Part 1—Plenary Sessions
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space arrangement and decoration, text, ritual gesture, object-symbols, dance, etc.), anyone who gave the whole or major part of his preoccupation to any one of these elements for worship was understood to be a liturgist. A professional liturgist was one who possessed a theoretic mastery or expertise in his particular area of liturgy, i.e., a reflective grasp and the ability to articulate this reflexive grasp, especially in the company of others who possess a similar expertise. (You will note that the word “theoretic” was chosen over the word “academic” since “academic” refers to only one form of theoretic expertise: the professional liturgist is not to be defined exclusively in terms of the academic credentials which qualify some.)
A second question touched the area of goal: what would such an academy set as a purpose for itself? There was much agreement that the primary goal of this association should be for the mutual enrichment of its membership, an exchanging of expertise oriented to the deepening and nourishment of our own professional involvement with liturgy. It was thought that the question of service for the Churches and Church-organizations would inevitably arise of itself, and that it would be a mistake to let that question preoccupy the thoughts of everyone as we got started. And, lastly, it was affirmed we did not see ourselves as a “pressure group” though we realized that an association of professionals in liturgy would quite naturally carry some weight in the estimate of others.22
That letter concluded that the next meeting would be January 2-5, 1975, and most likely at Notre Dame. A letter sent out in September in anticipation of the Notre Dame meeting introduced the topic for that meeting. That was, “establishing the true criteria for the cultural development of liturgy.” It is important to note how explicit they were in identifying “liturgy” as a multi-sensory ritual event, and not just a text. Further, its study was multidisciplinary, involving history, theology, and the human sciences. Lastly, it was at least ecumenical if not inter-faith. It raised the question of how the pastoral and theoretical approaches played out in this proposed group. It was agreed that there were significant pastoral implications to the work of liturgists, but given the general agreement that the primary purpose of our academy should be the mutual enrichment of its membership—a process which would inevitably overflow to the pastoral good of the Churches, it did not seem logical to make immediate pastoral relevance the normative criterion according to which a topic for our meeting should be chosen.23
It was proposed that the meeting would take place primarily in small groups, with occasional gatherings of all in attendance. Further correspondence indicated that a January meeting of the “American Academy of Liturgists” at Notre Dame was going to be organized around working groups with two plenary sessions. The first was a keynote address by Mary Collins whose topic was “Liturgical Methodology for the Cultural Evolution of Worship in America.”24 The other address was offered by Jesuit historian James Hennessey entitled, “The Dimensions of American Religious Experience.” The purpose of this second address was “Not to report the facts known to all, but to seek to uncover some of the radical impulses in our cultural experience which have been the locus of our experience of God’s Presence (or obstacles to it), and which can, perhaps, suggest to us something of our future.”
