Greetings! I am honored and excited to join the staff of Adoremus Bulletin as its new editor. I first discovered the Adoremus Bulletin around the year 2000 during my undergraduate studies. Until that time my exposure to the Church’s liturgy was almost exclusively at my small country parish, an experience I remember as neither particularly transcendent nor prosaic; it simply was. My recollections of reading Adoremus 25 years ago are of encountering a vast spiritual expanse. The liturgy was presented to me anew as something with a breadth and depth, a beauty and profundity I hadn’t known. It was also at this time that I became aware that the realm of liturgy has not always been a tranquil place in the life of the Church; there was something people referred to as the “liturgy wars.” I came to know the Adoremus Bulletin as a reliable voice of liturgical sanity that balanced fidelity to the Second Vatican Council and its legitimate reforms with a deep appreciation for the Church’s entire liturgical patrimony.
In more recent years I have been privileged to contribute occasionally to the Bulletin, often with articles flowing from my work in the classroom with seminarians. Since my own licentiate and doctoral work through the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary, I have taught liturgical and sacramental theology at Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology near Milwaukee, WI, for the last decade. I was both humbled and thrilled to be asked to join Adoremus’s editorial team and continue the good work of bringing Adoremus Bulletin to its readers.
As I begin this new endeavor, I am more than ever grateful for the visionary efforts of the founders of Adoremus, Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, Father Jerry Pokorsky, and Helen Hull Hitchcock. Adoremus’s managing editor Joseph O’Brien summarized well the work of its founders on the occasion of the Bulletin’s 25th anniversary: “Together, they offered the faithful a periodical that would provide timely and truthful information and analysis on all aspects of the liturgy, seeking to show how the liturgical reform called for by the Second Vatican Council to the Church’s sacred body of communal prayer not only responds to contemporary needs but also finds its roots buried deep in tradition.” My own vision of the liturgy has been shaped by their work. It would be hard to overstate the profound impact they have had on countless Catholics, clergy and faithful alike.
It is also important to recognize with gratitude my predecessor in this role, Christopher Carstens, who has served as editor and publisher for the past ten years. I see it as a work of providence that Chris was chosen to continue the good work of Adoremus during that period of the Church’s life. If the early years of Adoremus focused on the authentic reform of the rites in the wake of the Council, Chris led the Bulletin with a vision of implementing the official liturgy of the Church by moving people more deeply into the full mystery of the sacred liturgy. He departs as editor of the Bulletin in order to expand the good works of Adoremus into other arenas. Over the past several years I have also come to know Chris as a man who “walks the walk”—a faithful son of the Church, a disciple of the Lord, a mystagogue, and a true gentleman. I am thankful for his confidence in me, asking me to pick up where he left off as editor.
I have been shaped by the principles of Adoremus and am eager to contribute to their furtherance both for seasoned readers and for those new to the Bulletin. The masthead of the Bulletin encapsulates its mission: “For the renewal of the sacred liturgy.” We desire to help priests and deacons to celebrate the Church’s liturgical rites beautifully, faithfully, and authentically; and the laity to pray more intelligently and fruitfully.
If I were to emphasize a few ideas that are of particular significance to me, I would highlight both formation and what I call “deepening.” As a seminary professor and a father, I live in a world of formation. Certainly, this includes my own ongoing intellectual and spiritual formation in the liturgy. In the realm of seminary formation, I hope that my students will see ever more clearly the theological, spiritual, and pastoral riches contained in the Church’s liturgical books. Also, having two young boys of my own, I am daily engaged in the work of mystagogy—gradually forming my sons to perceive more profoundly the divine realities just below the surface of the signs and symbols they see. I am motivated by the fact that the Second Vatican Council, followed by Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and most recently Pope Francis, all continually called for ongoing liturgical formation. And I have no doubt that Pope Leo XIV will continue that same call to the faithful! Adoremus will continue to respond to this call as an unmatched resource for liturgical formation in the Church.
Allow me to explain what I mean by “deepening.” This word encapsulates a very necessary component of this liturgical formation. As I recall my first encounter with Adoremus as an experience of the breadth and depth of the liturgy, it strikes me that far too many Catholics have still not yet experienced the Church’s liturgy with the full beauty, reverence, and spiritual richness that our liturgical books intend. Often our liturgical art, architecture, and music reflect this poverty. We must go deeper. We must, in fact, experience a deepening of our appreciation for and understanding of the liturgy. Adoremus will continue in its conviction that the Church’s reformed liturgical books are eminently worthy of our reception and of our full devotion, while at the same time drawing on the whole of the great Catholic tradition to restore to their celebration an ethos of depth, reverence, and solemnity which they have frequently lacked.
I ask you, faithful readers, to help us continue the good work begun some 30 years ago. If you appreciate our content, share it with colleagues and friends, or gift them a subscription to Adoremus Bulletin. And please continue to pray for Adoremus, its staff, its new ventures—and its new editor!
