Bert Groen

Event time: 
Monday, March 1, 2010 - 11:30am
Event description: 

Men’s Liturgy, Women’s Liturgy, and Then?

Part of the 2009-2010 Liturgy Symposium

Institute of Sacred Music Great Hall, 409 Prospect Street

Refreshments for mind, body, and spirit will be served. Free and open to the public.


My objective is to make observations and suggestions with respect to a Christian liturgy that does justice to gender. First, I will examine how biblical and early Christian attitudes towards women and their liturgical roles were transformed and led to the marginalization of women in later Eastern and Western services. Second, I consider male fixations and several initiatives of reform in current Roman Catholic liturgy and theology, and I will discuss ‘women’s liturgies’ as counterbalance to traditional ecclesiastical services. Third, characteristics of adequate liturgical language and theological guidelines for worship which does justice to both sexes are presented.

 

Basilius J. Groen (called: Bert) is professor at the Institute of Liturgy, Christian Art and Hymnology, at the University of Graz, Austria. He was born in 1953 in the Netherlands. After graduation at a Dutch grammar school he spent a year as a foreign exchange student in the USA (1971-72; graduation at Jamestown High School, North Dakota). Then he studied philosophy, theology and Modern Greek in Nijmegen and Amsterdam, as well as liturgy, Byzantine art and hymnology in Trier and Thessalonica. Subsequently, he became director of the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, University of Nijmegen. In 2002, he was appointed full professor at the Institute for Liturgy, Christian Art and Hymnology, University of Graz, Austria. In that university he also holds the UNESCO-Chair for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue in Southeastern Europe. In addition, he is chairman of the Austrian professors of liturgical studies, he chairs the Austrian section of the “International Society of Friends of Nikos Kazantzakis”, and is a member of the board of governors of the ecumenical Pro Oriente Foundation in Vienna. In his scholarly writings he deals with, i.a., rites of the sick, current pastoral-liturgical issues, Byzantine worship, ecumenism and several aspects of Balkan studies. He is married and has a daughter, a son-in-law and a grandson.

www.b-groen.org