Processions: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (or Religion in the Town)

Processional practice of some kind seems to be universal in all cultures – often combining both civic and religious aspects. Processions have fulfilled any number of purposes from housing individuals, marking special occasions like weddings and funerals, welcoming relics, conquerors, and victors, memorializing significant events in the liturgical cycle, praying for protection as in lustrations and rogations and begging for respite from danger as well as staging demonstrations for political and religio-political purposes.

The work focuses on the history of Christian outdoor liturgical processing in both East and West. It concludes with the prospects of these processions for the future.

John F. Baldovin is Professor of Historical and Liturgical Theology at the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry. A Jesuit priest, he received degrees from the College of the Holy Cross, Weston School of Theology, and a PhD from Yale University.

He served on the advisory committee for the Bishop’s Committee on the Liturgy of the USCCB (1989-1993) as well as on the advisory committee for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). He is past president of the North American Academy of Liturgy as well as Societas Liturgica and the International Jungemann Society for Jesuits and the Liturgy.

His publications include The Urban Character of Christian Worship (Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1987; Living Bread, Saving Cub: Understanding the Mass (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), and Reforming Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Liturgical Press, 2008).