The Catholic liturgy as pedagogical reality

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Frimberger, Katja (2026) The Catholic liturgy as pedagogical reality. In: 20th International Network of Philosophers of Education Conference, 2026-08-11 - 2026-08-14. (In Press)

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Abstract

In this presentation I explore the Catholic liturgy as ‘pedagogical reality’ – drawing on the writing of Romano Guardini, a key figure in the early 20th century (German) liturgical reform movement. In the first part of the paper, I sketch the formative project of the ritual-liturgic act. Here, I explore how Guardini conceives the liturgical form as a call into a symbolic encounter with the existential human drama (of violence, suffering, helplessness), which is shown – through its cultic act - to be interwoven in God’s ‘dramatic’ response to this human drama (in the incarnation). Importantly, both ritual and ‘player’ are here pictured as dependent – for their (self-)formation - on their mutual self-giving in this symbolic play. As such, it is due to the relational structure of the ritual-symbolic act that the liturgy also pictures our human formation firstly as a relational enterprise; one in which the individual (partaking in the Mass) – although part of a community or body (here: the mystical Church) - is however not merely swallowed up in a dominating, collective will. Accordingly, Guardini suggests, the liturgy – via its dense symbolic structure – also creates a certain hermeneutic distance; one which – although its form seeks to indeed educate (or prepare) the human mind, body and spirit, it does not overwhelm human creative intellection. Through symbolic allusion, rhythmic repetition and questions that do not have final answers, the churchgoer’s intellect, body and spirit are ‘played’ and moved into engagement with the ritual act; but the individual’s inner life is not to be coerced into a psychic-emotional state. After sketching the liturgy’s formative project, I then, in the second part of the paper, go to ask a broader methodological question about pedagogical research. Drawing on philosopher of education Klaus Mollenhauer, I claim that the liturgic form reminds us that pedagogical inquiry is always a practical philosophising about how cultural forms enact (in practice) certain educational goods.

ORCID iDs

Frimberger, Katja ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2542-4040;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)