Applied Liturgical Research Lab
Pedagogical Approach
In learning by seeing and doing,
students blend theoretical, theological and practical knowedge
at once and in a holistic manner.
By undergoing what they will train in others,
students have the best position
from which to offer concrete,
theologically rich coaching for liturgical formation.A Core Proposition
Liturgy is a performing art at its core. It may be seen as many other things: normative sacrament, act of worship, common prayer, locus for primary theology, where Church happens, the deposit of the faith... but, at its very core, it is a performing art - it is an action, something that the people of God and God do. Liturgy belongs to the greater family of performing arts. It is from that family of human communications that God has chosen and shaped liturgy for communion with creation and his people. It is a performing art in which savings acts unfold.
"I was guided by the conviction that [opening the door to the liturgical world] was not to be attained by the process of explaining at what time or under what circumstances some custom or prayer came into use. Not by declaring the deep underlying dogmatic thought which is implied in some rite, where the connection does not arise from the living action itself.
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. Illustrate it by clear doctrine; join it with Catholic tradition by historical teaching. That must come, of course. But it must be a doing - and a true doing, not mere practising that it may be well known. Doing is something elementary, in which the whole man must take part, with all his creative powers: a live carrying out; a live experience, understanding, seeing." [from the introduction; Romano Guardini, Sacred Signs, Sheed & Ward, London, 1937.]
Hence, this institute focuses on the physicality of prayer as its core principle for training in the rites. The body-at-work grounds authentic liturgical spirituality.
A Lament
"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. Thus a certain distrust of verbal scenes imperceptibly sets in, making the texts seem to be overblown rhetoric unsupported by the ceremony surrounding them. No longer can the texts’ verbal scenes be imagined, and the texts themselves come to be discounted, distrusted, or ignored altogether. In any case, the liturgy’s ability to form its participants into a richly common way of seeing the world and the mystery at its heart weakens, yet another motive for community coherence is lost, and the root metaphor of Christ’s Body becomes a source of dispute or mere speculation. When the imagination of Christians goes flat, enculturating the metaphor becomes impossible, and the force of the mystery manifested drains away.
To move in this direction is to encounter one negative after another, as it were in a descending spiral that can only end in disaster liturgically, theologically and pastorally. To move in the opposite direction seems the only alternative. Attending to the liturgy’s strong textual scenes is one way to begin, going on from them to reestablishing the liturgy’s strong ceremonial scenes as compliments. When both begin to support each other, the participants’ way of seeing the world might begin to take on a distinctive Christian quality once again, and their evangelical and sacramental self-confidence may begin to return.” [conclusion to "Seeing Liturgically" by Aidan Kavanagh, Time and Community: in honor of Thomas Julian Talley, Washington, Pastoral Press, 1990, p. 278]
A Solution
The Institute will train trainers, presiders and other liturgical ministers in the theology and physical processes of breathing, voice production, movement and gesture in staged time and space. Each will learn how to discover liturgical text as spoken before an assembly, in short, public praying. They will, in Guardini's words, be fully capable of "seeing and doing," in Kavanagh's words, of fully "attending to liturgy's strong scenes."
Most approaches to liturgical practicum mix public speaking techniques and liturgical theology. Some approaches make the mistake of using electronic media as feedback, such as video taping performance, for later analysis. Such an approach mixes media that are not suited to each other. After all, “less is more” for TV and film, while, for live events, “more is more. “ What works for TV does not in any way work for a live event. The only fruitful feedback for a live event is biofeedback on site and in time. That is exactly how events like theatre and opera work.
Unfortunately, liturgical theology remains rooted, at the hermeneutical level, in text-based analyses such as literary hermeneutics or semiotics or symbols. It tries to adapt such text-based approaches to action but the results are clumsy and full of holes, since they derive from static media, that is, text or (sacred) object.
The institute’s approach to training is rooted in non-verbal, multi-dimensional, embodied, event-based analyses drawn from theatrum (to watch). It makes the empirical connections between liturgy, theatre and other performing arts. It resituates theological reflection within the arena of scripted movement on-the-fly. It allows the student to start anywhere, specifically from the exact point of her development in situ, and to explore strengths and weaknesses in any direction, all the while keeping the whole of liturgy plainly in view. It can delve into liturgical complexity or leap to its simplicity with ease. From among over 120 liturgical event dynamics, the method uses the construct of proximity to describe, prescribe and interpret liturgical action.
As far as is known, no other centre for formation offers this approach to liturgical training.
© James O'Regan, 2004, 2005