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Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue By Bruce T. Morrill Collegeville, Liturgical, 2000. 224 pp. $27.95.
Sometimes books that try to bridge the ditch between liturgy and political theology fail because they make artificial connections. Ritualists feel they really ought to say something practical, and moralists feel their ideology really ought to be connected to the worship of the church somehow, but neither group knows why. Also, sometimes these books confuse because they compare unequal things. Comparing rubrics with social justice, or particular moral principles with liturgy, is like comparing one's pet dog to the phylum amphibia: It is both artificial and confusing.
Bruce Morrill's book is a rare exception to both these problems. He does bring partners from each side of the ditch into dialogue, as his subtitle promises, but the connection he perceives is integral, not artificial, and what he compares are two phyla in Christianity, liturgical theology and political theology. Liturgical theology is not about banners and stoles and rubrics; it is about "the ancient traditional practices of the Church's liturgy [that] included among their fundamental purposes and goals the transformation of all who...