Having read the feature article on Catholic schools reported in TES Scotland (May 7) as well as the subsequent responses, I wish to offer two points of clarification.
First, my appointment, given by Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, is as director of chaplaincy services at Holy Rood High, Edinburgh.
Second, I wish to reassure your readers that I am indeed perfectly familiar with liturgy and the Catholic Church’s teachings and understanding of liturgy, as a result of my own faith formation and as a result of my training in chaplaincy studies through the Pontifical University, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. During this course I was also informed by Fr Mike Regan, episcopal vicar for liturgy in the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
The “quotation” which has caused your correspondent Leonard Franchi such alarm (“liturgy is the celebration, and putting to God, of the lived experience of our community”) was part of a description of some of the activities that take place in schools and was never intended to be taken as a comprehensive definition of liturgy. I must add, nor is it a full reflection of all that takes place in terms of liturgy in a Catholic school.
Kerry McLaren Holy Rood High School, Edinburgh
