Announcing Sacra Liturgia San Francisco: June 28 - July 1, 2022

After postponements caused by the global pandemic, Sacra Liturgia is delighted to announce its fifth international conference on the Sacred Liturgy to be held, at the invitation of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in San Francisco, California, USA, from June 28 – July 1, 2022.

His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah will give the keynote presentation and shall be joined by a number of internationally renowned speakers and liturgical scholars including Bishop Steven Lopes, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, Father Michael Lang, Dom Alcuin Reid, Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka and Professor Duncan Stroik in addressing a variety of liturgical questions pertinent to the life of the Church in our day. In line with previous international conferences in Rome, New York, London and Milan, Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will include daily exemplary solemn liturgical celebrations of Mass or Vespers, concluding with a Pontifical Mass of St Junipero Serra, the Apostle of California, on his feast day, July 1st.

Further details of speakers and topics will be announced in October. Registration prices and facilities, including affordable accommodation options, will be made available in January 2022.

The full conference programme will be published after Easter.

Sacra Liturgia is profoundly grateful to Archbishop Cordileone for his invitation to come to San Francisco and for the opportunity to reconvene there. We look forward, in line with our previous conferences, to an informative event that will form its participants in the spirit and power of the Sacred Liturgy and its authentic renewal in the Church of the twenty-first century.

PS. At the time of writing the dates of the seventh international English speaking Saca Liturgia Summer School, to be held in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, in the summer of 2022 are being decided. They will be published through the usual Sacra Liturgia media in due course.

MESSAGE OF BISHOP DOMINIQUE REY

I am delighted that the fifth international Sacra Liturgia Conference will be held in San Francisco in the United States of America from 28 June - 1 July 2022. Since 2013 in Rome, New York, London and Milan, clergy, religious and laity concerned for the worthy and integral celebration of the Sacred Liturgy have come together to further their own learning and formation in the Sacred Liturgy, to pray the liturgy together, and to renew and build friendships amongst those active in what Cardinal Ratzinger once described as “the new liturgical movement.”

Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will continue this work, emphasising the essential nature of authentic liturgical formation and of the true and beautiful celebration of the Sacred Liturgy in the life and mission of the whole Church in the 21st century.

I am profoundly grateful to His Excellency, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, at whose personal initiative Sacra Liturgia will come to his Archdiocese. So too I am delighted that His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah, will be present as a keynote speaker: all those who heard his powerful addresses to Sacra Liturgia in London and in Milan will look forward to his contribution next year. I thank him and all the speakers in advance for their willingness to contribute.

The success of previous Sacra Liturgia conferences has been predicated on the generosity of local organisers, benefactors and sponsors. Without them we could not operate or provide admission at reasonable rates, particularly for students, seminarians and religious. I thank in advance all those who will help us to do this again for Sacra Liturgia San Francisco. Almighty God will not fail to reward your kindness!

I pray that Sacra Liturgia 2022 will bring many blessings to San Francisco, the United States and to the Universal Church!

+Dominique Rey

Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, France

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council taught that “Zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy is rightly held to be a sign of the providential dispositions of God in our time, as a movement of the Holy Spirit in His Church. It is today a distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action” (SC, n. 43).

The Sacra Liturgia international conferences on the Sacred Liturgy have been promoting the Council’s vision of zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy for the past eight years. We are honoured and delighted to welcome Sacra Liturgia here to San Francisco for its fifth such international conference, to be held from June 28 – July 1, 2022 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah, will give the keynote presentation. The conference will also feature a number of other internationally renowned speakers and liturgical scholars, including Bishop Steven Lopes, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, Father Michael Lang, Dom Alcuin Reid, Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka and Professor Duncan Stroik who will address a variety of liturgical questions pertinent to the life of the Church in our day. In line with previous international conferences, Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will include daily exemplary solemn liturgical celebrations of Mass or Vespers, concluding with a Pontifical Mass of St. Júnipero Serra on his feast day, July 1st. The Mass will be held in the Basilica of Mission Dolores (founded directly by St. Serra) and will be the premier of the newly-composed Mass in Honor of St. Júnipero Serra by the composer in residence of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, Frank LaRocca.

Further details of speakers and topics will be announced in October. Registration prices and facilities, including affordable accommodation options, will be made available in January 2022. The full conference program will be published after Easter.

We look forward to an informative event that will, with the grace of God, further the “movement of the Holy Spirit in His Church” and affirm the restoration of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy as the “distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, [and] indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action.”

Abp Gullickson Speaks on Liturgical Restoration at Sacra Liturgia

The Monastère Saint Benoît in La Garde-Freinet, France, is currently hosting the annual Sacra Liturgia Summer School. Yesterday evening, Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland and Lichtenstein, celebrated Pontifical Vespers of the feast of the Transfiguration, after which, he gave an address to the participants entitled “Moving Forward – My Plea for Full Liturgical Restoration”. Here are just a few excerpts from His Excellency’s talk; the full text can be read at his blog Ad Montem Myrrhae. 

Photo courtesy of the Monastère Saint Benoît, via the Facebook page of Sacra Liturgia.

“On the topic of liturgical renewal and the advancement of the tradition, I wonder if the veterans of the cause, like Dom Alcuin here, would have accurately predicted all the great things that have come to pass in these five years since our last encounter! Although the various fronts in the battle remain hardened and occasionally there are brutal setbacks, in many places we hear tell of vibrant communities, with mostly young people and families. Even in places where celebrations are still infrequent, I have experienced the exuberance of people who will give of themselves generously, with or without the expertise of communities like the Seminaries in Wigratzbad in Germany or Denton, Nebraska, not far from my home in the US, to bring about liturgies of extraordinary beauty, which draw people from far and wide.

In these five years, even among supporters of the traditional Latin Mass the terms of discourse have changed somewhat. We encounter dyed in the wool traditionalists who now tend to glow and melt because of the hope inspired by annual occurrences such as the Chartres Pilgrimage. It is not that our witness is less militant or strident, but things are changing. Our Merciful Lord offers us the occasion not only to stand fast but also to be nurturing for once, in the real and ever growing hope of winning over men and women of good will for the cause of the Tradition.

‘Moving Forward’ then! Any right minded or right thinking Catholic should have an instinctive aversion for the notion of progress or moving forward, especially when it comes to the Divine Liturgy in and of itself. This aversion wells up not because of any prejudice rooted in some kind of antiquarian spirit or predilection, but because the obsession with progress is wrong-headed. It can be and most often is disjunctive, that is, not Catholic. It is often modernist, flawed in the most profound sense, and hence it is wrong to look for progress in things either Catholic or liturgical, as if progressing were a value. That being said, I still want to title my talk ‘Moving Forward’, because organic development in matters liturgical is a part of our history and rightly so. Liturgical life in the Church did not reach its apex with the death of the last Apostle. Catholic liturgy is not frozen in time once and for all. There is development in the way we worship and have worshiped over the centuries. Divine liturgy is something rational, but as such it is in continuity with the past and marked above all by a constancy which takes it out of the hands of innovators, of liturgists and even of popes and councils. Unfortunately, the postconciliar liturgical reforms were tainted by arbitrariness or caprice far more than attaining any particular improvement or progression they may wish to claim as fruits of the reform. …

Be advised that ‘turning back’ is not so much a nostalgic turning back of the clock. Rather, it is a systematic reset aimed at recovering our footing, if you will. Why bet on a loser? Why jump into the abyss if you do not have to? Right reason would decree that a best effort be made at recovery; we need to pick up the trail that was lost or abandoned. Liturgical restoration could become a rallying point for a general recovery of faith life, or perhaps given the half century and several (2+) generations which separate us from our patrimony, represents the hoped-for bulwark against an even greater loss of faith. The Vetus Ordo could become the beachhead for a new evangelization, a renewal of faith life within the Church and for the world. …

Some of you, no doubt, are even more aware than I am of the volumes of literature out there analyzing what went wrong in the Church and in the world back at the time of the Second Vatican Council. Far be it from me not to accentuate the positive, but it is time for us to face up to the hard reality. You might say that what I am arguing for is an honest effort on the part of Catholics to get beyond denial and to recognize the arbitrary nature of much of what was imposed upon us, yes, I will say it, with violence. If you do not like the word ‘violence’, then substitute the expression “imposed with arbitrary force of will”.