A Precious Fountain

Mary E. McGann, RSCJ, is adjunct associate professor of liturgical studies at the Jesuit School of Theology (Santa Clara University) and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. Her recent research and writing focus on the global water and food crises, the challenges these present to Christian worship and sacramental practice, and the need to pursue a deep liturgical renewal that honors and acknowledges our planetary interdependence. McGann is author of several articles and three books, including award-winning A Precious Fountain: Music in the Worship of an African American Catholic Community (Liturgical Press, 2004).

A Precious Fountain is a work of liturgical ethnography that probes the rich liturgical life of one worshiping community whose roots and practices are at once Black and Catholic, using music as a primary lens through which to explore the community's liturgy and embodied theology. Our Lady of Lourdes community in San Francisco is part of a larger event in the American church: the emergence of a new paradigm of Catholic worship, one that is "authentically Black and truly Catholic." Mary E. McGann, R.S.C.J., describes how the music worship of Our Lady of Lourdes in San Francisco not only enriches that community but also is an example of how a theology of music is practiced in that parish. She offers this new genre of liturgical literature that brings to light how God's Spirit is working in the churches through the idioms, perceptions, and insights of specific ethno-cultural communities in this time of massive cultural change and globalization. Virgil Michel, O.S.B., a monk of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, was a founder of the Liturgical Movement in the United States in the 1920s and fostered its development until his death in 1938. Michel's writing, editing, teaching, and preaching centered on the relationship between liturgy and the life of the faithful-the Body of Christ. The Pueblo Books imprint of Liturgical Press honors Virgil Michel's life and work with a monograph series named for him. The Virgil Michel Series will offer studies that examine the connections between liturgy and life in particular communities, as well as works exploring the relationship of liturgy to theology, ethics, and social sciences. The Virgil Michel Series will be ecumenical in breadth andinternational in scope, recognizing that liturgy embodies yet transcends cultures and denominations.