Vision

Reviews / Votes

An important harvest of communications on the Western Church's public prayer in theory and practice, with perceptive updates as a bonus. Persons new to the various liturgical offices, take notice!Gerard S. Sloyan, Priest of Trenton, School of Theology and Religious Studies, The Catholic University of America This collection will be a welcome addition to any liturgical library. . . . The entire work is worth serious re-reading and reflection.Pastoral Music More than a decade after the untimely death of Mark Searle (Y?1992), theologians continue to assess his contribution to Sacramental Theology and Pastoral Liturgy. In this volume of selected essays written by Searle between 1980 and 1992 leading writers add their reflections and reminiscences. The Church is grateful to Barbara Searle and Anne Koester for keeping Mark's memory and thought alive.Michael S. Driscoll, Liturgical Studies, University of Notre Dame This is a very good book, representing the intellectual legacy of a very good man. A strong collection of Mark Searle's finest articles?and a rich range of colleagues and students in dialogue with those articles?call us to see that Searle's pastoral liturgical studies should still engage us. These studies anticipate and deepen current conversations on public meaning, ecclesial community, the nature of reform, metaphor and image, pedagogy, and justice. Indeed, current thought would be the better were it always marked by the characteristics so abundantly present in Searle's work: honest history and engaged witness; reverence and critique; poetry and precision.Gordon W. Lathrop, Charles A. Schieren Professor of Liturgy, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia Vision is an invaluable collection of ten diverse and readable?but profound?essays on liturgical development by the eminent Mark Searle, who writes with scholarly insights but always with an eye to the pragmatic and pastoral. Its publication is appropriate at this moment of specious liturgical negativity (in high places and in low places) since the articles look to the needed future progress of the Christian liturgy. This is always done with relation to the totality of human life, the creative adaptation we have come to call inculturation. The introductions to each essay by ten other renowned scholars, equally open to a progressing liturgy, serve as a kind of guarantor of church progress in Christian life. Vision is well worth a reflective reading.Frederick R. McManus This book provides a vital testimony of the vision of a man imbued with a passionate love for liturgy and for the Church.The Way These essays are as timely today as when they were first written.Worship The insights found in Mark Searle's writings are as timely today as when they were written. He asked the hard questions and the rich introductory essays by contemporary liturgical scholars continue that discussion. This collection of selected articles is not only a fitting memorial to Mark Searle but an inspiration and valuable resource for all who love the liturgy.Catherine Dooley, O.P., School of Theology and Religious Studies, The Catholic University of America