Renowned liturgist The Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Robert F. Taft, S.J. (facebook) presented the keynote titled “The Liturgical Enterprise Twenty-five Years after Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983): The Man and His Heritage”—the centerpiece of the colloquium and this year’s Father Alexander Schmemann Annual Memorial Lecture—to a capacity crowd of 400 people on Friday, January 30, 2009. Remembering Fr. Alexander as protagonist for the discipline of liturgical theology, Fr. Taft honored him as a fellow "informer," not a "reformer," and as a "'kerygmatic theologian'... who was able to bring out of the liturgy its true meaning and make it live for people as a joyous event, which is the life in Christ." Fr. Taft emphasized the enduring and phenomenal "shelf life of Fr. Alexander's oeuvre" and termed his overall work a "landmark" in the field of liturgical theology. He also identified areas of scholarly progress in that field since Fr. Alexander's death, which will elucidate and guide the future of the academic study of liturgical theology.
Fr. Taft is a founding member of both the North American Academy of Liturgy and of the Association of Jesuit Liturgists, and a member of the U.S. National Committee for Byzantine Studies, of the Society for Armenian Studies (retired 1999), and of the International Societas Liturgica. He was a member of the Governing Council of the latter society for ten years (1979–89), and its President from 1985–87.
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Fr. Taft is seated bottom row, far left.
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