There are a couple of myths floating around out there that have no substance in truth and I would like to do my bit to put them to rest, permanently!
The first is one from my own side of the tennis court, that of believing that everything in the Faith was rosy up until Vatican II. Not so. It was, in my view, quite a bit better than the state of play today but there were abuses of several kinds in existence. Priestly authority could, at times be overpowering to the point of being obnoxious and domineering. There were, so we believe, sexual scandals, but these were largely hushed up (and that was not necessarily a bad thing; we need to keep a perspective on each case and, if a priest runs off with a female parishioner, it is not always appropriate to make public comment).
There was also a rather subservient attitude on behalf of the laity. One did not question a decision made by a priest, less still a Bishop. If you wanted to make public your faith and stand on a box at Speaker's Corner on a Sunday, you had to first complete a course in catechetics run by the CTS (or was it the CEG?). Without that imprimatur no one would even think of doing such a thing. But, by and large, there was nothing there that could not be fixed by a few ecclesiastical tweaks.
My second 'ghost' is from the left hand side of the court. The constant accusation that priests 'gabbled' the latin. My parish was in Hounslow, basically at one end of the main Heathrow Airport runway; as a result, we had a constant stream of itinerant priests staying for a few days before moving on. I lived less than 150 yeard from the church and so, as an altar server, I was on call for one or two masses each day, funerals, weddings, receiving coffins into the church the night before, bar mitzvhas well, no, not those actually but you get the picture. Never once did I experience a priest gabbling latin at Mass. I must have served hundreds of Masses. My explanation for the belief ? The fact that non latin speakers get confused when they hear the language spoken fluently.
I have the same problem on holiday in France or Japan or wherever. They all speak so damn fast, they sound as if they are gabbling their language! After a week I begin to develop an 'ear' for what is being said and the process of being able to begin to separate the individual words starts to take place.
It is true that some priests celebrated Mass rather rapidly but I do recall a discussion with Fr Richard Sutherland (RIP) in the course of which he told me that there was a set time period for a Low Mass. I cannot now remember what that time period was but I believe it was between 20 and 30 minutes. That's OK for a Low Mass mid week with only a handful of communicants, it can be done reverently and without rushing the latin. It might run to 40 minutes if it was a Sunday. And it must be remembered that those were the days when priests had, seemingly, huge calls on their time. They made house visits, very often, not just once a year. Many priests did not drive and so travelled around their patch on a bicycle. They also made their presence felt in the parish school, often on a daily basis and, of course, there was Mass every day and rosary most evenings. They worked very hard at pastoral and spiritual matters in those days and I am sure many do the same today.
And, finally, this last thought which few seem to consider. Up until 1970 or so, we were all Traditional Catholics.
That's right, you heard me correctly, we were
ALL TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS!
You know what? It wasn't all that bad, in fact, it was quite enjoyable!
The first is one from my own side of the tennis court, that of believing that everything in the Faith was rosy up until Vatican II. Not so. It was, in my view, quite a bit better than the state of play today but there were abuses of several kinds in existence. Priestly authority could, at times be overpowering to the point of being obnoxious and domineering. There were, so we believe, sexual scandals, but these were largely hushed up (and that was not necessarily a bad thing; we need to keep a perspective on each case and, if a priest runs off with a female parishioner, it is not always appropriate to make public comment).
There was also a rather subservient attitude on behalf of the laity. One did not question a decision made by a priest, less still a Bishop. If you wanted to make public your faith and stand on a box at Speaker's Corner on a Sunday, you had to first complete a course in catechetics run by the CTS (or was it the CEG?). Without that imprimatur no one would even think of doing such a thing. But, by and large, there was nothing there that could not be fixed by a few ecclesiastical tweaks.
My second 'ghost' is from the left hand side of the court. The constant accusation that priests 'gabbled' the latin. My parish was in Hounslow, basically at one end of the main Heathrow Airport runway; as a result, we had a constant stream of itinerant priests staying for a few days before moving on. I lived less than 150 yeard from the church and so, as an altar server, I was on call for one or two masses each day, funerals, weddings, receiving coffins into the church the night before, bar mitzvhas well, no, not those actually but you get the picture. Never once did I experience a priest gabbling latin at Mass. I must have served hundreds of Masses. My explanation for the belief ? The fact that non latin speakers get confused when they hear the language spoken fluently.
I have the same problem on holiday in France or Japan or wherever. They all speak so damn fast, they sound as if they are gabbling their language! After a week I begin to develop an 'ear' for what is being said and the process of being able to begin to separate the individual words starts to take place.
It is true that some priests celebrated Mass rather rapidly but I do recall a discussion with Fr Richard Sutherland (RIP) in the course of which he told me that there was a set time period for a Low Mass. I cannot now remember what that time period was but I believe it was between 20 and 30 minutes. That's OK for a Low Mass mid week with only a handful of communicants, it can be done reverently and without rushing the latin. It might run to 40 minutes if it was a Sunday. And it must be remembered that those were the days when priests had, seemingly, huge calls on their time. They made house visits, very often, not just once a year. Many priests did not drive and so travelled around their patch on a bicycle. They also made their presence felt in the parish school, often on a daily basis and, of course, there was Mass every day and rosary most evenings. They worked very hard at pastoral and spiritual matters in those days and I am sure many do the same today.
And, finally, this last thought which few seem to consider. Up until 1970 or so, we were all Traditional Catholics.
That's right, you heard me correctly, we were
ALL TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS!
You know what? It wasn't all that bad, in fact, it was quite enjoyable!
"Up until 1970 or so, we were all Traditional Catholics. That's right, you heard me correctly, we were ALL TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS!"
ReplyDelete- from which it follows the the present debacle was engineered in its entirety by Tradtional Catholics. That, I suggest, is the stubborn fact requiring honestly to be confronted before any ghosts can be laid to rest. There are, so far, very few indications that "Traditional Catholics" are prepared to do anything of the sort.
Anagnostis - please do not be too prescriptive, of course, the rot set in prior to 1970, it is just that Vatican II provides a handy calendar stamp for the changes that took place. Vatican II, as we know, was hijacked by the periti who steam rollered a mix of liturgical change that has proved disastrous. The changes were far from being engineered by Traditionalists, however, we had never used the word up until then.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRichard
ReplyDeleteThe detailed groundplan for the Novus Ordo Missae was laid out more or less in its entirety by the early 1950's, under the patronage of Pius XII.
Vatican II provides a handy scapegoat. The people responsible for the liturgical collapse were neither Modernists, nor liberals, nor neo-Protestant conspirators; they were straight-down-the-middle, loyal-to-the-Magisterium, pious Roman Catholics acting under the supervision of the Pope who canonised Pius X; they believed that no harm, only good, could come of a commission to re-engineer the patrimony of the Western Church Church, so long as the enterprise was underwritten by "Peter".
"Traditionalism", of course, is something that happens when Tradition itself has ceased.
Anagnostis, is there historical evidence for this? I doubt it somehow. I doubt that we would have had Vatican II if Pope Pius XII had lived longer.
ReplyDeleteThe whole exercise was a shock to most concerned, laity and clergy alike. From memory, about 5,000 British religious became laicised in the immediate aftermath.
Richard - This is all fully in the public domain. The Novus Ordo was conceived as a 20-year project and worked out in detail at a series of conferences between 1949 and 1952. Subsequent work by the same commission included the draft of what was to become Sacrosanctum Concilium, completed in the reign of Pope Pacelli (who certainly considered the calling of a Council, not least in order to rubber-stamp the project). Throughout the '50s, privileged associates in the Liturgical Movement were permitted to "leak" tantalising glimpses of what was being planned, in various books on "the Mass of the future". For a contemporary scholarly account, I recommend Dr Alcuin Read's Organic Development of the Liturgy.
ReplyDelete- sorry: I mean "a recent scholarly account".
ReplyDeleteRichard - When I worked in the West End of London, I went to Farm Street for Friday lunchtime Mass.
ReplyDeleteIn English, ungabbled, it took about 20 minutes. There was time for lunch afterwards.
The Mass in a Sacrifice. It doesn't need a lot of time.
...and that, Lefty, encapsulates precisely the general approach of the "reform": leitourgia as a system of "minimal conditions" - a regulated, decorous rigmarole for getting to the Magic Words. Why twenty minutes? Why not just ten? Or five? Where, in this understanding of Eucharist, is doxa kai eucharistia the very conditions (according to St Paul) of worship "in spirit and in truth"?
ReplyDeleteIt's very, very instructive (to those amenable to instruction) that scholars formed in the categories and methodologies of Scholastic theology (supposedly the bulwark of orthodoxy) were instrumental in the development and reception of the reform, while theologians and liturgiologists tending to a more Patristic outlook (sufficient to put them under a cloud in the 1950's - von Hildebrand, Bouyer, Ratzinger) were often horrified by its results, in detail and in principle.
Is it the dead Christ you receive in Holy Communion, or the raised and glorified Christ?
ReplyDeleteEvidently, then, something more than bare sacrifice is being accomplished.
"t's very, very instructive (to those amenable to instruction) that scholars formed in the categories and methodologies of Scholastic theology (supposedly the bulwark of orthodoxy) were instrumental in the development and reception of the reform, while theologians and liturgiologists tending to a more Patristic outlook (sufficient to put them under a cloud in the 1950's - von Hildebrand, Bouyer, Ratzinger) were often horrified by its results, in detail and in principle."
ReplyDeleteIt goes without saying (as I intended to say) that this runs flat contrary to the dualistic received narrative of TradWorld.
Not to be impious or smart-assed, but I would suggest a change to the title: "Now can we lay a few ghosts from the past to rest?"
ReplyDeleteAnthony - I wrote it as an Englishman would, forgetting the American innuendo :)
ReplyDelete