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Post by hibernicus on Apr 27, 2016 19:55:54 GMT
Have just read a book about Alfred Delp SJ, who was martyred by the Nazis (WITH BOUND HANDS by Mary Frances Cody) which gives translations of the letters which he smuggled out of prison. In one of these he remarks that what the Church needs is internal moral reform and if that fails it will go into decline "even if all the altars are facing the people and we have Gregorian chant in every parish". This is an interesting example of liturgical fashion in the 1940s - clearly both these ideas are seen as up-to-date, yet now celebration versus populum is seen as liberal-leaning (bearing in mind of course that most OF celebrants and congregations simply take it for granted) while Gregorian chant has been relegated to trads and music-lovers.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 11, 2016 20:35:16 GMT
Have been reading Fr Louis Bouyer's EUCHARISTIA - on the history of the Eucharistic prayer - which he brought out in the mid-60s just before things really started to go pear-shaped. It is marked by immediate post-Vatican II optimism, both on the potential for the new rites (he assumes BTW that while these will normally be in the vernacular they will be said in Latin much more often than was in fact the case) and on the increasingly "high" liturgical development of the mainline PRotestant churches (overlooking the equally prominent development of theological liberalism which was to negate these achievements). Considering what he says in his memoirs about his clashes with Bugnini, I think there is also a certain amount of diplomatic disingenuity here. And there are some things he seems not to anticipate - he does not mention the eastward position because he simply takes it for granted in the new rite as well as the old: A few impressions: (1) It is remarkable how complicated liturgical history is. I realise that I am a novice in the field and I find it bewildering; but maybe reading this has laid a little foundation I may build on from time to time. (2) The closeness of the relationship between the early Syrian liturgies and the Jewish passover and prayers at meals. It is really startling to see how close the OUR FATHER is, for example, to a standard Jewish prayer. (3) The extent to which Bouyer shares some liberal views. He is, for example, very severe on extra-liturgical Eucharistic devotions (though he complains at one point that suppressing these seems in practice to lead not to the transfer of the contemplative element into the liturgy, but to its total suppression). I can see from this book how a careless reader by noting his downplaying the words of institution as compared to the epiclesis, and his emphasis on the meal element and criticising the single emphasis on sacrifice, might think he was a crypto-Protestant even though he in fact takes the Real Presence for granted in his discussion (e.g. the very moving passage on how painful it is for a high Protestant who had used Cranmer's 1549 liturgy in the Catholic sense and saw the liturgical skill with which it is constructed to realise how deeply it is permeated with the Zwinglianism which Cranmer made explicit in the 1552 book). He does seem to have something here of the spirit which is all for academic exactitude and less concerned with what the effect of such changes may be on the faithful. (4) The Canon of Hippolytus is the favourite pet of liberal liturgical reformers and was used by Bugnini and Co as the model of an authentic primitive Roman liturgy free of later excrescences. Bouyer gives arguments for believing that it is in fact an exercise in antiquarianism by an author of Syriac origins, and that it is devised in opposition to a prayer very like the EF Canon of the MAss (except that at this date it was said in Greek). (5) Bouyer's Protestant upbringing comes through when he points out that many assumptions of liturgical scholars (e.g. that the oldest liturgy is likely to be the simplest) rest on unexamined Protestant assumptions, and that the idea that extempore prayer is short and simple and unstructured cannot be held by anyone familiar with churches where such extemporisation is the normal mode of worship. (6) HE also states that when devising their liturgies the Protestant reformers, seeking to get back to the supposed origins, separated out genuinely ancient elements whose full significance had been lost sight of from relatively recent late mediaeval developments. Since their own basic assumptions had been formed by late mediaeval spirituality, they proceeded to discard the former and retain the latter... I wonder if Fr Bouyer was thinking only of the Protestant reformers when he made this comment, or whether he had Mgr Bugnini in mind as well.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2016 19:53:51 GMT
The latest (May 2016) issue of the academic journal IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES has an article discussing John Charles McQuaid's response to the vernacular liturgy and his attempts to have daily masses in Irish and Latin as well as English said in each parish. I may comment on it in more detail when I have read it, but a brief skim raises a few points:
(1) The author seems to think Archbishop MCQuaid's desire to preserve the use of Latin in the liturgy is somehow surreptitious and subversive, but the Archbishop was clearly one of those who in voting for SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM (which specifically calls for the preservation of Latin in the liturgy) were expecting minor changes but nothing on the scale of what the relevant Congregation cooked up.
(2) When the Archbishop made his request about Latin he was told by one of his factotums that there was no lay demand for Latin Masses. Given that subsequent events (and often personal contact with people who were around at the time) shows that there was indeed some demand, this needs explaining. I would suggest at least two explanations - the perception that the vernacular was what the Pope wanted, and the fact that Archbishop McQuaid was so used to running the archdiocese on a top-down vertical "he who must be obeyed" model that he was poorly placed to detect such inchoate demand, still less to mobilise it, whatever his personal desire in the matter may have been.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Aug 7, 2016 21:12:29 GMT
That's interesting, Hibernicus.
A bit of a side issue, but I often wonder how the availability of daily Mass (in whatever language) has changed over the centuries.
McQuaid presents a rather sad figure at the end of his life. Even a lefty like Radharc's Fr. Joe Dunne, in his book No Tigers in Africa! (the title itself was supplied by McQuaid) mentions that it was shameful to see the way he suddenly became persona non gratis after his fall from power, or from office.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 31, 2017 17:34:46 GMT
Have been reading Mgr Bouyer's commentary on SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM, THE LITURGY RENEWED, which appeared soon after the decree was ratified. (There is a copy in the Central Catholic Library lending section, if you want to look at it for yourself). What this book clearly shows is that the eventual changes were not clearly indicated in the decree; Bouyer describes in some detail what the changes (he thinks) will amount to, and what he describes is very different from the form taken by the NO.
Also read Alcuin Reid's book on the liturgical movement up to Vatican II, written from a trad perspective, which is a very useful account of the different currents involved; what surprised me was the extent to which liturgical change took place under Pius XII - so much so that when the Council was called liturgists predicted it would not have much to say on the liturgy since the big changes had already been made! One vignette has Archbishop McQuaid, when the moving of the Easter Vigil from noon on Easter Saturday to the night before Easter Sunday was made universal (it had previously been allowed ad experimentum and he hadn't adopted it) going to Rome to protest that the people of Dublin were completely unprepared for it and being sent home with the order "Then teach them". An interesting detail for anyone who thinks McQuaid was simply a clone of Pius XII.
Another odd little detail - from the C19. Dom Prosper Gueranger actually wrote that the Papacy allowing SS Cyril and Methodius a Slavic liturgy was one of those deplorable examples of human weakness that occur in Papal history!
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 12, 2017 22:32:57 GMT
Have been reading WILLIAM GORDON WHEELER - A JOURNEY INTO THE FULLNESS OF FAITH by James Hagerty. I am posting this on this thread because it has some interesting Latin Mass material. Wheeler was a convert from Anglicanism who was in charge of the running of Westminster Cathedral for more than a decade before being sent north - first as Coadjutor of Middlesbrough, then as Bishop of Leeds 1966-85. In Westminster in the 50s he clearly saw himself as an "advanced" intellectual impatient with the Curia and fond of liturgical development, but simply by standing after the Council where he stood before it he came to be regarded as a reactionary (for example, at the time of his retirement he was the last bishop in England and Wales to make use of the cappa magna and he fell out quite strongly with). He was seen as the Latin Mass Society's most sympathetic contact in the hierarchy, and when some of the England and Wales bishops wanted the local indult phased out after the death of Cardinal Heenan, Wheeler wrote to Rome opposing this strongly and saying it had been a serious mistake to prohibit the EF (though he accepted the OF as normative). For those who are interested there's also some material on his contacts with Opus Dei, which started very early (straight after WW2). Here, from the book (p.126) is a limerick circulated by the Bishop of Clifton (the diocese which includes Bristol) during the Second Vatican Council: There was an old priest of Dunleary Who stood on his head at the Kyrie. When someone asked "Why?" He made this reply: "It's the latest liturgical theory!" This I suspect catches the preconciliar episcopal attitude to liturgical enthusiasts - marginal eccentrics always ready to come up with something outlandish. The placename is purely for the rhyme, of course. John Charles would never have tolerated such a thing.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2017 21:29:07 GMT
Fr Hunwicke's rather provocatively-named post draws attention to the removal from the OF of most of the EF references to continuity with the priesthood and sacrifices of the Old Covenant. (Another example which he doesn't mention is the removal from the rite of ordination of bishops of reference to the high priest of the ancient Temple) www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gzB-np9LJ0en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_sacerdos_magnus One contributory factor that Fr Hunwicke doesn't mention is the downplaying of one aspect of the comparison. St Ambrose gave as a justification for priestly celibacy the fact that (as the Gospels mention in relation to Zachary and Elizabeth) the Old Testament priests abstained from marital relations when they officiated at the sacrifice. Since the Western practice came to be for daily celebration of Mass, this emphasised that the priesthood was incompatible with marriage. (The Eastern practice took the same logic in a different direction - they had married priests but do not have daily liturgy.) This logic was extended to the reception of communion by laypeople, which of course is incompatible with daily reception of communion by the married. (One of the Jesuit practices which Pascal denounced in the PROVINCIAL LETTERS as self-evidently outrageous was allowing married people to receive communion on the same day they had marital relations.) Someone who knows more about this area than I do might trace whether there is a direct link between the promotion of daily communion (culminating with St. Pius X) and the willingness from Pius XII onwards to allow dispensations for the ordination of married converts (which was regarded as unthinkable in the C19 even when this caused considerable hardship for many Oxford Movement converts). Oddly enough, it is possible that Fr Hunwicke himself (as a married convert priest) is a beneficiary of the trend which he deplores. liturgicalnotes.blogspot.ie/2017/11/why-is-post-conciliar-catholic-church.html
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Post by prayerful on Dec 3, 2017 23:25:54 GMT
Have been reading WILLIAM GORDON WHEELER - A JOURNEY INTO THE FULLNESS OF FAITH by James Hagerty. I am posting this on this thread because it has some interesting Latin Mass material. Wheeler was a convert from Anglicanism who was in charge of the running of Westminster Cathedral for more than a decade before being sent north - first as Coadjutor of Middlesbrough, then as Bishop of Leeds 1966-85. In Westminster in the 50s he clearly saw himself as an "advanced" intellectual impatient with the Curia and fond of liturgical development, but simply by standing after the Council where he stood before it he came to be regarded as a reactionary (for example, at the time of his retirement he was the last bishop in England and Wales to make use of the cappa magna and he fell out quite strongly with). He was seen as the Latin Mass Society's most sympathetic contact in the hierarchy, and when some of the England and Wales bishops wanted the local indult phased out after the death of Cardinal Heenan, Wheeler wrote to Rome opposing this strongly and saying it had been a serious mistake to prohibit the EF (though he accepted the OF as normative). For those who are interested there's also some material on his contacts with Opus Dei, which started very early (straight after WW2). Here, from the book (p.126) is a limerick circulated by the Bishop of Clifton (the diocese which includes Bristol) during the Second Vatican Council: There was an old priest of Dunleary Who stood on his head at the Kyrie. When someone asked "Why?" He made this reply: "It's the latest liturgical theory!" This I suspect catches the preconciliar episcopal attitude to liturgical enthusiasts - marginal eccentrics always ready to come up with something outlandish. The placename is purely for the rhyme, of course. John Charles would never have tolerated such a thing. One thing Abp McQuaid can be thanked for is the requirement that while altars had to follow Sacrosanctum Concilium, or the normative interpretation of requiring that a priest be able to go around it, the altar would be so positioned as to allow the Mass of Ages to be offered. Now oft times there are some terrible looking potted plants in the way, but it allows for some future restoration.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 1, 2018 22:40:53 GMT
Some years ago I read the last collection of Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo stories, DON CAMILLO AND HELL'S ANGELS (also called DON CAMILLO AND THE FLOWER CHILDREN), in which the North Italian parish priest and his rival the Communist mayor Peppone face 60s developments - Peppone is pestered by Maoist dissidents and his son becomes a biker, while Don Camillo is landed with a flower-child niece and a trendy curate sent to him by the bishop to oversee the reordering of his church (it later transpires that some of the discarded statuary were priceless works of art; when the bishop complains of the bad publicity Don Camillo reminds him that he himself sent in a liturgical commissar to ensure that the vandalism was carried out). I always assumed that this reordering was connected with the introduction of the Novus Ordo. Only last week did it occur to me that the book appeared in English in 1969, the year the NO was introduced (which means the stories must have appeared at least a year or two earlier in Italian). In other words, what the stories actually illustrate is the wildcat liturgical experimentation which immediately followed the Council and which the NO was partly intended (at least by Paul VI) to regulate.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 23, 2018 20:52:05 GMT
Currently reading Leo Darroch's history of Una Voce. Very much a wood-for-the-trees chronicle. A few points come to mind so far: (1) Relies very much on the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy - massive chaos and decline followed the Council, therefore it must have been caused by the Council. There's obviously some truth in this, and refusal by church authorities etc to consider the possibility that some of the "experiments" were mistakes is sheer denial - but equally, if all had been healthy before the Council the Church wouldn't have imploded so widely and rapidly. (2) The book begins with a brief discussion of 50s debates over the vernacular, and the author is clueless enough to include with apparent approval a letter endorsing Dom Gueranger's view that allowing vernacular liturgy to the Slavs inevitably led to schism, and that the Greeks would not be in schism if they had been made to discard the Greek for the Latin rite. (I didn't know Gueranger expressed this last piece of cluelessness, but it is quite in accord with some of the other views I know he expressed.) This is exactly the sort of mindset - suppressing legitimate and recognised customs in favour of a reconstructed state of affairs assumed to be perfect - that has created our current mess. Once you disregard custom and usage on that scale, it would be just as plausible to argue that there would have been no schism if the Church of Rome had stuck to Greek liturgy - which was almost certainly the original liturgical language in Rome - and that we should all unite in using the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. Later on we find Mr Darroch reproducing Una Voce material citing the postconciliar preservation of the Use of Braga (in Portugal) as a precedent for the continuation of the TLM, apparently without noting how contrary this is to the Guerangerian view. More later...
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 25, 2018 8:43:39 GMT
I though Leo Darroch's election as president of the international Úna Voce federation was an indication the movement went the wrong way. And setting himself up as an historian of the organisation is much worse.
It is clear here that the man is regurgitating trad ignorance here. Unfortunately, the late Michael Davies played to this gallery but he never committed any of this to writing. Leo Darroch is not in the same league at all. And the Una Voce movement is regrettably a catalogue of missed opportunities and encouragement of some of the wrong people overtime to create a very ineffective international grouping. It could have been different. I'm not going to blame Leo Darroch on his own, there were others. It was a general malaise coupled with a great complacency during Benedict's pontificate which affected member associations as much as the international federation.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 27, 2018 20:55:54 GMT
Darroch doesn't cover the period after 2004 - he ends with Michael Davies' resignation. Davies gets relatively little coverage in the book compared to van Saventhem because the main source is an archive maintained by the van Saventhems. In fact the book is more a collection of documents than a proper history, and its primary focus is on dealings with the Vatican - there are passing remarks about dissensions in and between national member bodies, for example, but these are never explicated. Some other points that come to mind: (1) It really does unintentionally give a sense of how the Vatican bureaucracy functions like an old-style royal court, on access and gossip, and just how slowly and opaquely it operates. (2) There is a sense from some of the early Seventies documents that in its early years elements in UV were flirting at the very least with the idea that the NO was intrinsically heretical, yet in their later dealings with the Vatican the idea that the trad movement is tainted by association with such people is treated as absurd. (This is not necessarily dishonest - it is quite possible to flirt with danger, pull back, and years later forget you ever did so - but a historian with the documents before them should notice the development.) There is not a strong sense of how UV developed and adapted over time, just an assumption that they were always right. (3) In general the book is very bad at seeing other people's points of view; for example, when the row about biritualism in the FSSP is discussed no sense is given of the significance of the bishop's annual Chrism Mass and how problematic it is for priests to refuse to concelebrate it with him on principle, and the minority's having exercised their right as Catholics to appeal to the Vatican against their superiors' decision is treated as an outrage which should have led to their immediate expulsion and being turned adrift - which is exactly the sort of outrageous treatment of which trads and conservatives rightly complain when it is done to them as it often is. Again, opponents of trad liturgy are all lumped together as "modernists" as if they were all formal heretics and it was impossible that they could be sincerely mistaken. (There are exceptions to this; at one point Saventhem explains that Mgr Bugnini was sacked because he tried to turn his Congregation into a super-department annexing all sorts of responsibilities and making him a sort of Vatican Prime Minister, thereby antagonising too many powerful departmental heads. This strikes me as more plausible than the Mason theory because if the latter was true one would expect a bigger upheaval. Again, there is a passage spelling out the difference between the rival interpretations of liturgical reform; the writer claims that most bishops at Vatican II thought they were signing up for a process of investigation and codification leading to a new definitive form, while the "experts" put in charge of the changes thought that the idea of the liturgy as a means of evangelisation justified indefinite experimentation - even by individual congregations - and abandonment of fixed liturgical forms altogether.)
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 4, 2018 22:11:06 GMT
Another point which strikes me about Darroch's mindset. At one point he states (whether as his own view or that of Dr de Saventhem I'm not sure) that any liturgical innovation is inherently suspect because major heresies are usually accompanied by liturgical changes. According to that principle, the Orthodox are correct in condemning the filioque clause (which is clearly a Western innovation and addition to the Creed), and we should also abolish the Elevation and the Last Gospel (both developed relatively late in the Middle Ages). Indeed, that principle does not have to be developed very far to produce the idea that innovations are always deteriorations and should be stripped away (however well-established and effective) in order to get back to the supposedly superior hypothetical original. This is exactly what produced the present liturgical condition.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 29, 2018 20:03:12 GMT
Just an amusing little piece of historical ignorance. I believe the images are taken from a "historical fantasy" TV series called REIGN in which the early life of Mary Queen of Scots and her relationship with her first husband Francis II of France are reimagined as a sixteenth-century version of American high school romance. Note that in the wedding scenes the altar is a post-Vatican II separate table altar pulled away from the wall, rather than being set against the wall as would have been the case up to the mid-C20. This is real "Vikings with wristwatches" stuff. Also Tommy Makem had a really fine voice. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqi4ROJckzE
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 29, 2018 20:26:58 GMT
That's interesting, Hibernicus. A bit of a side issue, but I often wonder how the availability of daily Mass (in whatever language) has changed over the centuries. McQuaid presents a rather sad figure at the end of his life. Even a lefty like Radharc's Fr. Joe Dunne, in his book No Tigers in Africa! (the title itself was supplied by McQuaid) mentions that it was shameful to see the way he suddenly became persona non gratis after his fall from power, or from office. This is rather a delayed response, but I think it's a significant one. In a rural situation I suspect only a very few would be able to attend Mass daily (because of the need to work in the fields pre-mechanisation and pre-artificial light, the distances travelled etc). It would be more likely in towns with numerous churches within short distances of each other. Remember that C17 and C18 missioners like St Vincent de Paul, St Alphonsus Liguori, St Louis de Montfort etc had as their primary concerns getting priests to leave the towns where there were a lot of nice sinecures and go out into the countryside to evangelise the peasants and labourers who were little better than pagans. (The mendicant orders also tended to be town-based because that was where they could find benefactors to support them.) There is also the issue of daily communion, whose full implications didn't strike me until I became fully aware of the older Eucharistic discipline. Basically East and West both took the view that the discipline of the old Jerusalem Temple (the priest should not have marital relations in the same timespan as he officiated) applied to the priesthood of the New Covenant. Hence Eastern parish clergy (who are married) do not say Mass daily (though I presume it is said in monasteries) while the development of daily celebration of Mass by Western clergy is linked to the development of clerical celibacy. Traditionally, the same discipline applied to the reception of communion by the laity, which would mean that only celibates could receive communion daily. The promotion of frequent communion (particularly by St Pius X) is clearly contrary to this, and reflects a greater emphasis on the sacraments as tools of evangelisation (the Novus Ordo is part of the same trend; so is Pope Francis). The Orthodox say that the Latin mentality is so intent on keeping the letter of the law while minimising its burdens that it ends up rationalising away what it's supposed to be promoting.
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