Mar 15, 2000

In the News . . .

Online Edition

Vol. VI, No. 1: March
2000


In the News . . .


New Liturgical
Institute planned


Cardinal
Francis George is planning a new institute for liturgical studies
at Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary, and has selected Monsignor Francis
Mannion to become its director. Monsignor Mannion is pastor of
the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City and founder
of the Society for Catholic Liturgy.

The institute
will have teaching, research and publishing components and will
be staffed by three to five professors of liturgy and the sacraments,
according to a story by John Allen in the

National Catholic
Reporter

("New direction on liturgy in Chicago",
January 28, p. 5).

Monsignor Mannion
describes his position in the present liturgical crisis as "recatholicizing
the reform", but he assured the NCR that he does not have
a "restorationist" agenda. "I’m not on some kind
of far-right trip", he said. "The model to use for
this is not Hitler invading Poland".

The liturgical
institute will emphasize sacramental theology, the

NCR

said. It is not yet clear how the new institute will affect the
influential Liturgy Training Publications, owned and operated
by the Archdiocese of Chicago as a branch of its Office for Divine
Worship, and one of the principal producers of "progressive"
works on the liturgy.

Besides lector’s
workbooks and other liturgy materials, LTP publishes the ICEL
Psalter, from which the imprimatur was ordered withdrawn by the
Holy See, and the "Meetinghouse Series" of booklets
on church architecture. LTP has also produced a series of instructional
videos inspired by Cardinal Roger Mahony’s liturgy pastoral,
"Gather Faithfully Together", also published by LTP.

Gabe Huck, long
time director of LTP, told the NCR that he finds it "strange
and offensive that a matter of this magnitude could have come
this far along without serious consultation with the people involved
with trying to bring liturgical renewal to the people of the
Archdiocese of Chicago and beyond".

(

Our Sunday
Visitor

also published a feature story on the new institute
in its Feb. 20 edition.)


Liturgists react to bishops’ tabernacle comments

"If the Mass is being celebrated so poorly that people
aren’t aware of how Christ becomes present in the Eucharist,
the priest can wear the tabernacle around his neck and it’s not
going to make any difference", David Philippart told the


National Catholic Reporter

("Tabernacle/ Have Catholics
forgotten the Real Presence?", January 28, 2000, p. 3).

The idea that
the stripping of Catholic churches in renovation projects is
a Protestant aesthetic "burns me up", Philippart complained.

Philippart is
editor of two periodicals published by Liturgy Training Publications,


Rite

(formerly

Liturgy 90

), and

E & A –
Environment and Art Letter.

He is also co-editor of LTP’s
"Clip Notes for Church Bulletins", and author of such
works on the liturgy as "Dreaming the Reign of Christ"
and "Dreaming Paschal Sunday", both published in

Liturgy

,
the quarterly publication of the Liturgical Conference, now an
ecumencal association based in Washington, DC.)

He was reacting
to the US bishops’ November debate over the placement of tabernacles
triggered by the draft of

Domus Dei

, the proposed replacement
for the controversial 1978 statement,

Environment and Art
in Catholic Worship

.

The bishops who
spoke on the subject strongly argued for the prominent and central
placement of the tabernacle, which houses the reserved Sacrament,
the Body of Christ.


A



transcript
of the bishops’ discussion

was published in the December 1999 –
January 2000

AB

.

 


Separate chapels

Despite the strong sentiments expressed by his brother bishops
on the subject,

Bishop Tod Brown

of Orange, California,
has issued a decree, "Liturgical Norm 1999/05", which
requires tabernacles to be placed in separate chapels in all
new and renovated "parish worship spaces".


New BCL members


Mobile Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb, head of the "Common
Ground Initiative", who became chairman of the Bishops’
Committee on the Liturgy after the November meeting of the NCCB,
has appointed the members of his committee.

They are

Archbishop
Justin Rigali

(St. Louis),

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk


(Cincinnati);

Bishop Donald Trautman

(Erie);

Bishop
Tod Brown

(Orange);

Bishop Blaise Cupich

(Rapid City);
and

Bishop Allen Vigneron

(Detroit auxiliary).

This will be
Archbishop Rigali’s second term. He is also a member of the Congregation
for Divine Worship.

Bishop Trautman, past chairman of the BCL, is chairman-elect of the Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, and will assume this office in November 2000. He is also on the Committee for the Review of Scripture Translations.

Archbishop Pilarczyk,
past president of the NCCB (1989-92), is the current chairman
of the Doctrine Committee, and was president of ICEL for eleven
years.

Consulters are
Cardinals Francis George, Bernard Law and Roger Mahony, and Bishops
Carlos Sevilla, SJ (Yakima), and George Murry, SJ (Co-adj. St.
Thomas).

 

*

The Editors