Applied Liturgical Research Lab

That such an institute is possible arises out of breaking research into an event-based liturgical theology, developed over 30 years by James O'Regan (see below). The development a single language to account for description, interpretation, critique, prescription and prediction for liturgical event now allows for a holistic approach to liturgical formation that is at the same time theologically rich and practical. This breakthrough allows for the next step in the conciliar reform of liturgy that goes beyond establishing new texts and into the theological management of the events of speech and action. This institute now has the tools with which to work the reform at its next level.

This liturgical training institute will train trainers in the physical execution of Roman Catholic⁽¹⁾, Anglican, Lutheran and other traditions' liturgies. It will explore and rehearse the “how to do,” what Cardinal Ratzinger has written, “the right way to preserve [the Liturgy’s] vital force in changing times.”⁽²⁾

The institute focuses on training trainers rather than training priests, deacons and lectors in order to populate training needs across North America. These trainers, in turn, will train priests, deacons and lectors.

The institute enters the scene of liturgical experience in North America that sees that bishops’ conferences have relied on the fact of the vernacular to stand for training in how to do the rites. After all, everyone can speak their own language. How hard can it be to pray the liturgy in one’s own language? Unfortunately and perhaps counter intuitively, doing the rites is one of the most difficult challenges in ministerial priesthood: to take someone else’s words and actions (paradosis) and make them one's own for others.

Dom Aidan Kavanagh wrote concerning the effect of liturgy poorly prayed: “Worse, the blandness of ceremony in contrast to the rich imagery in the texts may suggest to people that textual images are not to be taken seriously because those who conduct the ceremony do not seem to do so.”⁽³⁾

This effect, also noted by Romano Guardini’s in his famous challenge about the capabilities of modern society to do liturgy at all, has spread from parish to parish. The institute proposes that the lament stems from one simple phenomenon: that priests today have received training in the rites only to the extent of what to do. Not how to do it.⁽⁴⁾ They know their theology but the practicum that they undergo is uninformed.⁽⁵⁾

The institute will develop the gifts and skills to perform a ‘richness of ceremony congruent with the rich imagery in the texts that may suggest to people that textual images are to be taken seriously because those who conduct the ceremony do so.' It will help recapture a living tradition glossed over by indifferent performance.

The sacramental realities of the Roman Rite can speak powerfully but they tend not to, in parish after parish, mostly because of Kavanagh’s lament. What Kavanagh and Guardini have seen is the result of poor training not malice aforethought.⁽⁶⁾ No priest intends blandness of ceremony. No lector wants to mumble and misspeak. They simply have not found training because it doesn’t exist. The institute can provide that training. Its principal, James O'Regan, has provided that training with effective results. The approach to liturgical training arises out of Guardini’s admonition that the way into the liturgy is by “seeing and doing.”⁽⁷⁾ It is the liturgical equivalent of internship for a medical doctor – doing hands-on liturgical rehearsal under close scrutiny.

The training focuses on the theology and physical processes of breathing, voice production, movement and gesture in staged time and space. Trainers will be able to fully explore and understand the physical realities of the rites. They will know viscerally what it means to proclaim before an assembly, to pray in common and to lead public prayer. They will be able to physically feel the difference between how they minister in everyday life and how they minister in the liturgical event. In short, each student will learn how to embody liturgical text as spoken before an assembly. They will, in Romano Guardini's words, be fully capable of "seeing and doing;" in Aidan Kavanagh's words, of fully "attending to liturgy's strong scenes."⁽⁸⁾ The institute will follow Guardini’s conviction: “The way to liturgical life does not go through mere teaching, but before all it goes through doing. Seeing and doing are the ground work on which all the rest is founded.”⁽⁹⁾

James O'Regan's examples of training⁽¹⁰⁾ may illustrate those results: In the Spring of 2005, in the sixth hour of a six hour training session over three weeks “rehearsing” the Eucharistic Prayer II (BAS) with two Anglican seminarians at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, a most remarkable outcome arose. He had given one seminarian the two-fold instruction to be as loud as she could be (without shouting) and as slow as she could stand (at least three seconds between words). As one may surmise, the speaking was choppy and awkward. It made no sense. By insisting on loud and slow, he was giving the speaker the time to hear each word as fully as possible without having to rush forward, looking for meaning. As she spoke, here and there, a word would make sense. But, at the first “Do this in remembrance of me” after the bread, as she spoke “remembrance…of… me,” a reality proposed itself to O'Regan, to the other two participants and to the seminarian who spoke. Those three words had the sound of fragility, a tone of poignancy and spoke of a person before whose eyes, only inches away, staring him in the face, was oblivion, and he called out to his friends to remember him.

In the almost four decades of hearing those words, again and again, O'Regan had never heard that reality proposed. He had never experienced such a visceral connection between the action of Jesus at the Last Supper and his death upon a cross. One, of course, knows the theology but here was the reality. It was indeed a remarkable moment of a rite speaking powerfully.

O'Regan asked the seminarian what she thought of her speaking. She replied that she almost cried. What the seminarian had experienced, as she spoke, was as much a surprise to herself as it was to those in the space. That such a reality could have physically happened at all was a function of her speaking loudly and slowly enough for her voice to falter and for the very word “remembrance” to dictate to her how it wished to be spoken. For that is what happened. It was not her speaking but Christ through her. O'Regan had not told her how to say the words nor gave suggestions about what the words might mean to her. He simply said, be loud and be slow. The work was at the physical level of ”seeing and doing.”

That phenomenon was paradosis playing out in the rite before all who were there to witness. While this rehearsal was not liturgy, it remained prayerful and liturgical. What is most important is that the seminarian had the physical, visceral, experience of what full liturgical prayer could be, and how to be open to do it again and again in the future.

The same results specific to the "Do this..." occured at Regis College in 2006 with a Roman Catholic seminarian. The physical approach to the rite can yield improved results in real time with any person. With individual coaching by skilled trainers, all who do liturgy can do it fully. Each presider can lay themselves out to the action of the Spirit in liturgy.

There are over 3,000 positions for such trainers in North America among dioceses and centers of formation in the form of manageable territories in the hands of skilled, gifted and knowledgeable trainers.⁽¹¹⁾ These trainers can provide real and effective solutions to the challenges of the rites faced by lectors, deacons and presiders.

O'Regan's 30 years of research has focused on the physicality of liturgy as we do it. He recently identified over 120 distinct aspects of live liturgy.⁽¹²⁾ These aspects are part of the training offered in the institute. He also presented the first event-based methodology for analyzing live liturgy, using the construct of "proximity." ⁽¹³⁾ This methodology now forms the groundwork for training offered in the institute.

O'Regan has published over 100 articles about live liturgy. His eBook, Kids Pray the Darndest Things: Effective Liturgy,⁽¹⁴⁾ received this endorsement from Msgr. James Moroney of the USCCB Liturgy Secretariat:

“Across the country, parishes are seeking to prepare liturgical celebrations, which draw children into a 'full, conscious, and active participation' in the sacred mysteries.

Kids Pray the Darndest Things provides cogent and exciting insights into the practical implications of the way the Church seeks to accomplish this essential goal, especially as it is presented in the Directory for Masses with Children.

This book should enjoy an important place on the shelf of every parish liturgist.”

These short endorsements refer to O'Regan's training sessions with presiders and lectors:

Dr. John Gibaut, Saint Paul University:

"...sessions were simply wonderful, from many different perspectives: theological, pastoral, liturgical and performative. I have noted a change in the presidential style in all three students, and not just in the seminars, but in other liturgical contexts over the past month at the
university, which (is) a direct consequence of your sessions.

...a gifted teacher, and you have taught us not just about how to pray the Eucharistic Prayer, but about the prayer, its deeper structure, meaning, sense and spirituality. I think also you imparted something of the mystery of presidential ministry, and hence, something of the meaning of priesthood."

Msgr Len Lunney, Episcopal Vicar, Archdiocese of Ottawa:

“As presider, I noticed the improved quality of proclamation for those who attended these formation sessions. Certainly the parish benefited from the greater clarity and effect of these proclamations of the word.

If results are anything to go by, James certainly gets results for the betterment of the Church.”

If this background and context resonates with your experience and perception of the state of liturgy in North America and the English-speaking world, and if you have an interest in attending or supporting this institute, please contact James O'Regan.

1. This approach to liturgical training easily applies to all episcopal or so-called "liturgical" traditions.
2. Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, “Book Review: The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Dom Alcuin Reid, O.S.B.”, Sacred Music, Winter 2004, v. 131, n 4, p. 21
3. Kavanagh, Aidan, “Seeing Liturgically,” Time and Community: in honor of Thomas Julian Talley, Washington, Pastoral Press, 1990, p. 275
4. “Pastors of souls must therefore realize that, when the liturgy is celebrated, something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration; it is their duty also to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects.” Abbott and Gallagher, The Documents of Vatican II, p. 143.
5. O'Regan's email survey of centre of formation across North America shows a wide divergence in the amount and content of liturgical praxis with little to no evidence of the physical aspects of embodied text.
6. “Television is constantly showing us gestures that are beautiful, decorous, and expressive. These pictures on the screen reflect hours of the most precise training and exacting rehearsal. Should the celebrants who handle, so to speak, the realities of the new and everlasting covenant be exempt from the same basic preparation?” O'Brien, Thomas C.; Fontaine, Gaston; International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Documents on the liturgy 1963-1979 conciliar, papal, and curial texts, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982, p. 147
7. Guardini, Romano, Sacred Signs, London: Sheed & Ward, 1937, introduction
8. Op. cit., p. 278
9. Op. cit., p. xv
10. http://www.jamesoregan.com/Liturgy/clarity.htm
11. This number is based loosely on the Ottawa archdiocese broken down in such a way as to allow a trainer to work with a limited number of “students” so that each has an opportunity to rehearse fully. A minimum of 20 minutes per training exercise per person seems to work best.
12. O'Regan presented a paper on the “taxonomy” of liturgy as event in Montreal at the regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion, May 7.05.
13. "Proximity: Fundamental Construct for Homogeneous Methodology in Liturgical Theology," paper presented at the North American Academy of Liturgy, Liturgical Hermeneutics Seminar, Toronto, January 6, 2007
14. http://www.jamesoregan.com/Kids_Pray/