The photo above is the chapel of St. Mary Seminary in Roland Park, Baltimore where I was in the seminary from 1976 to 1980. What a mess it was then. not so much today, though and thanks be to God for that!
My 1976 seminary class had about 60 candidates, one of the larger classes there since they went into meltdown mode around 1968. However, the liberal faculty there, who thought they were a parallel magisterium at the time, (clericalism on steroids, btw) had an agenda to make the Catholic Church into an ecumenical marshmallow. Gone were are popular devotions, like adoration, Benediction, public rosaries and the like.
Any seminarian who rocked the boat about these things, was immediately suspect, especially if that seminarian was opposed to women's ordination, optional celibacy and ecumenism that allowed for shared Eucharist. And if there was any hint of pre-Vatican II moral theology in the face of the new moral theology of that day, watch out. If you were labeled rigid, you would suffer and be marginalized. I remember the pro-homosexual agenda "catholic" group, Dignity, speaking to our seminarians and making fun of anyone who thought chastity was meant for everyone. If you complained about their presence there, you were considered homophobic, whatever that means, which back then meant you supported the Church's teaching on chastity.
And the Mass was as different as the many celebrants were, some more creative than others and some Masses downright invalid because of some of the stupidity in celebrating it.
I fear that every Mass I attended there in those 3 and 1/2 years was invalid as the bread used was homemade bread consisting of whole wheat, honey, leaven and some other palatable ingredients. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious and I often thought it would be great with coffee in the morning. Everyone referred to the so-called consecrated version of it as "chewy Jesus." Nice. NOT!
By 1980, our 60 + class dwindled down to 23. Very shortly after ordination, a few left the priesthood. Today, without those who have died or left the active ministry or the priesthood or forced to do so, there are about seven of us still in active ministry today I think.
When I was there, there was talk about doing a 1970's type renovation (wreckovation) of the chapel. But thanks be to God, it would have been too costly to do so and it never was attempted and still isn't being attempted.
In my day, the high altar under the corona was stripped and covered with an ugly heavy green thing that completely hid it. The tabernacle was moved to a side chapel (very nice though) to the left of the altar and the candles were removed.
In fact, around 1973 or 74, there was a "liturgy" of stripping that high altar of clothes, candles and tabernacle and placing these in a construction wheelbarrow and rolling them out the the chapel to the graveyard of pre-Vatican II accouterments. Of course the tabernacle made its way to the side chapel, but reservation of the Blessed Sacrament more commonly revered to as just "Eucharist" and especially adoration, not to mention, Benediction were relics of the pre-Vatican II Church and its corruptions and anti-ecumenical, making Catholics different than Protestants.
One priest-theologian on staff even made the snide and sacrilegious comment that adoration and Benediction were pagan by referring to it as "Canaanite Cookie Worship!" Yes, that was said and with typical academic clericalism and arrogance.
My only problem with the chapel today are the silly looking flimsy new altar and ambo. The ambo is still in the main aisle facing the altar of the seminary as it was in the 1970's.
Why in the NAME OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, would there be any objection to the Ordinary Form Mass's Liturgy of the Eucharist being celebrated ad orientem at the high altar and its spelndor? Why? Why? Why? I know why and many of you do too.
Back to my class of 60. Yes some of them needed to be weeded out but most of them should not have been and would have made great priests in another era, but not the era St. Mary's of the 1970's was contriving.Most left on their own completely disgusted with what St. Mary's was promoting as Vatican II renewal. Some, I suspect, lost their faith over it.
16 comments:
It took a lot of guts to stay with the program there. We are grateful you did.
"My only problem with the chapel today are the silly looking flimsy new altar and ambo."
Why? I hope it stays. When the day comes, where people finally come to their senses, you only need 2, maybe 4 guys to carry it away. 15 minutes and the sanctuary is "renovated". Easy.
Versus populum was imposed on congregations and clergy for ideological reasons, and sold as the recovery of an ancient practice, which was untrue. Restoring ad apsidem would be problematic. People are so used to the priest facing them that many would leave for another parish or simply stay away.
Those who advocate ad apsidem are traditionalists who would not avoid a Mass simply because it was celebrated versus populum, myself included. Other considerations would have to come into play.
John Nolan,
It would be interesting to hear from priests like Father Fox and Father McDonald if they have noticed many people going to another parish or stopped attending Mass because Mass was being celebrated ad orientem. The way I have seen it done with the OF in the US is that it is predominantly the Eucharistic Prayer where the priest and people turn toward the Lord together. I assume that is the way it is done in England. With proper catechesis, I cannot imagine the doomsday scenario liturgical progressives foresee.
Further to the above, there are contributors to this blog who would prefer a more traditional worship style yet put up with what they get in their local parish because they are traditionalists who see attendance at Mass as an obligation. Liberals who would up sticks and leave if the priest used Latin or 'turned his back' to them have no such scruples.
I have attended Masses entirely in the vernacular but would not wish to do this on a regular basis. However, a hybrid Latin-vernacular sung Mass (as done in Cologne cathedral, for example, but in many other places) is something I could live with.
I have zero tolerance for sloppy liturgical practice and bad music. Fortunately I can easily avoid both, and when I am too old to drive I shall be happy to stay at home.
TJM
Fr McDonald celebrates Mass in his church versus populum and with no Latin (if his live stream is anything to go by). Although his ars celebrandi is exemplary, I could not endure this week after week.
Sunday is Pentecost. The Sequence 'Veni Sancte Spiritus' is one of the greatest medieval Latin poems ever written. It is attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1208 to 1227 who was intrumental in drawing up Magna Carta. Its plainchant setting is simple enough, although a late composition, most Gregorian chant having already been composed by the end of the eighth century.
I don't want to hear it in English to a metrical hymn tune (although Samuel Webbe's tune is not bad, when it was written in the 18th century it was to accompany the Latin words).
John Nolan,
I agree Father McDonald's ars celebrandi is top notch.
My old Novus Ordo parish would substitute something dreadful in English for the Veni Sancte Spiritus. I obliterate the memory of which ditty they used. Like you, I much prefer it be chanted in Latin.
Veni, sancte Spiritus, et emitte caelitus lucis tuae radium.
Veni, pater pauperum, veni, dator nunerum, veni, lumen cordium.
Consolator optime, dulcis hospes animae, dulce refrigerium.
In labore requies, in aestu temperies, in fletu solatium.
O lux beatissima, reple cordis intima, tuorum fidelium.
Sine tuo numine nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium.
Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est saucium.
Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium.
Da tuis fidelibus, in te confidentibus, sacrum septenarium.
Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium.
Amen. Alleluia.
It's not Vergil or Ovid. The Latin vocabulary and syntax are easily understood by a first-year Latin student. Stephen Langton was an Englishman but did not speak English as we know it; he may have conversed in Norman French. Latin was his vernacular.
Even someone with no Latin at all, when given a literal line-by-line translation, cannot fail to appreciate it. And when he hears it sung, he has ample time to meditate on it.
John, what do you believe were the "ideological reasons" versus populum was imposed?
Also, do you believe it is true what the late Michael Davies claimed, ie: that the "Bugnini et al changes" to the Mass in the 1960s were very similar to the changes made by the English Protestant Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century?
As an altar boy in the late 1960s I can recall an educated laymen saying to our parish priest that with the sudden and radical changes in the Mass it is like the Church admitting that the Protestant reformers were right after all. And this man's wife, a convert, claimed that it was much more than just the use of the vernacular that made the new Mass similar to an Anglican communion service.
KPK.
Thank you, Father, for that honest and revealing description of your seminary, 1976-1980.
How did you survive?
Can I ask: if you have read Michael S Rose's "Goodbye, Good Men" do you think he was exaggerating in what he wrote on US seminaries?
How was SO MUCH change possible in seminaries (and the Catholic Church as a whole) between approximately 1956 to 1960 and 1976 to 1980?
It is said "the past is another country" but in the Catholic Church by 1980 the recent era c. 1956 to 1960 was another world.
BTW, I am a layman studying for a theology degree. I have read how the sources of scepticism and disbelief in the West are many and varied and go back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
This can be explained.
What I feel can't be or hasn't been properly explained are the true reasons for such a massive increase in disbelief in core Catholic/Christian teachings and a massive decrease in the practice of the Catholic faith in just a very short 15 years, c.1960 to 1975.
Gerard S.
KPK
I think there was more than one ideological strand to the imposition of versus populum. One was the idea of the priest as a presider over the assembly. In the first millennium the bishop would sit at the centre of the apse flanked by the presbyters. At a Pontifical High Mass at the faldstool the bishop at times has his back to the altar and some of the prayers are sung facing the people.
Then there is the idea of the Mass as a dialogue which presupposes that the priest face the people.
It has been suggested that it was regarded as desirable that the Epistle and Gospel be read facing the people. However, at a Low Mass the rubrics require them to be read at the altar, so the only way this could be done was to have the whole Mass facing the people. (The reintroduction of the ambo made this no longer necessary).
It should be recognized that even before Vatican II met the progressive liturgists who devised the new Mass had a pretty clear idea of what it would look like.
John Nolan,
The progressives obviously believed their vision of a pedestrian and banal "new Mass" would do the trick and drive millions away, and they were right!
John,
I think a simpler explanation for KPK is possible.
The main reason for many of the liturgical changes in the 1960s/1970s and the fact the Mass of Paul VI at the very least de-emphasizes the central Catholic doctrines that the Mass is a true sacrifice and transubstantiation is that those who manufactured the new Mass simply don't believe that the Mass is a true sacrifice and dont believe in transubstantiation and/or believe (like true modernists) that the notion of the Mass as a true sacrifice etc was OK in a past era but not in our modern era.
KPK, I can recommend googling "the Ottaviani Intervention" and reading a few articles that summarize it's contents.
Also, I can recommend simply spending 10 minutes reading Wikipedia's quite good summary of "traditionalist Catholicism".
Uwe Michael Lang's 'Turning towards the Lord' is a good résumé of recent scholarship.
Father I grew up In Baltimore and left to join the Marines. It was already dump then thanks to the mob that destroyed it in 68 and the leftist that ruled it ever since.
In Goodbye Good Men was it your seminary or the one in Emmitsburg that was called the Pink palace.
We need a new book called Goodby Anti-Church.
Mount Saint Mary's in Emmitsburg, Maryland, has been, since the day it was founded, a bastion of orthodoxy, a citadel of the True Faith, a veritable theological Maginot line against the heathens of everything rapscallionesque and of doubtful "Best If Used BY" date that ever came out of the PINK PALACE, also know as St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, also known as (why does a seminary have three names?) Roland Park, also known as (WAIT! that's four names!) Little Versailles.
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