On Friday, November 22, 1963, the Feast of Saint Cecelia, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was 9 years old and in the 5th Grade in Augusta, GA and remember that day like it was yesterday. It was less than a week away from Thanksgiving Day in 1963.
On Monday, November 25th the spectacular state funeral for the President took place which include the Requiem Mass of the pre-Vatican II Church.
I remember watching the funeral rites, both secular and religious live on TV at home with my family.
It was mesmerizing. And as a 9 year old, I had a sense of pride that the Catholic Mass in Latin was nationally televised with commentators explaining the rite as it progressed.
This is a Low Requiem, meaning it is not sung. However, there are traditional hymns and anthems sung at the Archbishop prays the prayers of the Requiem and reads the Scriptures. What progressive liturgists don’t get and can’t comprehend, is the mystical experience this way of celebrating a Low Mass became for the majority in attendance. They were witnessing the High Priest before the Throne of God offering His Sacrifice for them and for all the world. It mattered not if they heard or understood the Sacrament Priest (Archbishop). The overlay of music, while not the sung parts of the Mass, created this mystical, holy of holies experience. It is completely solemn, dignified and other-worldly, heavenly.
The laity and clergy present were not focusing on externals, wondering if they would receive Hosts consecrated at that Mass or from the tabernacle. They cared not if there would be one loaf broken for the many to eat. They did not worry about receiving the Chalice. They were not perplexed that Be not Afraid was not sung or On Eagle’s wings. They were being given a gift from God, to be in the Holy of Holies in the most mystical way possible. Their hearts and souls were moved by this highly personal and mystical experience of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Here is the 1963 Requiem, today mocked and derided by so many and in high places in 2022 much to their shame. Somehow and contrary to common sense, they believe that what was once sacred and revered is no longer so in the present day:
6 comments:
It was a low Mass and Cardinal Cushing croaked his way through it. However, like you, Father McDonald, I felt a sense of pride.
"Je me souviens des jours anciens et je pleure." (I remember days of old and I weep.)
I kind of miss that sing-songy delivery of the old-timers like Cushing. Hopefully this makes sense, though not to anyone under 35, but they had this cadence to saying the prayers. It was instantly familiar when I heard him.
During the 1940s, Cardinal Cushing was an early key advocate in the promotion of the Ecumenical Movement/"Interfaith Dialogue."
At Vatican II, he was instrumental in the passage of Nostra Aetate.
He exhorted Catholics to attend Billy Graham Crusades.
CUSHING PRAISES GRAHAM CRUSADE; Cardinal Urges ...https://www.nytimes.com › 1964/10/08 ›
BOSTON, Oct. 7 (AP)—Richard Cardinal Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, urged Catholic youths and college students today to attend the Rev.
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Cardinal Cushing was featured on the August 21, 1964 A.D. Time Magazine cover. The magazine praised his "liberalism" as a driving force behind the "renewal" of "American Catholicism."
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,876036-7,00.html
Cardinal Cushing acknowledge that he had little understanding of Latin: "I can't understand the Latin." Therefore, he promoted the vernacularization of the Mass.
From the 1964 A.D. Time Magazine article:
"Cushing has become a champion of freedom within the church. He tacitly allowed Dr. John Rock, a communicant of the Boston archdiocese, to argue for the moral licitness of a birth-control pill.
"He welcomed Swiss Theologian Hans Küng, one of Europe's most advanced Catholic thinkers, to Boston, and wrote a preface for Küng's latest book, Structures of the Church.
"Cushing says that the Index of Forbidden Books is "meaningless," and "they should get rid of the whole thing."
"He wants to drop the promises that non-Catholic partners in mixed marriages must make to raise their children as Catholics; to ask a believing Protestant to "sign on the dotted line" strikes Cushing as a violation of conscience.
"His reasoning is that Catholics "must not just respect but esteem" the religious values of others; he has blossomed as the most convinced and convincing ecumenist in the Catholic Church.
"With the rector by his side, he has knelt in prayer at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, and he claims to have visited 80 Protestant churches."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
As the result of a family connection to Cardinal Cushing, I have spent a fair amount of time having researched his ecclesial career.
Cardinal Cushing acknowledged that he did not understand Latin.
He was a staunch supporter of Mass offered in vernaculars...as well as versus populum.
During a 1966 A.D. interview, Cardinal Cushing thought that it was a shame that President Kennedy's Requiem Mass was offered in Latin. But he said that he had to follow the liturgical "rules and regulations" of that time.
From that interview:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/files/archives/JFKOH/Cushing,%20%20Richard%20Cardinal/JFKOH-RCC-01/JFKOH-RCC-01-TR.pdf
Cardinal Cushing:
"It’s too bad that on that occasion we didn’t have the vernacular in the Mass because
that Mass was televised throughout most of the world...but I had to follow the rules and
regulations.
"I remarked at the end of the Mass: “I hope some day this liturgy of the church
will be, in greater part at least, in the vernacular so people will know what is being said.”
"That day came to pass with the Second Vatican Council."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Mt, Many highly placed bishops and cardinals desired some really stupid thing after Vatican II and brought little of no common sense to what they were promoting. I grew up in the south and in a town where Catholics are a small minority, but had made a tremendous impact on the area, although a minority. Out of four parishes in Augusta in the 1950’s, three downtown and one on the “hill” and one on the south side, the city in the 1950’s had Catholic High Schools, one for girls and one for boys, three elementary schools and a major Catholic hospital. There were about 50 nuns in the area, 20 of whom were in the hospital. Today, that hospital is closed by the nuns who could no longer provide for it, downtown has one parish and an elementary school with a specialized ministry for those with special needs.
Many Catholics after Vatican II because of an uncritical approach to ecumenism did go to Billy Graham Crusades and did leave the Catholic Church to become Protestant because of it. Many Catholics went to Protestant Churches, trying to be ecumenical, and preferred the Protestants to the Catholics and became Protestant. The Charismatic Movement is a result of ecumenism and many Catholics joined the Pentecostal sects after they found Jesus for the first time when baptized in the Holy Spirit, as they say.
Cardinal Cushion is no example for the success of Vatican II. He was part of the problem certainly not the solution for promoting a new springtime for the Church—that is a miserable failure, to say the least.
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