Guest presenters - THLS 601

Monsignor Professor Kevin W. Irwin is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and has been a member of theology faculty at The Catholic University of America for over thirty years. Msgr Irwin held the Walter J. Schmitz Chair of Liturgical Studies from 2000-2015 and was the Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at CUA from 2005-2011. Currently he is an Ordinary Research Professor at CUA and continues to publish books and articles on a variety of topics.

Msgr Irwin is the author of over twenty books and seventy journal articles. He has made exceptional research contributions in liturgical-theological method and the role of ecology and creation in liturgy and sacraments. Among his most recent publications are A Commentary on Laudato Si' (Paulist Press, 2016); the revised and expanded edition of his classic Context and Text: A Method for Liturgical Theology (from Liturgical Press in 2018); Pope Francis and the Liturgy: The Call to Holiness and Mission (through Paulist Press in 2020), Liturgy and Sacraments in a COVID World: Renewal, Not Restoration (Paulist Press, 2021) and Ecology, Liturgy and the Sacraments (Paulist Press, 2023).

Before joining the faculty at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 2016, Assoc Prof McGowan was the inaugural postdoctoral associate in liturgical studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (2011-2012), a postdoctoral teaching scholar in the department of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and an adjunct professor of theology teaching in the area of liturgical studies at St. John's School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota. Her professional memberships include the North American Academy of Liturgy, the Catholic Academy of Liturgy, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the American Academy of Religion.

Assoc Prof McGowan's research interests focus on the theological, historical, and ritual development of Christian worship practices and the ways in which these practices (as articulated in texts and celebrated in living contexts) invite and engage the full and active participation of all members of the Body of Christ and call them to live differently in the Church and in the world. The textual and dialogical engagement of liturgical matters among various Christian traditions, East and West, ancient and modern is a recurring theme in her scholarship. She also explores how sacramental rites and catechesis involve the sacramental awareness of children and recognize young people as capable of appropriating and enacting Christian faith at a level appropriate to their embodied existence and chronological and intellectual maturity.

Her publications include Eucharistic Epicleses, Ancient and Modern: Speaking of the Spirit in Eucharistic Prayer (S.P.C.K. / Liturgical Press, 2014) and The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary, co-authored with Paul F. Bradshaw (Liturgical Press, 2018).