New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship by Paul Bradshaw (Westminster John Knox Press) Although this dictionary is very obviously closely related to the Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship edited by J. G. Davies (SCM Press, London 1972, 2nd ed. 1986), it is not merely a further edition of that work, but rather its successor. While the vast majority of the headings used in that earlier volume have been adopted here, some have been deleted, new ones added, and other subjects rearranged. For example, `experimental forms of worship' has been eliminated because it now seems an outdated category, and for a similar reason `feminist liturgical movement' subsumed within the wider category of `women and worship'; while entries referring to more recent developments, like `praise and worship movement', have been inserted. The broad entry on `liturgies' has been replaced by two separate entries, on `eucharist' and on `word, services of the'. In some cases entries have been placed under new headings that would be more commonly used today. Thus, for instance, `year, liturgical' has been substituted for `calendar'; `daily prayer' for `canonical hours'; `eucharistic prayer' for `anaphora'; `inculturation' for `indigenization'; and so on.

All entries have been entirely rewritten, and in nearly every case by a new contributor. Contributors have been chosen on the basis of their expertise in the particular subject, in some instances from within the particular worship tradition under discussion, in others from outside, since both views shed valuable and complementary light. All the entries, except the shortest, have been broken up into numbered sections with sub-headings for ease of use and provided with bibliographical resources for further study. Where appropriate, the literature listed has been divided into selected texts and studies, with works containing a more extensive bibliography indicated by the symbol (bib.). It is the editor's earnest hope that with these changes and improvements the volume will serve as a comprehensive guide to the subject for future years as well as Davies' work has done for the last thirty years.

Holidays and Holy Nights: Celebrating Twelve Seasonal Festivals of the Christian Year by Christopher Hill (Quest Books) For many people the chaos of fifty-hour workweeks and the demands of family have created a hectic, routine-driven life. Time itself becomes a conveyor belt moving us continuously from one demand to the next and year-to-year. Holidays and Holy Nights offers an escape from the conveyor-belt life and introduces us to the cyclical and deeply spiritual Christian liturgical year.

This joyous book "unpacks" theology to uncover the poetic, symbolic, folkloric, psychological, and mystical nature of the liturgical year. Moving through the four seasons, Christopher Hill, former communications director for the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee, discusses holidays such as the Feast of Michaelmas, Halloween, Advent, Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, and the Transfiguration. After evoking the experience of the seasons/festivals, Hill shows how they developed in history, theology, and folklore. He then offers specific suggestions for participating more deeply in the seasons, for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development by Herbert Norris (Dover) unabridged republication of the edition originally published by E. P Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1950. Introduction. Authorities Quoted. Brief Historical Data. Index. 276 black-and-white illustrations. 8-page color insert. The Christian church's earliest vestments were hardly distinguishable from the everyday dress of ordinary people in ancient Rome, but in time, ecclesiastical dress acquired its own distinguishing characteristics. This comprehensive reference by noted English costume authority Herbert Norris traces the evolution of clerical attire through the centuries until the end of the 1400s.

The meticulously researched text is enhanced by more than 270 of the author's own illustrations, including 8 in full color, adapted from originals but specially redrawn to accentuate essential features of the garments. The vestments are treated in the approximate order of their appearance in liturgical ritual, beginning with the simple alb, and including the pallium, chasuble, cassock, surplice, mitre, and many other items. Footwear, crosses, headgear, rings, gloves, and other accessories are also depicted and described in detail.

We Have the Mind of Christ: The Holy Spirit and Liturgical Memory in the Thought of Edward J. Kilmartin by Jerome M. Hall (Liturgical Prwess) In a thirty-five year career of teaching and writing on liturgical theology, Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J., (1923-1994) became noted among Roman Catholic theologians for his emphasis on the activity of the Holy Spirit in Christian liturgy. At his death his writing showed particular concern with the role of the Holy Spirit in the liturgical memorial, or anamnesis, of Jesus Christ.

We Have the Mind of Christ serves as Edward J. Kilmartin's trinitarian theology of liturgical celebration emphasizes the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church's memorial of Christ's saving deeds. Father Kilmartin stresses the Spirit's activity in the liturgical assembly, whose members express the faith of Christ and the Church. His life's work comes together as a whole only in the light of the twentieth‑century controversy about the presence of Christ's saving deeds in the celebration of the liturgy. We Have the Mind of Christ details Kilmartin's construction of a proposed solution to the controversy and shows how the elements of his liturgical theology fit into that solution.

We Have the Mind of Christ an introduction to Kilmartin's work and argues that one particular concern, the relationship between Jesus' historical deeds and the liturgical celebration, lies at the heart of Kilmartin's theological project. His interest in this subject may be understood in light of the events which brought him to the field of sacramental and liturgical theology just before Vatican II. We Have the Mind of Christ gives a systematic and synthetic presentation of Kilmartin's approach to the presence of Christ and his saving acts in the liturgy which the Church celebrates in his memory.

Chapter one gives the status quaestionis in Roman Catholic theological reflection on the liturgical presence of Christ and his saving deeds at the time Kilmartin began his work. It outlines the major positions taken during the controversy over the manner of that presence, points out the problems inherent in each position, and indicates the development of the Roman magisterium's teaching on the presence of Christ and his acts in the liturgy.
Chapter two describes Kilmartin's method of uncovering the theological content of the lex orandi, the Church's rule of worship, and lists the conclusions that he drew from liturgical text and practice. The third chapter presents the principal elements of his proposed solution to the question of the liturgical presence of Christ in a thematic and systematic fashion, indicating the other theologians whom he cited as his most important conversation partners. Chapter four details Kilmartin's synthesis of those elements, relating the prayer of the liturgical assembly to Jesus' acts through the personal activity of the Holy Spirit. Chapter five uses the criticisms raised against the various positions outlined in chapter one as criteria for judging Kilmartin's proposed solution to the question of describing the mystery presence, and considers his success in integrating the various themes presented in chapters two and three into a truly systematic theology of liturgical celebration.

Excerpt: Perhaps the most vigorous and most significant discussion in sacramental theology while Kilmartin was a theological student at Weston, from 1951 to 1955, concerned the manner of presence of Christ and his saving acts in the liturgy. This controversy had begun in the 1920s, and, especially in its early years, had occasioned great dispute between the German Benedictine Odo Casel and other monks of the Rhineland abbey of Maria Laach, on one side, and Jesuits at the Gregorian University, among others, on the other side. In 1947, in the encyclical Mediator Dei, Pius XII addressed the subject, affirming the presence of Christ and his saving acts in the liturgy, but he did not take a position on the disputed question of the manner of that presence. Spirited discussion of the subject continued right up to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Interest in the council's constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated in 1963, forced the disputed question into the background without its ever having been resolved.

Thus when Kilmartin was learning to teach sacramental and liturgical theology, the presence of Christ and his saving deeds in the Church's liturgy 5 had been a major topic of discussion in Roman Catholic sacramental theology for a good part of the twentieth century. The conversation was carried on through articles that were vigorous in their argumentation and insistent on the pastoral importance of a proper understanding of the Church's liturgy. The disputing theologians defended their positions by referring to Scripture, liturgical texts, and patristic literature as well as to scholastic theology and magisterial statements. As a young professor constructing his own courses in the theology of Christian worship, Kilmartin would have been compelled to treat the question of how Christ's saving acts are present in liturgical celebration.

Kilmartin applied his energy, attention, and scientific education to the subject of this controversy. In more than thirty years of debate, no theologian had proposed a solution that seemed satisfactory; indeed, many proposals seemed to raise more questions than they answered. That led him to think that the question itself was being formulated in an improper fashion. Over time he developed the elements of an explicitly Trinitarian approach to sacramental theology, an approach that he believed could explain the mystery presence in a more acceptable way than that of Casel and his interlocutors. Kilmartin found support for his position in the work of colleagues who were also developing Trinitarian theologies of liturgy.

At the same time, Kilmartin was quite aware that "the average modern Catholic theology" not just of the Eucharist but of liturgical celebration in general was still fixed on approaches which, by their inability to answer the question of the mystery presence, had proven to be "without a future." 6 Constructing Trinitarian theologies of liturgy that would capture the popular imagination by more satisfactorily treating the mystery presence while systematically relating the various truths of the faith to each other was, he believed, a major part of the task of liturgical theology at the beginning of the third millennium.' His illness and death, however, prevented him from assembling all the elements of his Trinitarian approach to the mystery presence into a unified presentation.

A New Song For the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Crossroad Herder Book
$24.95, paper, 178 pages, notes
ISBN 0-8245-1536-6

Taken from different talks and papers by Cardinal Ratzinger, this book makes practicable from several points-of-view the indispensable components of a theology of worship, according to Catholic Church teaching. For Ratzinger, the issue of liturgy is not merely a practical one, for in liturgy we deal with our understanding of God and this world, our relationship with Christ and with ourselves. In other words, the way we live the liturgy today in our churches will determine the future shape of our faith and church.

"Throughout the years of the Liturgical Movement, as well as at the outset of the Second Vatican Council's reform of the liturgy, it appeared to many as if striving for the correct liturgical form were a purely pragmatic matter, a search for the form of worship most accessible to the people of our time. Since then it has become increasingly clear that liturgy involves our understanding of God and the world and our relationship to Christ, the Church, and ourselves. How we attend to liturgy determines the fate of the faith and the Church. For this reason liturgical matters have acquired an importance today that we were unable to envision before.
"...Our entire search for the criteria of liturgical renewal ultimately culminates in one question: Who do the people say that the Son of Man is? (Matt. 16:14f.).... Only a close connection with Christology can make possible a productive development of the theology and practice of liturgy." - From the Preface
Ratzinger's zeal for the minutiae of how we worship reflects broadly on the meaning and shape of Catholic faith. This cardinal has been in the forefront for many of this Pope's curtailment of experimentalism within Church teachings.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was professor of theology at the universities of Bonn, Munster, Tubingen, and Regensburg before becoming Archbishop of Munich in 1977 and prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981.

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