Worship as a Revelation: The Past Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy

(Paperback)

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The publication by Benedict XVI of the motu proprio has put the question of the historyand meaning of the liturgy back into centre stage, not just for catholics but for many other christians as well. Dr. Hemming seeks to provide an intelligent background to the Pope's decision, addressing himself to a number of questions about the nature and character of catholic worship that opens a much wider historical discussion which will inform and persuade a wide audience. The chapter on liturgy and revelation is the turning point in the book and shows how an understanding of time that is presumed in all modern philosophical thought, is challenged by the understanding of divine self-revelation. This then forces us to ask what our relation to liturgical events are and how we experience them. Hemming advocates a `high` theology of the liturgy with the profoundest understanding of the spiritual and the enigma of faith. How will Christian worship change now, asks the author in his concluding chapter He offers a sketch of what may happen in the coming decades, long after the Papacy of Benedict XVI.

Reviews

" This is a book that must be read and studied and read again. It will challenge and it will inform...this is a book the claims of which must be taken very seriously" Mass of ages , november 2008, no. 188 -- Alcuin Reid Doct.
Reviewed in The Pastoral Review, July/August 2009 -- Ian Coleman
Mention -Book News, February 2009
'An intriguing account of the doctrine of transubstantiation ... Hemming's book is provocative [...] and that is to its benefit. It gets at the root issues of liturgical reform ... It repays several times over having read it and contemplated it.' Antiphon, 2008
"[An] important and cogently argued book."Church Times, April 2009
Review in New Directions, September 2008
"a book that must be read and studied and read again by theologians...and indeed by all liturgical practitioners. It will challenge and it will inform" Reviewed by Alcuin Read in Catholic Herald, 11 July 2008 * Catholic Herald *
A very readable book with a clear, single idea behind it...Worship as Revelation is thought-provoking and worth reading, the work of a first-class theological mind. -- Francesca Murphy, University of Notre Dame * Scottish Journal of Theology *

Author Bio

Laurence Paul Hemming is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Lancaster University, UK.