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Post by shane on Nov 25, 2011 0:26:39 GMT
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Post by shane on Jan 24, 2012 17:40:02 GMT
Furthermore to my thoughts about 1950s Irish Catholicism and its liturgical potential, I would like to offer a few propositions for your consideration. The period from the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 up until the promulgation of the Novus Ordo almost a decade later, was characterised by an extremely rapid rate of liturgical disintegration, unprecedented in the history of the Catholic Church. However if we look at the state of the Irish Church just on the eve of the Second Vatican Council - i.e. in the late 1950s and the early 1960s - what actually did occur subsequently was far from inevitable or in any way pre-determined. Throughout the first 60 years of the twentieth century there seems to have been an increasing consciousness in Ireland of the need to ameliorate and elevate the standard of liturgical worship; serious and industrious efforts were made in this direction. Interest in the liturgical movement in the Irish Church particularly takes shape after the Second World War and the primary stimuli by which this interest is aroused are: the release of Mediator Dei in 1947, the continuing progress of diocesan liturgical festivals, the founding of The Furrow and Doctrine and Life in 1950 and 1951 respectively, the inauguration of the Irish Liturgical Congresses in 1954 and the increasingly extensive impinging of continental and American influences on the Irish religious context. The necessity for progress in liturgical standards is enjoined in several episcopal statements, directives and pastorals, right up until a very late date. For instance, in 1959 (the year in which Pope John XXIII announced his intention to convene an ecumenical council) Bishop James MacNamee of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise used his lenten pastoral to exhort an advance in the liturgical standards of his diocese and chastises the reticence of some of his priests, who view congregational participation as superfluous: It may be objected that it would be impossible to teach all this [i.e. the responses of the third degree] to children, especially as they must be said in Latin, and that it would be still more difficult to teach them to understand the meaning of the words they are required to use. The answer to this is that if a choir of boys or girls can be taught both to read these prayers and to sing them, it ought to be possible for at least the higher classes in our primary schools to recite them and understand them, and it should be still more easy for pupils of vocational and secondary schools. It is really a matter of considering the task worthwhile and then of settling down to it patiently and earnestly. I have already referred to the excellent paper read by the then Bishop William Conway, auxiliary of Armagh, to the 1961 Irish Liturgical Congress as a heart-breaking example of 'what might have been'. He showed himself entirely oblivious of what was just around the corner, reflecting a wider (and no doubt blissful) ignorance in Irish Catholicism of the impending revolution. Commenting on the same paper in 1963 ( Irish Independent, 7th September, 1963), just three months before the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Louis McRedmond (who later reported on the Council for the Indo and wrote a book on it) observed that: Dr Conway's point is that understanding must precede fuller participation. He plots a neat strategy by which we may be lured into accepting the new idea: in brief, hasten slowly. Some of the shorter responses, which are easily explained, should alone be required from adult congregations at first. The practice might be begun with Sung Masses. Meanwhile in the schools the children could be brought through the various stages. Thus, by acting over ten or fifteen years instead of overnight, we should achieve an enormously beneficial liturgical renewal without the strain on tradition felt in England and, apparently, on the Continent too. Cardinal D'Alton's lenten pastoral of 1960 - which in the course of an obituary Fr. Gerry McGarry (then editor of The Furrow and professor of Pastoral Theology at Maynooth) deservedly praised as "the finest document of the Irish liturgical movement" ( Catholic Herald, 8th February, 1963) - treated at length the theological basis underpinning 'participatio actuosa' and envisaged a regular Missa Cantata in every parish of his Archdiocese. It was the fruit of considerable study beforehand: in the winter of 1959, he set himself the task of studying the proponents and sources (including Jungmann) of the liturgical movement. It's interesting to note that many of those who originally championed liturgical reform in pre-conciliar times were disillusioned by the liturgical reform that followed. In April 1974, Fr. P.J. Brophy, President of St. Patrick's College, Carlow, wrote an article in The Furrow asking 'Whatever Happened to Our Liturgical Dreams?' He states that in the 1940s and '50s, he was one of many Irish priests who dreamed of a revivified liturgy in Ireland and took inspiration from the pace of developments that he witnessed in local parishes during his Summer vacations to France. He tried his efforts with local communities of nuns in Carlow but encountered distrust and a lack of enthusiasm among practical-minded priests. He identifies the period 1954-1964 as a decisive decade of change. However, while he praises Sacrosanctum Concilium, the application of the liturgical reform did not live up to his expectations. For him the 'hackneyed hymns' and the aesthetical mediocrity of the reformed liturgy are a betrayal of the original intent of the liturgical movement. In 1979, Fr. Eamonn Bredin, lecturer in Sacramental Theology at the Institute of Religious Education, Mount Oliver, Dundalk, wrote a four-part series in The Furrow on the progress of liturgical reform in Ireland since Vatican II. His criticisms of the new liturgy savour almost of traditionalism, criticizing it for its inherent artificiality and lack of beauty. He welcomes the transition to the vernacular as an obvious benefit, but laments the loss of sacrality which the Latin language had provided. He notes that older people are unenthusiastic about the new liturgy and pine for the past. Seán Mac Réamoinn was arguably the most influential lay exponent of liturgical reform - even before Vatican II. In June, 1956, he wrote a quite scary article in The Furrow (and also in the Irish language magazine Comhar) welcoming the new order of Holy Week and speculating that it was prelude of things to come. Implausibly, James S. Donnelly cites him in an article in History Ireland (Autumn, 2000) to support his contention that "liturgical renewal inspired by Vatican II was generally a success in Ireland": Against the odds, however, Irish Catholicism did accommodate itself to some of the injunctions of Vatican II, though in other areas the response was incomplete or sadly deficient. Liturgical reformers had relatively little about which to complain. Writing in 1985 [in an essay in 'Freedom to Hope: The Catholic Church in Ireland Twenty Years After Vatican II' - Shane], the broadcaster and cultural commentator Seán Mac Réamoinn could declare expansively, ‘On the face of it, liturgical renewal has been the success story of Vatican II in Ireland’. From the beginning, Mass in the vernaculars (English and Irish) was thoroughly accepted. Mass attendance rates remained remarkably high overall (well above 80 per cent), especially in comparison with the rest of Europe. In addition, the participation of Mass-goers in the liturgy was generally much better than in the pre-council era. As Mac Réamoinn observed, ‘the days of the silent congregation are numbered, if not over, and the people’s voice is heard, even—mirabile dictu—in song!’ Common all over the country by 1985 were lay scripture readers, lay ministers of the eucharist, and communion in the hand. That does not fully encapsulate Mac Réamoinn's views. He certainly had more than "relatively little about which to complain." In the same year the Sunday Independent (24th November, 1985) quotes him as mourning the 'lost dimension of mystery' that resulted from the liturgical reforms. (The same article quotes another writer's view that one negative result of the Council was "the despoliation of the liturgy".) Here is an extract from his Laylines' column in Doctrine and Life of April, 1996: An old friend who died last month had made it clear to his family that he wanted a sung Requiem in Latin for his funeral. Fortunately, with more than a little help from the Dominicans, his wish was granted. And I know that all who were present were considerably moved by the liturgy. For many of us it was a reminder not just of old ways, but of the power of plainsong to shape our worship. And for those to whom it was a new experience it was, I believe, no less affecting, if at times more obscurely so…
Some of us who joined in the singing were out of practice, to put it very kindly. I hope we didn’t damage the ensemble too seriously. And I believe we didn’t for, though the Gregorian discipline demands as much careful respect, if not more, than other musical forms, it can cover a multitude of imperfections…
[L]ast month’s experience was a sharp reminder of what we have lost, or rather mislaid or thrown aside. I have written here before about the appalling philistinism which has allowed us to neglect so much of our western Catholic heritage: it is as if the Orthodox world had suddenly decided to embrace iconoclasm as a way of living and praying, and thrown all those images — which are plainsong’s rival in their deep and direct communication of the spiritual — on the ecclesiastical scrap heap. And I shudder to think what the more enthusiastic among them would have adopted as substitutes, what glossy meretricious essays in neo-sentimentality would have paralleled some of our recent hymns, post-modern effusions of sentimental pietism…
When we ignore plainsong, or for that matter, classical polyphony, to the point of banishing this great music from our churches and denying it to our younger people, we are depriving them and us of a spiritual enrichment whose value is more, far more, than aesthetic — important as that may be. It reminds me of nothing so much as the pathetic way so many of our great-(great-) grandparents believed that they must not pass the Irish language on to their children….such was the crazy logic of the time, they thought that a knowledge of Irish and of English were mutually exclusive. We now realise, or at least I hope we do, what an injustice was done in those days, from the best of motives.
Mind you, it is harder to see what has been the motivation of ‘getting rid of the oul’ Latin’ over the past thirty years or so. How can anyone have possibly seen such stupidity as an aid to liturgical renewal? Certainly the composition of vernacular settings was, and is, to be encouraged, but not to the exclusion of work of a standard which it would be difficult to emulate or approach overnight. And interestingly, the simple O’Riada Cúil Aodha Mass seems to be the most generally popular of all the new settings, not least among congregations who would be hard put to it to provide translations of the texts…The ‘poetry’ seems to get through, in spite of any verbal problems. Is there a moral here?
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 25, 2012 0:48:47 GMT
Very good find, Shane. What is interesting is that this sense that liturgical reform had not turned out as expected does not seem to have produced any sort of insitutionalised "conservatism" a la Communio - just individual expressions of regret. Insofar as there was any "conservative" reaction it took place mainly at episcopal level, not among theologian- and in order to have lasting impact such a reaction needs the office of prophet as well as king. (This is why Pope Benedict devotes so much of his time to writing - he believes it is the idea which triumphs in the end. Fr Michael O'Carroll's comment apropos of Fr JAmes Leen and archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that while the administrator may have many achievements it is the visionary whose work lasts, seems all too apposite now. Donnelly's selective use of Mac Reamoinn reflects an assumption (which I noted in my BRANDSMA review of Louise Fuller's IRISH CATHOLICISM SINCE 1945 some time ago) that the post-Vatican II changes are so self-evidently good, and what went before them so utterly bad, that their mere implementation constitutes a great achievement, and therefore it is unthinkable that they should be subjected to detached assessment to test whether they fulfilled their stated aims. JAmes Hitchcock notes in one of his books (I think THE DECLINE AND FALL OF RADICAL CATHOLICISM) that the US liturgical movement in the early 1960s was in many respects quite strikingly conservative by the standards of what came after it, and that by the late 60s many people who a decade earlier had been calling for more Gregorian chant, fuller understanding of Aquinas etc were going whole-hog for the folk guitars, clown masses, and protestantising or marxisation of the Church. Hitchcock, who states that in the 1950s he would have been regarded as a liberal, and would have seen himself as such by the standards of the time, remarks that in hindsight the 1950s reactionaries had a point when they said that many of the liturgical reformers were really motivated by desire to see themselves as superior to the embarrassments of popular Catholicism, to be "real" Americans rather than set apart in a despised sub-culture etc; the divide between those who really wanted to deepen the Church's understanding of the liturgy and those who were driven by pride and resentment only really came into the open from the late 1960s, and this divide is the origin of the liberal/conservative [as distict from trad] split. The sort of material Shane has in his post helps to explain why IMHO it is necessary for trads to see ourselves as the legitimate heirs to a liturgical reform movement which was knocked off course when the windows blew open, rather than harkening back to an idealised point in time as the liturgical ideal from which we should never have departed.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 25, 2012 12:29:03 GMT
The sort of material Shane has in his post helps to explain why IMHO it is necessary for trads to see ourselves as the legitimate heirs to a liturgical reform movement which was knocked off course when the windows blew open, rather than harkening back to an idealised point in time as the liturgical ideal from which we should never have departed. With Hibernicus, I agree Shane's contribution above is excellent and it gives the lie to some of the allegations and generalisations about liturgy in Ireland immediately before the council. I had heard about Bishop McNamee's work in Ardagh and Clonmacnois and I'm also aware of local work which could vary from parish to parish. I was, to put it mildly, surprised by Seán Mac Réamonn's 1996 reflects. His quote about the success story of the Irish liturgy is well known. We should recall that the liturgy in Ireland was very conservative up to and into the 1980s - even as church music and church architecture was flying out the window. I will throw in another point: the extraordinary form as it is emerging across the country is largely how it might have been before the work of the 1950s. I have attended EF Masses in Dublin, Meath, Louth, Newry, Belfast, Bruckless, Galway, Limerick and Cork as well as other venues over the past few years and if a rule is emerging in Ireland it is precisely of a silent and passive congregation that is much derided. That wasn't alway the case in Dublin, but it has become the case in Harrington St. Priests like Fr Michael Cahill, Fr William OCSO and Fr Anthony O'Reilly invite responses in their manner of celebration, but they don't come. Very few members of the faithful are aware of the postures they should maintain during Mass - I have yet to see a congregation on this island following the correct postures throughout the Mass, even in St Kevin's where all one has to do is imitate what those priests sitting in the sanctuary who are not among the Sacred Ministers are doing. I am also amazed at how much effort seems to be put into Sacred Polyphony and how little is put into Gregorian Chant, though the latter is something the faithful can join in on. Much work exists ahead of the EF, methinks, as it will not serve as an agent of evangelisation as long as it remains as I describe it above.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 25, 2012 17:25:55 GMT
What do you mean by "much derided"? Who is doing the "deriding"? I suspect that to a considerable extent this emergence of a silent congregation reflects congregational preference - but I think more should be done to encourage them to take part. (See the "Dialogue Mass" thread elsewhere on this forum.) In this, as in so much else, trads need to be more articulate and self-aware.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jan 26, 2012 21:39:19 GMT
What I meant is that the silent low Mass is held up as a model as how not to do things by supporters of the new liturgy (whether conservative or progressive). The congregation are just as passive in polyphonic sung Masses - or indeed at Gregorian sung Masses.
I don't think preference is an issue. Many are simply don't know any better. And through Michael's & John's/St Paul's/St Audoen's in Dublin, the dialogue Mass was the rule. That suddenly vanished in St Kevin's.
I think the faithful need instruction, but I have no idea where the instruction will come from. Even the Ecclesia Dei Coalition booklets are no help - I have regularly seen people hold them, kneeling though the booklet says 'stand'. So leadership needs to be shown.
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Post by shane on Mar 7, 2012 0:14:26 GMT
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Post by melancholicus on Mar 15, 2012 21:04:58 GMT
The emergence of the silent Low Mass as the norm for celebrations of the ancient liturgy is interesting. It could well be that congregations simply don't know what to do with themselves, but personally I feel that the ethos of the Old Mass encourages silence and contemplation, and discourages activity, whether vocal or physical. Since we all have the natural human inclination to do what everyone else is doing, if most of the congregants are not giving the responses, we will tend to keep quiet also because we don't want to draw attention to ourselves as the lone audible voice in the midst of a sea of silence.
Now for the anecdote.
When I was in seminary (FSSP), the liturgical week at the community Mass was broken down as follows:
Sunday: Solemn High Mass Monday and Tuesday: Silent Low Mass in which only the servers gave the responses. Wednesday through Saturday: Dialogue Low Mass, in which everyone present was expected not only to utter responses, but to to observe "choir rubrics", about which I shall say more later.
One day a week (Mon-Sat) we would have a floating Missa Cantata, usually celebrated on a day on which there was a significant feast (on First Class feasts this would of course be a High Mass).
Anyhow:
When Low Mass was celebrated, the OVERWHELMING preference of the seminarians was for the Silent Low Mass, in which responses were given only by the two servers. I noticed a pronounced physical passivity among my peers on Mondays and Tuesdays, many of whom preferred to spend much of the Mass on their knees.
Mondays and Tuesdays, the days of silent Low Mass, were the spiritual days, the peaceful days, the contemplative days. Because on Wednesday morning one could easily sense the resentment in chapel as Mass became a battleground.
Authority laid down that the seminarians were to utter all the responses of the Mass aloud (including the Gloria in Excelsis, which is not a response). This in itself was disliked by some but the many (including myself) could tolerate it. We were also commanded to observe "choir rubrics" which, simply put, were a translation of the rubrics regulating posture at a High Mass directly into a Low Mass setting. This really didn't work. At a High Mass everything is sung, which slows the pace of the liturgy considerably, so that the changes of posture are stately and graceful, with seemly time intervals between them. At a Low Mass, recited at a normal speaking pace, all these changes of posture are crowded into a much shorter time period, sometimes with extremely distasteful results. Take for instance the several bows to the cross during the Gloria in Excelsis, which is a beautiful thing when the Gloria is sung, but when it is recited these constant turnings and bowings become ridiculous, almost like liturgical disco dancing. The imposition of these rubrics caused great resentment in the community, and many souls ended by ignoring them altogether, kneeling throughout the Dialogue Low Mass (which they could get away with quite easily, thanks to the ad orientem posture of the celebrant).
Incidentally, there is no ecclesiastical mandate for celebrating Low Mass in such a fashion. I did some research and discovered that our liturgy police had implemented as law some mere suggestions they had found in O'Connell's revision of Fortescue.
The "choir rubrics" made the Dialogue Mass exceedingly unpopular, such that all but one or two souls (at the time I was there) ended up with a marked preference for Silent Low Mass, which remains my preference to this day.
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Post by shane on Mar 16, 2012 19:28:21 GMT
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Post by melancholicus on Mar 16, 2012 19:48:15 GMT
Ah, Clifford Howell. I know this guy's name from the well-deserved whipping given him in the writings of the late Michael Davies. It is hardly surprising the liturgy was destroyed after the council with ideologues such as Howell in the driving seat.
His key phrases "de facto the Mass is the sacrifice of all" (without specifying any distinction between the sacrifice offered by the priest and that of the laity); "when I do things in style"; "useless unitelligible Latin"; and his emphasis on the "social nature" of the Mass all betray the insouciant arrogance of the liturgical reformer, confident that the Tradition is an obstacle to prayer and piety and that he knows what is best for the Church and for the faithful.
Maybe we had to lose the traditional liturgy in order to appreciate fully the value of it.
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Post by shane on Mar 16, 2012 20:04:46 GMT
I would agree with you melancholicus. As they say, sometimes you don't know what you have until it's gone.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 20, 2012 15:52:35 GMT
Not only that - many things, some irreplacabale, were lost with the liturgy.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 20, 2012 20:55:07 GMT
I don't think the Novus ORdo is all bad, but the way it was implemented reminds me irresistibly of a certain style of 1950s and 1960s town planning a la Corbusier.
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Post by shane on Mar 20, 2012 21:28:14 GMT
hibernicus, what particular aspects of the NO do you see as positive?
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 22, 2012 23:32:49 GMT
Well, the obvious first point is that it is a valid and licit Mass, which is the core of things. In terms of where it might have an advantage over the TLM, I think the use of the vernacular does have a positive aspect in terms of immediate comprehension (especially in relation to the proclamation of the Gospel, on which I have been having a dialogue of the deaf with Shane recently). The countervailing problem is that it easily leads to banalisation, whereas the TLM once you 'get' it draws you higher up and further in. The emphasis on evangelisation in the NO does reflect a genuine problem of modernity - the TLM works best where people are used to it and take it for granted, in the old-style parish. When it is thrown into a more variegated environment it can come to be seen as alien and incomprehensible, something the priest alone understands and the congregation merely watches. (There was a very high rate of lapsation among the urban migrant poor in the golden age of the TLM, though the NO hasn't done better in this regard - they used to say Bretons in C19 PAris lapsed after one generation.) There was a preconciliar tendency to rush through the parish Low Mass very quickly - I recall that in one of Canon Sheehan's novels a half-hour Mass is spoken of as unusually long. To some extent I am acting as devil's advocate here; there are clear advantages to the TLM/EF (for example the more I experience it the more obviously right the ad orientem celebration seems and the more closed-in on itself versus populum seems by comparison) but the liturgical changes were not imposed out of nowhere by MAsonic conspirators, and the TLM won't be an automatic success - efforts must be made to understand how people see it and how it can be presented. Too many trads talk as if the TLM would automatically attract everyone who saw it (though to be fair much of this literature dates from periods when large sections of the congregation remembered the TLM and could suddenly 'get the point' of it in a way that is less likely to happen with people who have never seen it before.
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