Catholic World Report has posted an interview with Dom Alcuin Reid about the Sacra Liturgia Conference to be held from June 1-4 in New York City. Here are a few excerpts; you can read the complete interview at their website, in which Dom Alcuin also gives the list of speakers and liturgical events. (Also previously announced here on NLM.)
CWR: What do you hope to achieve through this conference?Dom Alcuin: I think the reason people wanted a Sacra Liturgia conference in the USA was because they saw that what we did in Rome was to further peoples’ formation in what the Sacred Liturgy is, in how to celebrate and pray it, and in appreciating its utterly fundamental role in living the Christian life of witness and mission in the world of the twenty-first century. We did this at various levels—practically by the full and beautiful celebration of the older and the newer rites, academically through the presentations of many expert scholars and pastors which have done a lot already to move liturgical scholarship forward, and informally through the contacts and networks built up throughout the conference.
If our New York conference can continue that work of liturgical formation and sound scholarship and put people in contact with one another we shall be very pleased.
CWR: What place does this conference have in what has become known as the “new liturgical movement”?
Dom Alcuin: Certainly Sacra Liturgia wishes to be seen as something standing at the centre of the new liturgical movement. That is a phrase that comes from Pope Benedict XVI’s book The Spirit of the Liturgy, written as Cardinal Ratzinger before his election to the papacy.
We look to support all that is good and true in the liturgical life of the Church: we promote an authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council’s mandate for liturgical reform and an assessment of the implementation of its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that is faithful to the Council. We are open to an ongoing consideration of the value of a possible reform of the reform. Most certainly we work for the integral celebration of the usus recentior (the modern liturgy) with an optimal ars celebrandi—that way of celebrating the liturgy fully, beautifully and in harmony with its received tradition—as well as an openness to the value and riches of the usus antiquior (the older rites) in the Church today.
All of these are elements of the new liturgical movement. If we can move forward on these fronts Catholics will be able to draw ever more deeply from the source and summit of Christian life—which is what the Sacred Liturgy is—and our mission in the world will be stronger, more effective.