Liturgy & Preaching

Containing over 700 articles, this Dictionary allows the reader to explore Eastern Christian civilization with its cultural and religious riches. The articles are written by a team of 50 international contributors, including leading historians, theologians, linguists, philosophers, patrologists, musicians, and scholars of liturgy and iconography.

This vast reference work contains 554 official documents of the Church issued from the time of the Second Vatican Council up to 1979. These decrees and instructions define the basic principles that have updated Catholic public worship the last 25 years. Grouped under seven major headings - General Principles, The Eucharist, The Other Sacraments and the Sacramentals, The Divine Office, The Liturgical Year, Music, and Art and Furnishings - the documents are comprehensively cross-indexed. This is an absolutely indispensable reference for anyone interested in the liturgical renewal.

Contributors to this dictionary have been selected from all over the English-speaking world, and it is to the concerns of the English-speaking churches that these essays are primarily addressed. The dictionary is structured as a theological and pastoral resource, covering a wide range of activities that are constitutive of a sacramental Church. The entries include the strictly theological, the practical liturgical, the pastoral, and the social. Alphabetical and topical indices, cross-referencing and sturdy, durable binding increase the value of this one-of-a-kind reference work.

This distinguished and comprehensive dictionary should stand as the definitive reference work on all aspects of liturgical practice and belief for many years to come. While maintaining the best traditions of Westminster's dictionaries, it also supersedes and replaces its predecessor edited by J. G. Davies and first published in 1986.