Catholic Vancouver August 14, 2017
Vancouver set to host national liturgy conference
By Agnieszka Ruck
VANCOUVER—Stepping into Westminster Abbey in Mission, with its high ceiling, stained glass windows, and larger-than-life statues of the saints can give anyone a sense of reverence and awe.
According to Alberta Archbishop Gerard Pettipas, that’s the sense all consecrated Catholic churches should give us.
“In our Church, we speak of persons, times, and places that are consecrated and that are set aside as holy,” he said. “It isn’t that God cannot be in other places,” but that “we have a sense of the presence of God in that place.”
Archbishop Pettipas is the chairman of the Episcopal Commission for Liturgy and the Sacraments (ECLS), one of the organizations behind a national conference on liturgy and sacred spaces coming Vancouver this November.
He’s looking forward to the conference, which will gather many bishops, priests, and lay people from across Canada to talk about liturgical art, church architecture, music, and other elements of holy places. While most guests will be members of national or local liturgy committees, everyone interested in the topic is welcome.
We can experience God in every place (but) there are those places that are set aside where we normally celebrate our sacraments.
“We can experience God in every place, (but) there are those places that are set aside that we consecrate, where we normally celebrate our sacraments, our rituals,” said Archbishop Pettipas.
“I think if we meet God in sacred places, hopefully we’re better attuned to meet God in the other places we go as well.”
The conference will include talks by keynote speaker and liturgist Father Michael McGourty from the Archdiocese of Toronto, as well as meetings, a banquet, and a tour of the iconic Westminster Abbey in Mission.
Archbishop Pettipas hopes the conference will inspire Catholics to see sacred spaces in a new way. Meeting people from other churches “opens your mind to other possibilities of things that might be done, that might enhance the sacred space or how we use the space, how we decorate it, how we honour it.”
The conference, called Temple Built of Living Stones, will be held at the Vancouver Airport Marriott Hotel in Richmond Nov. 6-7.
More information is available here or by contacting the National Liturgy Office of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops: 1-613-241-9461 ext. 154 or [email protected].