On 17–18 June 2005 the Dominican Liturgical Center in Kraków organized the conference “Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy” with Aidan Nichols OP.

The symposium was devoted to the sources and consequences of the Council’s liturgical reform and to the current state of liturgical theology and celebratory practice in Poland. The immediate occasion for the conference was the publication by Christianitas of the book “Looking at the Liturgy” by Aidan Nichols OP.

On Friday, 17 June, the book was launched. The author himself took part in the presentation and in the panel discussion on tradition and liturgical renewal, together with Fr. Tomasz Kwiecień OP and Paweł Milcarek, representing the book’s publisher.

“Looking at the Liturgy” is a book devoted to a critical analysis of the sources and consequences of the post-conciliar liturgical reform. It was a help in the work on “The Spirit of the Liturgy” by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Although it appeared in the West in the mid-1990s, the Polish edition has only now been published, on the initiative of Christianitas.

Aidan Nichols OP is a liturgist, historian, Master of Sacred Theology (an academic title granted in the Dominican Order) and an honorary lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He has also taught at, among others, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome (Angelicum). His main interests are questions connected with the Tradition of the Church, the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Thomism.

After the meeting devoted to Fr. Nichols’s book, the early music ensemble “Redivivum” gave a concert entitled “Evening prayer with the psalms” in the Basilica of the Holy Trinity. Both events are part of the conference “Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy”, organized on 17–18 June 2005 by the Dominican Liturgical Center. Saturday’s programme includes open lectures by Fr. Aidan Nichols and Holy Mass in St. Giles’ Church.