Missing the Forest for the Trees? The Centraility of the Paschal Mystery and the “Liturgy Wars”
Part of the 2007-2008 Liturgy Symposium
Institute of Sacred Music Great Hall, 409 Prospect Street, New Haven
Refreshments for mind, body, and spirit will be served. Free and open to the public.
The author explains liturgy as celebration of a mystery, moreover as celebration of the Paschal Mystery. Following the pattern lex orandi – lex credendi he focuses on scripture and liturgical prayers, and develops liturgical and theological criteria for a solid understanding of the Paschal Mystery as it is found in the Constitution on Liturgy of Vatican II (SC 5).
With these criteria Stuflesser tries to solve two more recent Liturgy Wars: the reintroduction of the pre-vatican, so called “Tridentine Rite” by the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI. In last July, and the question of the translation of the Latin liturgy into the vernacular after Vatican II often described with a kind of „dynamic equivalence“.
Stuflesser explains how focusing the on the liturgical theology of Vatican II and on the understanding of liturgy as celebration of the Paschal Mystery could help to avoid those “Liturgy wars” in the future.
Dr. Stuflesser is a professor theology at Julius-Maximilians-University in Wuerzburg, Germany.