Table Of Content.d
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
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TOWARD A TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
OF LITURGICAL PARTICIPATION
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
Created from nottingham on 2021-04-07 19:22:07.
R. Gabriel Pivarnik, OP
Foreword by Rev. Msgr. Kevin W. Irwin
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
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Toward a Trinitarian Theology
of Liturgical Participation
A PUEBLO BOOK
Liturgical Press Collegeville, Minnesota
www.litpress.org
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
Created from nottingham on 2021-04-07 19:22:07.
A Pueblo Book published by Liturgical Press
Cover design by David Manahan, OSB. Cover photo: Thinkstock Photos.
Cover Illustration: Frank Kacmarcik, OblSB, used with permission.
Excerpts from documents of the Second Vatican Council are from Vatican Council II. Volume 1, The Conciliar and
Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery, OP, © 1996 (Costello Publishing Company, Inc.). Used with
permission.
© 2012 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by
any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the
previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-
7500. Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN 978-0-8146-6260-1 (e-book)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012950684
ISBN 978-0-8146-6285-4
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
Created from nottingham on 2021-04-07 19:22:07.
For my parents,
William and Barbara
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
Created from nottingham on 2021-04-07 19:22:07.
Contents
Foreword
Kevin W. Irwin
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Search for Meaning within Liturgical Participation
The Unfolding of a Trinitarian Narrative in the Concept of
Chapter 1:
Liturgical Participation
Attempts at Creating a Trinitarian Approach to Participation I:
Chapter 2:
Cipriano Vagaggini
Attempts at Creating a Trinitarian Approach to Participation II:
Chapter 3:
Edward Kilmartin
Later Attempts to Articulate a Trinitarian Theology of
Chapter 4:
Participation
.d Chapter 5: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation
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10 Bibliography
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
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Foreword
From a pastoral as well as a theological point of view probably no one word
typifies what the liturgical reforms of Vatican II were primarily concerned with
than the word “participation.” While adding up the number of times a word is
used in any document and on that basis suggesting its importance can be very
deceptive, nonetheless the fact that the term “participation” is used sixteen times
in the liturgy constitution from Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and that its
modifier is “active” on twelve of those occasions and that “liturgical instruction
and active participation” is cited as one of the three principles on which the
restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy is based is very significant.1 After
the reformed rites were published and subsequently translated into vernacular
languages, enormous efforts were undertaken to invite those who participated in
the former liturgy to engage themselves now more fully in the sacred liturgy by
using their voices and bodies to experience the action of nothing less than the
Trinity at work among us through the rites and prayers of the sacred liturgy, well
understood.2
That the term “participation” has been used and fostered since the first part of
the twentieth century in the papal magisterium is clear.3 That the vernacular was
cited by the pioneers of the liturgical movement as a means to this end is also
clear. But what is less clear is what the term “participation” actually means in its
breadth and depth. Some have recently argued (not without value) that there was
so much emphasis placed on the externals of the reformed liturgy that physical
activity seemed to be what active participation meant as envisioned by the
council. Some have taken this more than a precipitous step further and written
that what really matters is “to take part in” Christ’s paschal mystery interiorly and
internally and that the means to do this through the liturgy did not matter. In fact,
the means to participate do matter a great deal, because the sacred liturgy matters
a great deal. The means we use are based on two important and classic Catholic
.d principles—of sacramentality and of the incarnation. This is to say that the way
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Despite the frequency with which the phrase “active participation” was used in
Sacrosanctum Concilium, what was needed then and what is needed still are
Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
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theological explorations of its meaning both then and now. Father Pivarnik offers
us rich fare in this solidly grounded, thoroughly researched, densely argued, but
eminently readable monograph. It is a work of true theological scholarship that
will serve the ongoing renewal of the church for years to come, derived from the
church’s participation in the sacred liturgy.
In placing Cipriano Vagaggini, OSB, and Edward Kilmartin, SJ, in dialogue
with the church’s magisterium, Father Pivarnik accomplishes what Catholic
theologians often strive to do, that is, to offer arguments and perspectives on a
topic simply not available through the magisterium alone because of the nature of
magisterial statements. At times reactive (as at the Council of Trent) and at times
deliberately pithy and open-ended (as in Sacrosanctum Concilium), magisterial
statements deserve fuller theological exploration and explanation from within the
Catholic theological tradition. In Cipriano Vagaggini, Father Pivarnik has chosen
a classically trained theologian, an expert in liturgical texts (both East and West),
and an esteemed peritus at Vatican II. In Edward Kilmartin, Father Pivarnik has
chosen a premier sacramental theologian of the twentieth century whose
knowledge and use of insights from several German trinitarian theologians to help
explain what the liturgy is remains unsurpassed. In summarizing and using both
Vagaggini’s and Kilmartin’s oeuvre, he provides the great service of condensing the
rather diffuse and numerous articles and books from each author and in the
process offers the next generation of liturgical scholars important bibliographical
material for future research. (While both Vagaggini and Kilmartin have left us key
books, i.e., Vagaggini’s Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy in its various editions
from 1957 on and Kilmartin’s Christian Liturgy, Father Pivarnik has brought them
into dialogue with the rest of their articles and books, in some cases updating and
nuancing the originals.)
And yet, Father Pivarnik is not uncritical of even these giants in the
constellation of important twentieth-century liturgical theologians. His
assessments and evaluations are precise and invitational in the sense that when he
offers what are still underdeveloped ideas from each author, he invites the reader
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It is especially in chapter 5 of this book that we benefit from Father Pivarnik’s
linguistic abilities, as well as his philosophical and theological training as a son of
Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
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St. Thomas and as a teacher who himself has already drawn many into
appreciating more fully what it means to participate in the sacred liturgy. I
anticipate that this study will make him an invaluable dialogue partner in future
debates about the ongoing renewal of the church as based on liturgical
participation—a major point of what liturgical participation means, which is
unfortunately often lost in some contemporary debates. His theological expertise
abounds on every page of this book.
The liturgy is a many splendored thing. It can be viewed and grasped from a
variety of viewpoints and perspectives. In choosing the lens of “trinitarian liturgical
participation” Father Pivarnik has chosen one of the foundations on which the
entire enterprise of liturgy is based. We are in his debt for inviting us to go
beyond the externals and the ephemeral and to drink deeply of the liturgy at it
source—in and through the triune God. This book should become a model for
others trying to help us all appreciate what it means to participate in the sacred
liturgy.
Rev. Msgr. Kevin W. Irwin
Walter J. Schmitz Chair in Liturgical Studies
School of Theology and Religious Studies
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC
1 See http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-
ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html, 14, 19, 27, 30, 41, 50, 113, 114, 121, 124, and the title
preceding 14.
2 Sacrosanctum Concilium refers to per ritus et preces (48).
3 See this often repeated phrase from Tra le sollecitudini of Pope Pius X (1903).
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Pivarnik, R. Gabriel. Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation, Liturgical Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=4545116.
Created from nottingham on 2021-04-07 19:22:07.
