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About the Consultation
on Common Texts (CCT)
The Consultation on Common Texts (CCT) emerged from
ecumenical meetings held in the mid 1960s. From 1969 this group began
using the designation "Consultation on Common Texts," which reflected
its original focus on the development of agreed versions of liturgical
texts used in common by the Churches. Membership by this time included
representatives of the founding interchurch bodies and churches and
representatives of other church bodies that wished to participate.
The initial work of the CCT toward common versions of liturgical texts
(Gloria, Creed, Lord's Prayer, etc.) was soon taken up by an
international body which became known as the International Consultation
on English Texts (ICET). Participants in the CCT took part in this work,
and the so-called ICET texts were subsequently issued in three editions:
1971, 1972,1975.
The work of the CCT in the meantime came to include efforts toward a
translation of the psalms for liturgical use, which was eventually
prepared by Dr. Massey Shepherd, Jr. in consultation with the CCT and
published as A Liturgical Psalter for the Eucharist (1976). In
1977 work began on a brief resource for the ecumenical celebration of
morning prayer and evening prayer. This was eventually published under
the title Ecumenical Services of Prayer (1983).
The expansion of CCT's work beyond the original focus on agreed versions
of liturgical texts continued with its sponsorship in 1978 of a meeting
on the lectionary involving representatives of a number of churches.
This was called because of the widespread use and adaptation by the
churches of the 1969 Ordo Lectionum Missae. As a result of this
meeting, the CCT was asked to take up the task of harmonizing these
lectionary variants and the calendar differences implicit in them. The
CCT produced its work in 1983 in the Common Lectionary. This was
subsequently revised in light of several years of comment and use and
published, in 1992, as the Revised Common Lectionary.
The 1980s saw the CCT involved in other tasks that reflected its
expanded agenda. In 1987 it published A Christian Celebration of
Marriage, and, in 1988, A Celebration of Baptism. The purpose
of these resources, as too in the case of Ecumenical Services of
Prayer, was twofold. On the one hand, there was the possibility of
their actual use in worship by a number of the participating churches,
in situations considered to be ecumenical in nature. On the other hand,
where the likelihood of actual liturgical use was small, these resources
could stand as models offered by the CCT to the churches as they
continued to renew their own liturgical life and the ritual forms that
give structure to it.
In 1983, the CCT joined with the International Commission on English in
the Liturgy (ICEL) to sponsor an international consultation on
ecumenical liturgical matters at the time of the Vienna Congress of
Societas Liturgica. This resulted in the formation in 1985 of the
English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC) as a successor body to
ICET, which ceased to function in 1975. As one of the constitutive
bodies of ELLC, the CCT serves its member churches as a liaison with
ELLC and, through it, with several regional ecumenical liturgical
associations throughout the English-speaking world and the forty
churches which together they represent.
The membership of the CCT, as originally established, was representative
of groups of churches and individual churches, but members have not seen
themselves as "delegates who have to defend the particular interests of
their church bodies, although they may be expected to interpret them.
Collegial activity toward the production of work of excellence and of
ecumenical value has been the highest priority. And continuing
membership has been based on the ability of the member to relate the
work of the CCT to his or her ecclesial body.
The current membership of the CCT includes designees of the following
churches or agencies:
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