Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Notes from the 2016 Notre Dame Symposium 5: Ritual - How Do We Form People in a Visual Culture

KIMBERLY BELCHER: "Ritual Formation and Evangelization"

 History,  ritual and formation in the liturgical movement

1. Narrative of the past 
2. Explains one aspect of the present evolution.  Romanticism

Metzger book History of the Liturgy as example: everything took place before 12th century or between then and Vatican II. Liturgy is something that takes place in old books.  For most people text is not the most important thing about their experience of the liturgy.

Liturgy's boundaries  

Through 20th century boundaries were the 7 sacraments.  Text studies fairly limited.... Jewish texts, etc.  
also Liturgy of the Hours  
Liturgical Year
Rites of Burial
Occasional rites a any public prayer in common

Renewal was limited to input of books and output of books.  That is not sufficient.

Liturgy's meaning
Aidan Kavanaugh Three Days story of baptism romanticized

Paul Bradshaw and Max Johhnson The eucharistic liturgies - deconstructs the romanticism... There was no golden age of the catechumenate...

History and the worshiping subject.  Guardini (1918) on the church as beyond the body of the faithful.  In 1964. He said in the 19th century we moved to qwindividualistic inward act and lost the sense of being a member of the body of Christ 

Some implications of ritual
Traditional -----> pluralistic.    In a traditional worlds there is only one way.. The way you have always done it and your parents etc.  we forget there was evolution

Oral----> Post-literate. Transition to culture not adept at interpreting body language, imagery etc.  but are adept at texts. (Now that is transitioning to a culture of images again.

  • Distinction between public and private eroding
  • Knowledge is embodied  and interpretive
  • Individuals do not live  in stable symbolic communities it contrict their social worlds through pastiche 

Ritual: a system of mutually interpreting human behaviors that function as connected tissues....

Ritual and meanings
  • Meaning is fluid, not fixed
  • Meanings are constructed by practice and reflection over time - we have to go back to it over and over so the ritual can speak to us when time arises
  • Individuals are now capable of subversion-assigning sago a practice a earning opposite that prescribed by authority - confirmation
  • Ritual can be a space for production of meanings rather than having a meaning of its own

Solutions
Hermeneutics 
Allowing space for questions

Ritual: defying bounds

Ritual is "connective tissue". Can be stretched but retain its connection
  • Liturgy has intrinsic tension between its nearness and distance from the everyday
  • Liturgy promotes connections bwtwymundane experience, private prayer, and social and cultural life

Ritual and renewal

Not just about new books or old books!

Nathan Mitchell is it possible that modern people don't know how to make a ritual act?

We need to learn to dance! We need to give people permission to thrive in the culture the live in that isnverynnegative

Liturgical evangelization:  
Make space to LISTEN
To decolonizing cultures 
To those we minister to
Build up the partial

Foster BODY  practice. Doesn't just happen in the Eucharist.
How does our culture re-learn how to process?

Video of Kenyan dances at papal Mass

Photography as tool to help people reintegrate their lives

  • REFLECT and remember use photos to help the,m remember 
  • SPEAK a common language from our experience

Pictures of 2 churches from Flickr...

Pictures take a sustained gaze to generate theological reflection

We need to get together to generate sustained reflection on our rites -theological reflection in communities. 

Ritual evangelization is to assist people in liturgy, not to assess

Q & A
Doing this together communally builds up an assembly that understands how better to celebrate

In our cultures athletes and musicians understand doing things over and over until we get it right.







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