Pastoral Support for Married Couples and Families during the Pilgrimages of John Paul II to Poland

Pilgrimages are one of the forms of popular piety carried out for centuries and in various ways. A special type of pilgrimage are papal pilgrimages to individual countries, which is the implementation of Christ’s mission: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations (…). and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’ (Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu w przekładzie z języków oryginalnych. 1980. Mt 28: 19–20). Pilgrimages give the Pope the opportunity to come closer with the faithful and confirm them in their faith. They also make possible common prayer on different continents and teaching, the personal perception of which can bring people a profound change and improvement of life. John Paul II was the first after 455 years non-·Italian pope to visit his country of origin, Poland, eight times. He spent 64 days in his homeland and delivered 264 speeches. He taught freedom and continued his catechesis on marriage and the family, which was a topic to which he attached great importance. The subject of marriage and family is an important matter for the whole world. Therefore, it is worth introducing the papal teaching delivered during all pilgrimages to Poland to people from other countries, especially since some of the speeches are not translated into English. The article is a selection of pro-family content contained in the speeches of John Paul II in Poland, useful in the formation of spouses and parents. It may prove useful in their marriages and families, as well as in the professional help provided to students undertaking education in family life, students in the field of familiology preparing for marriage, spouses, parents and grandparents who educate their children and grandchildren.

The Printing and the Printers of The Book of Common Prayer, 1549–1561

Bibliographers have been notoriously 'hesitant to deal with liturgies', and this volume bridges an important gap with its authoritative examination of how the Book of Common Prayer came into being. The first edition of 1549, the first Grafton edition of 1552 and the first quarto edition of 1559 are now correctly identified, while Peter W. M. Blayney shows that the first two editions of 1559 were probably finished on the same day. Through relentless scrutiny of the evidence, he reveals that the contents of the 1549 version continued to evolve both during and after the printing of the first edition, and that changes were still being made to the Elizabethan revision weeks after the Act of Uniformity was passed. His bold reconstruction is transformative for the early Anglican liturgy, and thus for the wider history of the Church of England. This major, revisionist work is a remarkable book about a remarkable book.

The effect of air conditioning outlets on the spread of respiratory disease in Mosque’s environment

Mosques are places for daily worship for Muslims, where they attend prayers five times/day. As a common prayer practice, worshippers conduct prayers in standing groups side-by-side in rows touching shoulders and ankles. Furthermore, in their praying practice, worshippers touch the floor with their forehead four to eight times in a single prayer, which is an important factor in picking or spreading infection disease. Mosques are usually air-cooled by mechanical means with a poor ventilation system. The prayer practices, coupled with the poor ventilation system increase the risk of spreading respiratory diseases like COVID-19. This study utilizes a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package to evaluate disease particles’ movement around rows of worshipers. The research evaluates the impact of air outlet locations on the spread of the disease particles. The results indicated that the locations of air outlets relative to the infected person may significantly help to spread the particulates. In mosque environment, the ceiling diffusers are recommended, and sidewall outlets should be avoided. In addition, it was concluded that a minimum of 2 meters between occupants as suggested by WHO is not deemed enough to control the spread of disease in mosque environment and a minimum of 3 m is necessary. The study calls to review the guidelines by the World Health Organization (WHO) for mosques and similar environment.

William Gore: A Puseyite in Parramatta

This article examines the way one nineteenth-century clergyman of the Church of England in Australia, William Gore, was influenced by the Oxford Movement. Gore was the incumbent of the parish of All Saints Church, North Parramatta in Sydney. He implemented liturgical practices valued by the Oxford Movement, including wearing a surplice to preach rather than a Geneva gown, reading the Offertory sentences in the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer, celebrating the Holy Communion on the saints days set in the Prayer Book and placing a cross on the holy table. He was supported by his bishop, William Grant Broughton. The reaction from parishioners was surprise, shock and opposition and he was branded as a ‘Puseyite’. This article uses local primary material, including press reports of parish meetings, to describe the reactions of parishioners in parish meetings against Gore’s liturgical uses. Gore’s activities are assessed as an important early example of the Oxford Movement’s influence in the Church of England in Australia. Gore’s practices, discussed in the public domain, provide evidence that the Oxford Movement was beginning to transform the nineteenth-century liturgical worship of the Church of England in Australia.

Divine Visitation: The 1662 Prayer Book’s Theology of Sickness and Plague

When it began to be clear that COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, clerics were scrambling for liturgical ways to address the crisis. But it turned out that most twentieth-century Anglican Prayers Books have few, if any, prayers for times of plague or great sickness. This was not always the case. In light of the current pandemic and the pastoral challenges it has introduced, this article explores the theology of sickness and plague in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer in light of the devastating history of plagues and sicknesses in England, both before and after the sixteenth-century reformations. This exploration makes use of the lens of ‘divine visitation’ as an ordering principle, one of the distinctive phrases that the Prayer Book uses repeatedly to speak of bodily illness.

“Essentials” for Worship: Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book

This article explores some of the theological principles required for effective church worship. In 1927, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) outlined four “Essentials” or principles for effective liturgy, identified in the context of revisions to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: adoration, the historic, the Eternal, and the interplay between spirit and sense. This article explores the extent to which these four theological principles are actually embodied in prayers that Underhill selected and wrote for retreat leading at The House of Retreat, Pleshey (north London, UK), recently published as Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book. Additional theological principles, not mentioned in Underhill’s “Essentials” essay but evident in her book of prayers, are also evaluated and exemplified. Underhill’s guidance to her spiritual directees about the value of liturgy in their spiritual lives is also briefly touched upon.

Communal and Community-Forming Character of Prayer

In the age of secularisation, prayer is becoming an increasingly difficult act of believers to understand. Extremely dangerous individualism and subjectivism is the contemporary threat to common and community prayer. All of this makes it necessary to take a new look at this category of prayer so that it leads to an authentic testimony from Christians in the world. In this way, it also prevents the dangerous exclusivity of believers themselves when faced with challenges. Among the whole variety and categories of prayers, communal prayer and the prayer of community are very important. This distinction is necessary because it reveals to us the truth that every prayer has a communal character even though it is not always a common prayer. However, prayer celebrated together is the source of life for the Christian, the Church and the clearest and most readable testimony of faith.

A Body That Matters: Liturgy, Mediation, Performativity

Taking the liturgy of The Episcopal Church as an extended case study, this article develops a poststructuralist eucharistic theology that bears upon the theorization of religious identity, Christian liturgy, and material religion. My point of departure is the question of whether a dinner-church Communion—that is, one in which an Episcopal priest consecrates items other than bread and wine—would qualify as an Anglican eucharistic celebration if that service was conducted using the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. To this query I respond in the affirmative. In conversation with Birgit Meyer on religious media and Judith Butler on language and matter, I argue that it is in being interpreted as the body and blood of Christ that the eucharistic elements come to be materialized as such, with the Book of Common Prayer governing that interpretation for Anglicans and giving it force.