Michael Davies on the need for liturgical renewal
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    I was listening recently to a video of Michael Davies' speaking at a church in Virginia in 1998 and found this section (which I've transcribed from the video) filled with some valuable insights into what at least some of the Council Fathers may have been thinking:

    Many really traditional Catholics were really thrilled by this liturgy Constitution (Sacrosanctum Concilium). A very, very well known French traditionalist, one of the greatest French journalists, Professor Louis Salleron, who wrote a book on the Mass, was excited about the Liturgy Constitution, and he thought this was going to be actually a blueprint for a real renewal of the liturgy.

    Now there was definitely a need for a renewal of the liturgy.

    France had really led the way in this.You see, the typical parish Mass in France, when you went on Sunday, went to the High Mass, the people would all sing it, they would all sing the Gregorian chant, and some parishes had vespers in the evening which is what Pope St. Pius X wanted. St. Piux X wanted a renewal of the liturgy, but what he wanted was the existing liturgy used to its full potential.

    The way the liturgy was used before Vatican II for most Catholics, they went to one Low Mass a week, and all the rest of the Church's liturgy was just totally unknown to them. It's rather as if someone has a complete collection of records of all the works of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, and perhaps they kept playing Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto over and over again and never heard one of the others.They'd be missing a lot. So there was room for the people to be brought to enjoy the riches of the liturgy.
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  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    So many great points in this Michael Davies' video! Here's another gem worth sharing where Mr. Davies quotes from Cardinal Newman's novel Loss and Gain. The protagonist, Willis, makes the following observation on the Mass (which was obviously the Mass of St. Pius V):

    To me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever, and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words -- it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. Here becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble.
    . - See more at: http://www.adoremus.org/7-899Newman.html#sthash.3zCoYK0G.qRZEJZna.dpuf
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  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    Little question that there was some need for 'reform.' In retrospect, the 1965 (US) version was probably the best realization of SC. Kinda went downhill from there, though.
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  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Actually, Dad 29, I believe Pope Pius XII's De Musica Sacra in 1957 was the best liturgical renewal program since, as Michael Davies said, it simply "used the existing liturgy to its full potential."

    I've been talking about this issue with a friend who now attends a Missa Cantata, and this was her observation which I think is worthy of note, esp. when she speaks of a "Low Mass mentality"--- a kind of passive, obedient, "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" attitude which I believe may stem from the silent Low Mass environment where the people are conditioned to be silent spectators:

    I never thought of that when I imagined our parents' generation going to Mass every week- I assumed it was the Sung High Mass - even though I think my mother told me it was the Low Mass I just didn't process that.

    The first time we went to a TLM it turned out to be a low Mass- I had no idea there were different types of TLMs and I was very concerned that we wouldn't be able to continue going as I really felt called to leave the Novus Ordo- that was scary, but I just couldn't connect with the Low Mass.

    I have been running into so many people lately who have been raised in either SSPX or SSPV (where the silent Low Mass prevails) and they have come gradually to reject the TLM as if the Mass was the problem with those sects----the logic is flawed, and I find it frustrating when they defend the Novus Ordo as a 'happy medium'- because as I'm reading in 'the Devastated Vineyard' "the truth doesn't lay halfway between two extremes but is above and beyond them" .

    I see this all so clearly and yet can't tell anyone about it- their eyes glass over or (as in the case with my mum and her sisters who all left the Church) they say, "that's wonderful that you found something that works for YOU, but I really think the whole thing is terrible" and they secretly worry for my children.

    So they grew up on "low Mass mentality": obedience over all (even over trying to understand their faith), going through the motions in many cases- no wonder when it all fell apart after Vatican II they gladly ditched it- they must have felt that was such a victory- except they wear their anger as a badge of honor instead of healing from it all.

    This has been such an issue for me lately, seeing my relatives nearing their 80s and 90s and still being so angry at the church- the more I learn and see I just want to shout, "Here (the Latin High Mass as Pope Pius XII envisioned) is the answer!!" but they don't want to hear anything about it.
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  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    I know it looks like I'm carrying on a conversation with myself, but I'd like to add one more thought to the above, and I beg everyone's patience for going on with this!

    I've found Pope John Paul II's famous maxim that lack of participation brings alienation to be true in many areas of life not just the liturgy, and I know from much personal and observed experience that how much one invests in praying the Mass---the degree to which one participates internally which is then in large part manifested in external actions and words---determines how deeply one believes and lives the Catholic faith.

    But I'm also convinced that the theological and spiritual content of the liturgy is just as much a factor as the degree of attention and participation one brings to Catholic worship.

    I suggest then that there are four modes of Catholic worship and each will produce its own distinctive kind of Catholic:

    1) weak participation in a liturgy that is theologically shallow and spiritually poor

    2) weak participation in a liturgy that is theologically/spiritually sound and substantive

    3) strong participation in a liturgy that is theologically shallow and spiritually poor

    4) strong participation in a liturgy that is theologically/spiritually sound and substantive

    I'm not trying to be polemical or divisive, but the obvious question is, which mode is most likely to produce Catholics with the strongest possible faith?
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