After 23 years as the Education Officer at Liturgy Brisbane, Elizabeth Harrington is retiring. Elizabeth came with great experience and skill as a secondary school teacher. She had also been parish pastoral associate for a number of years working with liturgy and sacraments. In addition, she has been extensively involved with ecumenism at diocesan and national levels. All these streams flowed into the new role of Education Officer.
For over two decades, she has run workshops and in-service for parishes and schools on a wide range of liturgical topics. She has written hundreds of Liturgy Lines columns suitable for parish newsletters and handouts for parish ministry training. (These are collected and indexed on the Liturgy Brisbane website.) A long-time member of the editorial board, she has written numerous articles for Liturgy News. She has been endlessly patient in answering questions and offering advice in liturgy: Do you have something to help us prepare our Lenten liturgy? How should we celebrate baptism at Sunday Mass? How do we find a good sponsor for a catechumen? What does a liturgy committee do? Is this a suitable communion hymn?
Over her career at Liturgy Brisbane, Elizabeth has developed a reputation throughout Australia as a reliable and balanced resource person in liturgy. She has established an extraordinary network of relationships with liturgy people in every diocese and in every parish of the Archdiocese of Brisbane.
As Elizabeth retires, Liturgy Brisbane is delighted to announce her successor as Education Officer. Liturgy Brisbane are excited to have secured the services of James Robinson who comes to them from the Brisbane Catholic Education office where he has been Education Officer in religious education. His career in Catholic education, extending over twenty years, has embraced not only teaching and coordinating religious education but also periods as assistant principal and deputy principal.
He is not only an enthusiastic and gifted teacher of adults but also adept at using electronic media in his teaching. It is his facility with on-line learning and the production of electronic resources which recommended him to Liturgy Brisbane. This will enable them to face the future with confidence in an electronic age. As he begins this work, he will build on his theology and education degrees with doctoral study in liturgy and sacraments.