Sr. Rita Larivee, a member of the Sisters of St. Anne of Marlboro, Mass., has been appointed director of operations for the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company. In announcing the new post, Publisher Thomas C. Fox said that Larivee will also help the company in planning and technology development with an eye to examining justice and global community issues in an information age.

Larivee recently completed a doctorate in Christian Ethics at Loyola University of Chicago where she specialized in liberation theology and spirituality. Her background includes 20 years’ experience as a technologist and computer analyst and two years as president of Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass.

“Quickly changing technology and electronic communications pose new challenges and offer exciting new opportunities for our universal church and for the human family,” Fox said. “Through electronics we are better positioned to think globally and bring people of various cultures and backgrounds together as never before to converse on the needs of the world.”

Our Winter Books supplement last week had room for only a portion of the avalanche of suggestions received from our readers, who, when it comes to books, are practically fanatic. We promise to publish a further selection of your favorite books in the very near future. We are deeply grateful to all who wrote.

Arthur Jones’ article on page 10 is the first of two about the liturgy. When Jones recently authored a series on preaching, the response was ardent enough to indicate how profoundly people care about public worship. This centrality was reflected at Vatican II where the liturgy was the first reform enacted.

Sadly, it led to a battle that has never quite abated. Nothing today separates so-called left and right like worship does. One sign of the fractured times is a glossy magazine called The Latin Mass, which, in its impatience with the “new liturgy,” is turning against recent popes and other allies. The Jones articles, by contrast, hint at the liturgy’s power to heal.

National Catholic Reporter, November 14, 1997

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