Society for Catholic Liturgy conference, Oct 2-4, 2014, in Colorado Springs

This past weekend I presented a paper at the annual conference of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, in Colorado Springs.  St. Mary's Cathedral was a great venue for the conference, and it was great to meet some new people and hear some quite excellent papers and presentations.

Here are some brief write-ups about the conference.  The main keynote was from Bp. Conley of Lincoln.

Bp. Conley giving keynote at St. Mary's Cathedral. Picture by Jennifer Donelson.
 

My paper was called "Order of Levitical Blessing: Fruitfully Reclaiming a Patristic, Liturgical Typology of the Diaconate."  I argued that the Latin Church very early developed a theology of the diaconate based on the type of the Levite, the second priesthood (after that of Aaron) of the Old Testament.  We can see this type used in a wide variety of sources, liturgical and non-liturgical.  I sketched out the main lines of development of the type, noting its moral arguments and its theological implications for relationships among the grades of Holy Orders, and I examined the use of the type in the ordination rites of deacons in the Latin Church (citing texts from the Leonine Sacramentary, Gelasian Sacramentary, Gregorian Sacramentary, Missale Francorum, Liber Ordinum (Mozarabic Rite), and Tridentine (1595) Pontificale Romanum), and comparing the much more limited use of the type in the current (2012 English edition) Pontificale.  I showed how the Tradition had developed an understanding of specific blessings or graces for the Church in the separate ministry of deacons, complementing that of other orders, and how that idea disappeared from the current recension of the rite, because it used only New Testament passages to develop a (slightly different) theology of the diaconate.  I therefore suggested that re-introducing the previous Old Testament typology to our understanding of the rite and of the diaconate would greatly add to the Church's reflection on the renewal of the diaconate, and help us answer key questions about certain aspects of its sacramentality, and about its distinctive place within the layers of the Church's ministry.