Sunday, September 9, 2012
REQUIEM FOR A VERY GOOD ITALIAN FRIEND!
At the end of my vacation, a very good Italian friend of mine who was my former parishioner at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta died. She had been our parish's "hostess" for parish receptions and major dinners at the rectory. She was also active in the Council of Catholic Women and past president of that organization.
Her Requiem was videoed since her Italian siblings and other relatives could not come to Augusta from Italy.
Most Holy Trinity was completed and consecrated in April of 1863. The Jardine pipe organ you hear could not be shipped from New York because of the Union blockade of the Confederacy. But it arrived in 1866 due in large part to Most Holy Trinity's associate pastor at the time, Father Abram Ryan, the priest-poet of the Confederacy who offered poetry recitals of his poems in Augusta and raised the funds to have it shipped.
The Church has remained untouched since its consecration except the altar table was pulled from the reredos. But as you can see, this Church is ideal for both the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and the modern Ordinary Form and Mass technically could still be celebrated ad orientem quite easily. The altar railing is completely in tact and has marvelous brass gates that came from a Church in France in the 1860's. So no telling how old these are.
The parish was founded on its current property in 1810 and primarily was composed of Catholics of French origin. In the 1840's due to an influx of Irish immigrants to Augusta to escape the potato famine and to find work in the textile industry and cotton fields and also to build Augusta's canal, the small frame church was expanded. By the middle of the 1850's the pastor realized that a new and larger Church needed to be built and so the corner stone of the new Church as it is still called, was laid in 1857 and dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul. The pastor who had been there since the 1840's, Father John Barry, realized that the Irish were eclipsing the French and had taken over the parish so to placate the French he laid the corner stone honoring a French saint. By that time he was also the second Bishop of the Diocese of Savannah having been established in 1850. Prior to that it was under the Diocese of Charleston, SC and prior to Charleston's erection as a diocese, it was under Baltimore.
Most Holy Trinity was also a large part of the trustee movement in the USA in the 1860's and has an interesting checkered history in that regard.
When the Church was consecrated at the height of the War between the States, also known as the Civil War, an Irish pastor was in place. The following week by vote of the clergy and laity, yes, laity, the parish took on a new patron saint, Saint Patrick of Ireland! And yes, without officially changing the name of the parish, it was called St. Patrick's Catholic Church until 1970 when two parishes in downtown Augusta were closed and merged into "Saint Patrick" and the original name, never officially changed, was restored to the Church of the Most Holy Trinity.
The Irish went so far as to remove a cast iron statue of Saint Vincent de Paul that was nearly 6 feet tall, and quite heavey, crushed it and buried it behind the Church so as to poke in the eye the horrified French who had their patron saint, Saint Vincent de Paul de-throned as the patron saint of the parish.
I discovered poor old Saint Vincent de Paul when construction workers building the foundation for the church's new sacristy in 1998 hit it as the dug the ground and I asked them to unearth it to find out what it was. And sure enough it was Saint Vincent de Paul! He was re-interred at the same spot, so damaged was it by deliberate violence of the Irish!
I thought I gave a rather nice homily for the funeral of Cheti Warner!
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7 comments:
The moving of the altar forward (not mandated by the GIRM, which refers to new altars, not existing ones) is preferable to putting a new fixed altar in front of an existing one. Here they have left a sufficient footpace in front of the altar so ad orientem is possible.
Great to see the altar rails. Why were they not being used? Also, at the risk of sounding pedantic, a Requiem Mass requires the Introit 'Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine'. Otherwise it is a Funeral Mass.
Are you sure your homily didn't breach GIRM 382? It sounded like a eulogy to me.
The most disturbing aspect to me was the absence of the body. Cremation is a substitute for burial, and the Mass and Commendation precede the burial. The practice of having the cremated remains present is quite bizarre, and although it does sometimes happen in Continental Europe, it needs to be stamped out without delay. What on earth is the reason for it?
Of course I've been away from this parish now for over 8 years and they've had four pastors since my departure. I was there for almost 14 years. So the funeral was as they do funerals and the railing is not used for Holy Communion nor is the EF Mass offered there though the requests for it in Augusta would assure a full Church from the metro area if offered, but that is another story and a bit of clericalism involved.
In the USA, the norms for cremation have been adjusted over the years. At first, cremation was by way of exception but the body had to be present and cremated afterward. But this was changed about 20 years ago or so allowing for the cremains to be present during the Mass and treated as the "remains" of the person. Church law also required these be give a proper Christian burial or internment. But often family member refuse to do so and take the ashes with them and scatter them or share them with others or keep them in the hope or make jewelry out of them, all pagan practices. So I agree that cremation should be banned because of these factors except if we can assure Christian burial or entombment.
My homily was a homily focusing on the Paschal Mystery but incorporating various aspects of Cheti's life to make my points, so a blend if you will, between eulogy and homily but mostly homily.
When I was pastor there, for very extraordinary Events, I would celebrate the Mass ad orientem, but very rarely but it is easily done at this altar and from the congregation, you can't even tell that the altar table is forward of the reredos.
I did celebrate there the first Saturday of each month at our normal anticipated Mass the Ordinary Form of the Mass in Latin except for the Liturgy of the Word and we had a men's schola that sang the propers and other parts of the Mass and magnificently. this was around 2001 and the first time in my priesthood that I was exposed to what the Mass should be and what Vatican II really envisioned. But I did not celebrate it ad orientem because I didn't think I should push the envelope with the bishop as eye brows were already being raised by the Latin Mass as odd as that is.
The antipathy of the Irish to the French surprises me. I would have thought the French collaboration with the Confederacy as well as the affection Celts have for anything Not British would have made them rather fond. Go figure.
@rcg
Celts are British by definition. When the Romans invaded in AD 43 they called the island 'Pretania', later corrupted to 'Britannia'. The tribes they encountered were Celtic, who had invaded from central Europe several centuries earlier. The aboriginal inhabitants of the British Isles were a small dark people whose descendants can still be found in north Wales. Go figure.
John and rcg, Perhaps the Irish just had it in for the Anglo-Saxons and/or the Normans (and thus the French or, even worse, the Vikings) =). Or perhaps there were some local animosities that might help to explain the episode. It would be interesting to know more.
P.S. You do know that when Julius Caesar first landed on the shores of Britain in 55 B.C. he said “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” which translates as “I came, I saw, I conquered.” However, since the small, dark-complected British did not understand Latin, they heard “Weeny, Weedy, and Weeaky.” This so demoralized them that when the Emperor Claudius re-invaded Britain in 43 A.D. he was able to take over the whole country very easily (except for the northern bits, of course).
The problem between the old time French and the new comers is that the Irish soon outnumbered the French and let their majority status be known not unlike Mexican immigrants in rural Georgia today who by far out number the Anglos in their parishes and take over.
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