestic ritual of preparation...

...Blaise Day blessing...

...So, I can find no fault with the program of the series, but the proof of the pudding is in the volumes on the individual sacraments themselves...

...Mark Searle's distinction be-tween emergency (clinical) baptism, which characterizes the history of infant baptism, and dealing with infants as infants in initiation is most helpful...

...Each volume is designed to be a collaborative effort by theologians, social scientists, and liturgical specialists...

...All I could imagine while reading this rite was a supper club or a cocktail lounge...

...As a matter of fact, with the exception of the baptismal formula ("N is baptized," an ecumenical gesture to the Christian East) and the formula for post-baptismal anointing which mentions the Holy Spirit, as in the RCIA, there is nothing here that could not be put into practice today...

...Surely as a rite of passage there can be a number of ritual moments celebrating the reality of marital commitment and union...

...The volume on marriage, edited by Bernard Cooke, has the virtue of being written by authors who are all married themselves...

...That is no small gift...

...Other needed and suggestive rituals are proposed in this volume for the installation of the provincial of a religious order, the celebration of the completion of a ministry training program, and the installation of various parish ministers...

...While this is true for theology in general (a revolution matching Thomas Aquinas's synthesis of tradition with Aristotelian philosophy), it is especially warranted in the case of the sacraments, where empirical evidence is high...

...The authors reveal a healthy ambiguity about the relation between anointing the sick and reconciliation...

...The collaboration works best when the authors have been able to dialogue a great deal, as in the case of the volume on reconciliation, where Peter Fink gathered the team from his own faculty at Weston School of Theology...

...And, since testing out theories is so important to the sciences, the results of the dialogue need to be tried out as it were, in the formulation of possible rituals...

...we are forced to perceive the ordained that way, as visitors...

...First, much of the enthusiasm has gone out of the post-conciliar liturgical reform...

...Finally, one might happen across a few churches where the liturgy is clearly in ferment, with a number of experiments being tried like liturgical dance or alternative forms of homilies...

...This baptismal rite actually begins with a "pre-catechumenal" ritual before birth itself and in the domestic setting, followed by a rite of baptismal intent closer to the birth itself, performed in the context of the Sunday assembly...

...In any case I found the treatment of infant baptism here one of the best I have seen recently...

...I was particularly impressed by Jennifer Glen's pastoral-theological essay on sickness and healing (as opposed to the medical Zeitgeist's preoccupation with "cure...

...At times the series gives the impression that the authors of a single volume were not able to have much contact with one another...

...The final volume of the series, Anointing of the Sick, edited by Peter Fink, provides a helpfully wider consideration of ritual and illness for this rite which is no longer the rite of the dying...

...On the other hand, in terms of issue of inclusive language I found the series to be laudable and exemplary, both in terms of language about human beings and about God...

...I find it both frustrating and tragic that this has become for the most part an unimaginable future and that so much of our liturgical and ecclesial speculation has to be channeled into thinking about how we can get around the need for the ordained...

...I say "in general" because that is about the best one can expect from a series with six different editors and a total of thirty-two authors...

...Departing from the trend of concentration on adult initiation, the authors of the second volume have opted for a discussion of infant baptism...

...Perhaps our confused practice(s) of confirmation merely clouds the real issue of initiation and is best left aside while this issue - what does it mean to be baptized...

...Regis Duffy's brief introductory essay sets the tone for the whole series with his characteristic concern for praxis, judging the success of sacramental celebration by its fruits in daily life...

...it must be found in the life of a flesh and blood worshiping community...

...This is precisely the kind of ritual imagination that we need - one that takes into account the developmental issues raised by the social sciences and at the same time grows organically out of the Christian tradition...

...The volume on the Eucharist is another matter altogether...

...I would like to concentrate here on the two rituals proposed by Thomas Richstatter: one for a weekday Eucharist in an intentional community (with the option for a communion service when no priest is available) and the other for a Sunday Eucharist of a parish made up of intentional communities...

...Reading through these volumes occasionally caused this student of liturgy to squirm, but most of all they made me think about an imaginatively brighter future for our common worship...

...Likewise, the situating of baptism within the social-psychological framework of the family by Andrew Thompson clarified for me the main life issues at stake in initiating infants...

...The proposed ritual by Kathleen Fischer and Thomas Hart is basically the current rite of marriage enhanced by fine suggestions for more integral participation by the couple themselves and by the entire assembly...

...In this situation we clearly need imaginative thinking and writing about the church's worship...

...If we have learned anything in the past twenty-five years, it is precisely that these nonverbal factors make or break our worship...

...In fact, the narrative is dropped when a non-ordained person presides, which suggests that it is being treated as a magical intervention or as the consecration which it is not...

...Any future has to be envisioned within the framework of a particular concern and the authors of this volume have opted for the framework of "Intentional Christian communities," the American equivalent of Latin American base communities...

...Power also offers a much streamlined and more participative proposal for the ordination of a presbyter...

...Wisely, the author also includes a "ritual after death'' in the case of miscarriage or stillbirth...

...We have a long way to go before our liturgies, which we call celebrations, become truly celebratory...

...Here the celebration of the Eucharist serves as the framework of the whole meeting...

...The main problem here, apart from the repetition of a good deal of the verbiage that characterized the weekday gathering, is that the assembly is divided around a number of tables with a main table for the presider...

...Certainly one of the burning issues in Catholic worship and church life in general today is the nature and practice of Christian initiation...

...I found this volume an overwhelming success...

...I can think of no image more disastrous for the symbol of Eucharist as communion both with the Lord and one another than this fracturing of the assembly...

...This volume simply does not provide a feasible future for the Eucharist, although I must admit I found it stimulating...

...Alternative Futures for Worship (Liturgical Press, $56.95 set, $8.95 each, 5 volumes) is meant to provide just that...

...Under the editorship of Michael Cowan, the various authors bring together in a provocative way the social and ecclesial dimensions of leadership in contemporary society, in particular David Power's essay, "Liturgy and Empowerment," is an outstanding example of coherent reflection on the role of ministry within the church, rooted firmly in the New Testament tradition...

...Third, the priest is treated as an outsider, as explicitly invited to the gathering and not as the leader of the intentional community...

...In both the area of dialogue between theology and social science and the proposed rituals this series gets high marks from me - in general...

...A domestic ritual after birth is provided as a preparation for baptism...

...There is nothing very radical in all of this...

...Celebration cannot be found in the text of a liturgical book after all...

...Although all of the major ritual books of the church have been produced, and a few like the Rite of Funerals have been revised and fine-tuned, it should be clear that renewal of the liturgy is far from over...

...Second, the informal ministries, for example, that of host and/or hostess are terribly formalized for a gathering of this sort...

...Of course, Richstatter is attending to a real problem...

...I wonder...

...The result is that committee reports are given and new members formally introduced in the middle of the Liturgy of the Word...

...In particular, the liturgy for a Christian Day of Atonement (as a kind of vigil for the year's end feast of Christ the King) by Fink and the proposal for the reconciliation of groups by Fink and Woods are outstanding examples of the kind of thinking we ought to be doing about this important sacramental experience...

...The authors here present a most practicable future for an expanded ministry of healing in the Catholic church, one in which we have much to learn from our Episcopalian brothers and sisters...

...It seems to me that the main goals of these seven volumes are two: first, to bring reflection on the activity of sacramental worship into dialogue with the social sciences, and second, to speculate on what the various rituals might look like if this dialogue were taken seriously...

...Despite the fact that it is not the focus of this volume, the enormous influence of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) - a process that lasts from one to three years - can be seen in Gail Ramshaw-Schmidt's ritual proposal for "Celebrating Baptism in Stages," even for infants...

...The major question of sacramental competence that it pursues is at the heart of sacramental life today...

...All in all this series has fulfilled its goals...

...The argument seems to be that parishes will only work if they are made up of smaller communities in which something real about the lives of the individual members is at stake...

...The best of the lot is the fourth volume on reconciliation...

...The root of the problem is, for Roman Catholics at any rate, the lack of ordained ministers, a problem which could easily be solved by admitting women and married men to orders...