NAAL Newsletter
Fall 2006
- Letter from the President: Paul Turner
- Make Your Hotel Reservations Now
- Visitors to Toronto 2007
- From the Delegate for Seminars: William (Bill) Kervin
- Travel Advisory: Do I Need a Passport?
- Calling all Lutheran Members
- From Our Vice-President: Looking Ahead to Savannah
- Registration Forms: Coming to an E-Mailbox Near You
Letter from the President
Dear Members of the NAAL,
I announce to you a great joy. We have a Berakah recipient! His name is John Baldovin. John is Professor of Historical and Liturgical Theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts – a position he formerly held at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, where he also served a term as acting president. John holds a Ph.D. from Yale University. He served as President of the North American Academy of Liturgy from 1990-1991 and as President of Societas Liturgica from 1999-2001. He has served on committees for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, the editorial board of Studia Liturgica, and the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. His books include Bread of Life, Cup of Salvation: Understanding the Mass, Lanham (Md): Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. His articles include “The Liturgical Movement and Its Consequences,” in C. Hefling and C. Shattuck, eds., The Oxford Guide to The Book of Common Prayer, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, 249-260. John has also inspired many of us in our field of research. His faith, optimism and ecumenical sensitivity make him a model member of our Academy. I am happy to announce that we will bestow the Berakah award upon John in Toronto in January, and that he will favor us with an address at the close of our meeting.
I have another great joy to announce. We have an administrative assistant! After many years of discussion, concern, hope and insight, the Academy last year approved the hiring of an administrative assistant to help us with many details of our annual meeting, the business of the Academy throughout the year, and the difficult task of remembering what we did the last time. After interviewing with the Academy Committee this summer, Courtney Murtaugh has accepted our invitation to serve in this office. Courtney hails from Barrington IL, where she has been Director of Guest Services at Loyola University Chicago. She was the primary communicator between departments serving conference groups. Her tasks included room reservations, on-campus housing, hotel site tours, campus police, facilities, housekeeping, food service, catering, audio-visual service, university ministry, risk management, and external vendors. She has managed a budget, supervised staff, produced reports, and increased conference sales revenues. She holds a Master of Pastoral Studies from Loyola University of Chicago. The Academy Committee was impressed with her organizational skills, interpersonal communication, and interest in our work. We are confident she will provide us excellent service. I’m anxious for you to meet her at our gathering in Toronto this January. Welcome, Courtney! murtaughs@ameritech.net.
Interreligious jazz vespers. Morning prayer with the Feminist Studies in Liturgy Seminar. An Eastern Rite voice in a plenary address. Ruth Duck’s Vice Presidential address. John Baldovin’s Berakah address. Exhibits. Your favorite seminar group. A hotel staff that excels in courtesy. What’s not to like? The Toronto 2007 gathering is shaping up to be a memorable experience, thanks to committee members Bill Kervin, Fred Graham, Ken Hull, Susan Roll, James O’Regan, David Buley, John Hill and Margaret Bick. I kiss their feet.
Come early. Stay late. Come early enough to participate in one of the pre-meeting meetings. Whether you are Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ or United Church of Canada, we have a gathering for you on Thursday morning, January 4. Plan on arriving Wednesday January 3. The Park Hyatt will accommodate you with its convention room rate.
Thursday night January 4 we will plunge you into the city of Toronto. Grab a subway to Eaton Centre. Work your way through the shops to the remarkable church of Holy Trinity, where Tim Elliott will bring jazz musicians to begin our time together in worship. We will gather and rejoice to see one another, praising the God who made us, and praying for the ill, the deceased, and the needy of the world. Refreshments (not a full meal) will be served afterward – right in the church.
Friday January 5 we will hear Ruth Duck’s address and meet the candidates for membership. The seminars will take up most of the day. Choose your own food all day long. The options near the Park Hyatt are endless. Complimentary coffee and apples are available in the hotel lobby. Several breakfast nooks are within arm’s reach out the side door.
For Friday lunch we encourage you to consider one of our sidebar discussions. These are optional conversations, and the chairs would love to hear from you if you would like to participate. For the music group, contact Alan Hommerding hommerdinga@jspaluch.com. If you’d like to help plan the Savannah 2008 NAAL gathering, Ruth Duck Ruth.Duck@garrett.edu would love to hear from you. Want to meet with other academic institutes and centers (centres, if you’re from Canada)? Contact Martin Jean martin.jean@yale.edu. Curious about graduate studies in liturgy? Email Lizette Larson-Miller llarson@cdsp.edu. If you would like to help plan the environment at future NAAL gatherings, notify Carol Frenning cfrenning@aol.com. And if you have ideas about expanding the membership of our academy, come with me PaulTu@aol.com.
Friday evening is your free night. We have options for prayer in the early evening. And the city of Toronto lies before you with all its charms. You are welcome Friday night to Shabbat services with the First Narayever congregation. A Shabbat dinner will be catered on site for those who wish to participate. Alternatively, you may join in the eucharist at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Sorrows. Fred Graham is preparing music for the event. I will preside and preach. Your restaurant choices up and down the block will simply amaze you.
Saturday morning January 6 Richard Schneider will present a plenary address on iconology, the liturgical theology of icons. Jewish by birth, Roman Catholic in his youth, Orthodox in his mature years, Richard teaches at the secular York University in Toronto and at the St. Vladimir School in New York. His address promises to deconstruct everything you thought about icons and help you enter their meaning in a new and engaging way.
After more time with seminar groups we’ll have our business meeting, the prelude to the annual banquet. Music before and after will be provided by members of our Academy and some affiliates. By the way, do you play flute, oboe, bassoon or cello? Michael Prendergast would like to have you play for the banquet table prayer. Contact Michael at michaelp@ocp.org.
Sunday morning January 7 we will serve a formal breakfast and bask in the glow of John Baldovin’s Berakah address. We will adjourn before 10:00 a.m. But if you’re ready for more, Richard Schneider is offering you a post-meeting tour of some of Toronto’s most famous churches. Your cost for this? Two subway tickets. If you can get yourself there, he’ll take you beyond.
Stay longer if you like. The hotel will give you the same convention rate if you’d like to stay another day, and it helps the Academy as well.
Behind on your dues? Now is a great time to catch up.
Know a visitor you’d like to encourage to consider applying for Academy membership? Tell them the good news about our Toronto plans. And let Past President Tom Schattauer know tschattauer@wartburgseminary.edu.
Want to know more about Toronto? Check out www.toronto.com and www.torontolife.ca and http://www.torontotourism.com/visitor.
Need help getting from the airport to the hotel? See http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/ or http://www.gtaa.com/Index.aspx?Sid=Node2/Node2.3/Node2.3.5&Tpl=1).
We’d like to remember the sick and deceased members of the Academy. I have heard with sadness the news of the deaths of Paul Cioffi and Aidan Kavanagh. Are there others we should remember in our prayers? Please let me know PaulTu@aol.com.
So, what are you waiting for? Block off those dates. Get those airline tickets. Update your passport. I look forward to seeing you there.
Paul Turner
Make Your Hotel Reservations Now
You can make your hotel reservations for the Park Hyatt Toronto online. Just use the following link to get the NAAL conference rate: http://parktoronto.hyatt.com/groupbooking/alit. You can also make a reservation by telephone: 416 925-1234 (direct to the Park Hyatt Toronto) or 1 (888) 591-1234 (the Hyatt toll-free reservation line). Be sure to say you are reserving for the NAAL meeting, so you get our conference rate.
Visitors to Toronto 2007
Do you know someone who should become a member of NAAL? The place to start is as a visitor to one of our meetings.
Please consider encouraging such persons to apply to the past president for visitor credentials to attend our upcoming meeting in Toronto. Send them to the visitor information on our website (http://www.naal-liturgy.org/visitors/), and have them fill out an application for visitor status, which they can find there (http://www.naal-liturgy.org/visitors/visitorapp.html). They can also contact me directly (tschattauer@wartburgseminary.edu).
Current members are the best source for visitors who will eventually become members of the Academy. Visitors, like members, are to be scholars and professionals in liturgy and related fields. We continue to strive toward a broad ecumenical and interfaith as well as racial, ethnic, and gender representation in our membership. This year we are especially interested to identify Canadian colleagues who should be members. Those in southern Ontario and Quebec will have particularly easy access to the Toronto meeting.
Thanks for your help in identifying visitors and expanding our membership.
Thomas Schattauer
Past President
From the Delegate for Seminars: William (Bill) Kervin
Twenty-one seminars are scheduled to meet in Toronto in January – our greatest number ever – including the newly formed The Advent Project, convened by William Petersen. Seminar Conveners are asked to send me details of their meeting plans as soon as possible, including the estimated number of participants. (Space for meeting rooms will be at a premium at the Park Hyatt, Toronto, so an accurate sense of such numbers will be essential for things to run smoothly.)
Finally, all seminars are being asked to help us save audio-visual costs by providing for their own needs in this regard. (E.g., rental of an LCD project in Toronto will cost us from $525.00 – 950.00 a day!) Please be in touch with your Seminar Convener to coordinate any such needs.
View seminar information online at: www.naal-liturgy.org Do not hesitate to contact me with any questions, suggestions or concerns. With thanks for your continued contribution to the work of the Academy.
William (Bill) Kervin, Delegate for Seminars
Emmanuel College, Toronto
w.kervin@utoronto.ca
416-585-4546
Travel Advisory: Do I Need a Passport?
Travelers to Toronto from the United States need to be aware of new Department of Homeland Security rules going into effect in January. The issue is getting back into the United States. As of January 8, 2007, passports will be required to enter the United States through airports and seaports, no matter where you are coming from. That includes Canada. So if you are staying on after the NAAL meeting, and you are returning by plane or cruise ship, you will need your passport.
If you are returning to the U.S. via a land crossing (e.g. by car or by foot or by dogsled), these new rules do not go into effect until 2009 (due to a recent extension; it was going to be 2008). So, if you are driving, you can still use a birth certificate or a license for your return to the US.
If you have a passport, it might be better to avoid any doubt and bring it with you.
For further information, see http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_3013.html .
Calling all Lutheran Members
The Lutheran members of the Academy will meet on Thursday at 9 A.M. at the Hyatt for a day of conversation about marriage. Contact gailramshaw@cs.com if you want the agenda.
From Our Vice-President: Looking Ahead to Savannah
Please mark your calendars for January 3-6, 2008, when NAAL will be meeting in Savannah, Georgia, site of much fascinating religious history and home of many vital worshiping communities in the present. For example, Congregation Mickve Israel was founded by forty-two Jews, mostly from Spain and Portugal, in 1733, and an active congregation continues to worship there. In 1735, John and Charles Wesley came to Savannah invited by General Oglethorpe; although their ministries did not last long there (due to various controversies and troubles), Christ Church Episcopal, which they started, lives on, along with many Methodist churches in the area. The First African Baptist Church, founded in 1777, is said to be the first African American church in North America, and continues in active ministries including worship, youth outreach and tutoring, and prison ministry. These are just a few of the historic and vital places of worship in close walking distance to the Hyatt in Savannah that provide interesting places for us to worship and visit. In addition, the area is home to beautiful seacoast parks and preserves—all in all, a great place to meet and come early or stay late.
We have fewer members in the Savannah area than in meeting places such as New York, Toronto, or San Diego, so if you are familiar with the area and willing to serve on the local arrangements committee, please let me know.
Ruth Duck
Ruth.Duck@garrett.edu
847-251-3853
Registration Forms: Coming to an E-Mailbox Near You
We will soon be sending you the registration form for the Toronto Meeting. In an effort to curtail expenses, we will send registration forms by e-mail only this year. We will send registration forms by regular mail to members and visitors without e-mail addresses and to those whose messages bounce back to me. So when the electronic registration form comes your way, don’t ignore it. This will be the only form you will receive. Please, fill it out and send it back as soon as possible. You will also be able to pay your dues along with your registration fee.
As always, please send any updated contact information to me at Donsmm@aol.com or to lasalle@montfort.org. Thanks to all those who have kept me posted with their updated information.
Don LaSalle
NAAL Secretary