LITURGICAL RENEWAL THROUGH THE YEARS — FORMATIONAL EXPERIENCES and RECENT PAST REFORMS

They probably didn’t know how much he influenced my interest in the liturgy. Long before Vatican II, Bill Thompson and Bill O’Shea were champions of liturgical renewal, at least locally in the confines of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, as far back as the late 1950s. I owe a good amount of my liturgical spirituality (not to be confused with the excellent works by Louis Bouyer) to the example offered by the two Bills.

Several years before that, in 1951, I’d received my first daily missal—The St. Andrew Daily Missal—complete with woodcuts of the saints and symbols of the sacraments sprinkled throughout the pages. I’d started serving as an altar boy in 1948, and daily mass had become part of my life by eighth grade. And that missal got a lot of use from then on through high school seminary.

Though that formation may have been my introduction to liturgy, I remember a more concrete  experience of liturgical renewal at St. Mary of the Lake during college years—Philosophy in seminary terms. In those day such renewal was in the form of “active participation.” Up to that time, Fr. Edward Fitzgerald, prefect of the philosophy hall had “said low mass” each day as we seminarians followed silently except for an occasional “Et cum spiritu tuo” and “Amen.” Bill Thompson and Bill O’Shea were the fomenters of a request made to “Fitz.” The request was an apparently simple one: the inclusion of four hymns in our Mass on a few days a week—processional, offertory, communion and recessional. One would have thought this was some revolutionary effort to take away the mass from the priest. On the first day “Fitz” allowed this addition. But as he opened the communion rail gate to go to the sacristy to vest for mass, he turned to us as we were completing our half-hour of morning meditation in our assigned places in the pews of the Philosophy Chapel, announcing,  “We will begin singing these hymns as part of the mass, but, remember, this is my mass.” 

The two Bills had taken part in the annual Liturgical Conference at Notre Dame for a number of years and were far ahead of most in what was being recommended in those interVatican I-Vatican II days. Actually Vatican II was not even a glimmer on the horizon in those days.  In those days the two Bills and anyone else who was interested in liturgy or subscribed to Worship magazine received from their peers the epithetical dub of “liturgy bugs.” 

You see, Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand, the former rector of the seminary, had invited such social advocates and liturgical lights of the time as Virgil Michel, Martin Hellriegel, Catherine DeHuech Doherty, Godfrey Diekmann and Dorothy Day to speak to the seminarians, placing the seminary at the forefront of liturgical theology and social thought and forming a generation of Chicago priests. In 1949 after a serious auto accident, Hillenbrand, who had served as rector for 14 years, was replaced by Monsignor Malachy P. Foley, who took it upon himself to bring the seminary back to the “fortress” mentality of the times. During his rectorship, the seminary earned the nickname “the Rock” the name given Alcatraz by its inmates. Like that infamous penal institution, St. Mary of the Lake confined its seminarians throughout the scholastic year, allowing no one to leave the grounds of the seminary except on rare occasions, like attending the funeral of a family member. The mentality of preventing what’s happening in the “real world” from seeping into seminary life was the order of the day even regarding the liturgy. Active participation and “dialogue Mass”—the extent of liturgical renewal in those days—were seen as something from the outside world. And such renewal was as foreign to seminary life as subscriptions by seminarians to Time or Newsweek. Even the Feehan Memorial Library of the seminary which Cardinal Mundelein hoped would become the “Catholic University of the West” had only year-old news magazines available to the seminarians, newer issues kept behind locked wire-threaded gates and only with rare exceptions to be used in any student research. The motto on the frieze of the library in Latin reads: “Wisdom has built her house” (Pro. 9:1). One might have responded in those days, “But she’s been locked out of it.” What can one say? It was a different time.

  

It was in 1958 when I first attended the National Liturgical Week at Notre Dame. These events were sponsored by the Liturgical Conference—founded in 1940 as the Benedictine Liturgical Conference—which grew and changed its name to The Liturgical Conference to reflect the increased interest of all Catholics and Christians of other denominations. What an experience! 

In 1959 I transferred from St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein to Mt. St, Mary’s of the West, Norwood, Ohio—affectionately referred to by the student body as "The Rock” for its isolating Alcatraz-like atmosphere. Having experienced both the Lake and the Mount, I contend that there was a great deal more isolation at Mundelein than at the Mount. Leaving the grounds of St. Mary of the Lake was near impossible, whereas at “The Mount” there were regular off-campus activities during those 4 years: from weekly opportunities  to go skating at the Cincinnati Gardens (Home of the Cincinnati Bengals) to the annual “Fort Myers Day” outing.

The five-volume work by Dr. Pius Parsch The Church’s Year of Grace, originally published in German, began to be translated by William Heidt, OSB with the assistance of other monks of St. John’s Abby Collegeville, Minnesota, with the first volume published in 1962. The illustrations were rendered by Brother Placid Lawrence Stuckenschneider, OSB. Each subsequent year, a new volume came out. Awaited each year with great anticipation, those volumes became the source of my daily mediation during the four years of the study of Theology at the Mount. 

I also took part in the 1960 Liturgical Conference—themed “Liturgy and Unity” in deference to the mission adopted by the newly-elected Pope John XXIII—at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. And the following year, I also attended the Conference held in Oklahoma City with classmates from Cincinnati. It may have been the year when one of the workshops was a “Demonstration of Holy Mass in English” presented by a group under the direction of Dennis Fitzpatrick, one of the young visionary liturgical reformers of the day. A sample of the common chants composed for this event can be heard by clicking here. This was four years before the first liturgical reforms would be implemented in parishes. As I listen to the music now, I remember how singing the texts in English was such an encouraging thrill. Were a video of that “demonstration mass” available, the presentation would appear not far off from what we experience today.

Though I wasn’t able to take part in 1964—that first year after ordination—it was at the Liturgical Conference in St. Louis that Bill Thompson attended. I remember his telling of taking part in the meeting of the Vernacular Society of America whose meeting had coincided with the Conference each year. Co-founded by Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand in the late 1920’s, the Vernacular Society’s members worked together for promoting the use of the vernacular in liturgical worship.  This year’s conference being held in St. Louis was the first one following the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy by Vatican II. Bill later recounted how a declaration seldom heard in any organization was heard there.  

As I remember Bill’s recounting of the meeting of the Vernacular Society that year, Msgr. Martin Hellriegel, who was celebrating his 50th anniversary of ordination, stood at the podium before the gathering of hundreds of Society members. With due decorum and solemnity, he raised his voice and gloriously proclaimed, “I declare this Society disbanded; its mission is complete.” It was a vindication of the apostolate he carried out so single-heartedly, often at the cost of both private and public criticism. 

The liturgical formation of those earlier days may cause some to wonder, with reinstallation of the Tridentine Mass and the 2013 replacement of the English translation of the liturgical prayers and responses “to conform with the original Latin texts of the Missale Romanum” whether we may be at a point to pick up the banner again proclaiming, “Mission complete  in your day, Monsignor; forty-six years later, perhaps not.” The new translation, now so accepted in parish worship, must be causing giants of the Liturgical Movement of the 20^th century, like Virgil Michel, the Monsignori Martin Hellriegel, Reynold Hillenbrand and Frederick McManus, Clifford Howell, S.J., Bishop Bernard Sheil, Msgr. Dan Cantwell as well as a whole army of monks of St. John Abbey, Collegeville, and other holy women and men, to roll over in their graves causing a quake that should be felt in the Vatican. An equal army of living women and men today are in harmony with that quaking. This quake should counteract this seismic shift toward the "Jesus-and-me, priest-doing-magic, monolithic, sanctuary-distant, pay-pray-n-obey, know-your-place-and-keep-quiet, clerical culture" liturgical mentality. We thought we’d matured away from that.

There are a great many more catastrophic events going on in our world than liturgical revisionism so well covered in the fine blog by Tom Woods, Jr. "Benedict's Revolution: The Return to the Old Latin Mass." So forgive this added comment on B16’s retro-liturgical changes. But I can’t help feeling a sense of deep disappointment bordering on despair seeing this 21st century Benedict bent on undoing what the followers of the earlier Benedict have spearheaded in the 20th century. Perhaps the aforementioned living army needs to call upon the spirits of these departed people to re-establish a new Liturgical Conference and Vernacular Society of America to counteract the growing impact of organizations like “The New Liturgical Movement” [I cringe to even write it in the present context! (Novus Motus Liturgicus - http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/).] 

Many may fear that the call of the Gospel Jesus that his followers be Eucharist in our world is being snuffed out. The call of Jesus to works of compassion and justice, being emphasized by Pope Francis offers hope that the outpouring of care for the marginalized will replace the threat of our parish liturgies being replaced with a devotional service forgetful of the Gospel call—incorporated by an earlier Benedict into the motto of his Order—to both “pray and work”, praying for the poor and neglected while at the same time working for social change through advocacy. Only in that way can we be assured that our liturgies with its "Let Us Build a House" will not be replaced by the old Jesus-and-me mentality of "O Lord, I Am Not Worthy."

In the light of these event we have now weathered and moved on to the Pope Francis guiding the bark of Peter, all this concern has faded and more important issues have arisen. Still, I remain grateful for the interest in liturgy and the formation in liturgical spirituality the two Bills inspired in me.