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A New Liturgical Hermeneutic: Christian
Maturation by Developmental Steps
Author(s) -
Leachman James
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2008.01269.x
Subject(s) - liturgy , prayer , theology , philosophy , presentation (obstetrics) , sociology , classics , epistemology , history , medicine , radiology
In this paper I first survey several paradigms of liturgical renewal that respond to the mandate of the Second Vatican Council and I restate a suggestion made in 2007 for a new model of liturgical study, ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’. This new model encourages a deeper appreciation of the current liturgy and is offered that the Church may better discern the way forward in the renewal of the liturgy. Then, following a brief presentation of the liturgical hermeneutic taught at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy and a practical example of analysing a prayer with this method, I conclude by showing how the ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’ model has helped to reveal a liturgical hermeneutic heretofore overlooked, that of Christian maturation by developmental steps. The method which Daniel McCarthy and I have developed and used here can validly be applied to other liturgical sources, yet this paper's conclusions, based on the analysis of a newly‐composed oration in one of the renewed texts ( editiones typicae ) resulting from the Second Vatican Council and the Constitution on the Liturgy, suggest that Christian maturation was a real concern of those taking part in the Council.