1962: Of Manners in Church, of the Vernacular, and of Vocations

One of you readers sent me a link to a video from 1962, made in Ireland, about the changes in the Ritual for administration of sacraments, especially of Marriage and Baptism.   They talk about the New Ritual, the introduction of the use of the vernacular into the rituals.  There is mention of the Liturgical Movement and of active participation.  Then they bring up English in the Mass, in the fore-Mass.  “I don’t think that many people would wish for English in the Canon of the Mass, the center of the Mass.”

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I can’t find a way to embed.  Go HERE

There is also video on Manners in Church  HERE  Again, it’s 1962.  This should be shown to every one.  It’s rather amusing.  You see a nice shot of the traditional form of Mass.  Be sure to hang in until sermon time!

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And take in the filmette about the Village With The Most Vocations HERE  This one might make you quite nearly weep with frustration.

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There’s a moment at the very end which show you who really ran the Church.

Poor Ireland.  Poor poor Ireland.  What has become of the Church in Ireland?

“But Fahther! But Fahther”, some of you are caviling, “You … you… everything is BETTER now!   Everyone who doesn’t hate the poor and the environment knows that Vatican II was a huge success!   Convents had too many vocations.  And we are all priests, just like the brave revolutionary Luther said.  Vocations are…. umm… we need women’s ordination like the spirit of Vatican II wants and… and… gay, lesbian, transgender and questioning.  So people aren’t getting married “in church” anymore. What does that really mean when we all go to Communion anyway?!?   There are still lots of Catholic hospitals and schools… well.. there are LOTS of them! We are church!  And YOU HATE VATICAN II!”

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14 Comments

  1. Supertradmum says:

    A holy priest at the Latin Mass parish in London, Harrington Street, told me years ago that the falling away from the Faith happened before Vatican II. He told me that the people did not appropriate an adult faith, did not read or study, did not understand the faith so that when they came up against Modernism, and consumerism, they could not stand up against these.

    Also, the nuns stating that holy families bring about vocations are spot on…daily rosary, love of the Mass, simplicity of life…all gone in our times.

    And happy convents….I grew up in the Age of Nuns and sadly witnessed unhappy convents. But, imho, contraception and wealth have ruined Ireland.

  2. Joseph-Mary says:

    Nuns to leave after 151 years: http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/204934/Nuns-to-leave-County-Limerick-village.html

    Contents of Convent to be auctioned: http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/contents-of-doon-convent-in-limerick-to-be-auctioned-1.2705694

    When convents are vacated even holy relics are not appreciated. I have obtained some that way. That once thriving place of faith and holiness is now lost to the world.

  3. Henry Edwards says:

    Starting at about 4:25 in the first video, the narrator interviews one Fr. McGarrity, who was a member of the liturgical committee that prepared the new materials. He asks him why the vernacular is being introduced. Fr. McGarrity replies (in effect) that it is in response to a groundswell in the Church. Asked how this desire was expressed, he replies that the laity had expressed to their priests their wish for more vernacular, priests reported it to their bishops, who passed it up the line, etc.

    This fantasy was bandied all about in the 1960s, but even as a member of a liberal university parish–liberal parishes being quite uncommon at that time–I never heard of a single pew Catholic expressing any such wish to his priest, in advance of hearing about it via agenda-driven media reports back from Vatican II.

  4. Benedict Joseph says:

    The hierarchy in 195=62, under what influence I can’t say, allowed themselves to be swayed by something, someone, and abandoned a flock that was all theirs.
    How many of the tattooed might by religious and priests today if their had only been more vigilance for the flock? Are we destined to repeat this performance?

  5. WmHesch says:

    RE: the manners video… post-Conciliar viewers might see the throng of folks leaving before the sermon as suggesting people were leaving midway through the Mass. That’s not the case.

    It was very common in the old days for a Low Mass to proceed uninterrupted from start to finish, then to be followed by a sermon or catechetical instruction (NB: the priest is vested in cassock and surplice).

    So strictly speaking, those in the video leaving before the sermon had already fulfilled their obligation…

  6. Sliwka says:

    Regarding “Manners”

    Where we fulfilled our Sunday Obligation last Sunday, there seemed to be a large number of people who arrived (slightly) late and stood around the sides and back of this fan-shaped nave. Fr, who is younger, began describing how the building committee only wanted 1, 000 seating capacity the diocese pressed for 1, 500 (or the other way around). I thought this would then lead into a soft joke about how there should have been 2, 000.

    Nope, Fr then scolded all of those who stood that if it possible to stand for one hour, then they can certainly kneel for five minutes (I guess standing at the back gets you out of kneeling before our Lord now…). It was great. I also saw at this parish what I’ve seen at a couple other large parishes in the Edmonton Archdiocese where nearly all congregants sit after the Agnus Dei until their row’s “turn” for Communion.

  7. Ages says:

    The video on manners is amusing. Many problems could be solved by banishing pews altogether (except for the aged and infirm), as it was for many, many centuries. :-)

  8. robtbrown says:

    Henry Edwards says:

    Starting at about 4:25 in the first video, the narrator interviews one Fr. McGarrity, who was a member of the liturgical committee that prepared the new materials. He asks him why the vernacular is being introduced. Fr. McGarrity replies (in effect) that it is in response to a groundswell in the Church. Asked how this desire was expressed, he replies that the laity had expressed to their priests their wish for more vernacular, priests reported it to their bishops, who passed it up the line, etc.

    This fantasy was bandied all about in the 1960s, but even as a member of a liberal university parish–liberal parishes being quite uncommon at that time–I never heard of a single pew Catholic expressing any such wish to his priest, in advance of hearing about it via agenda-driven media reports back from Vatican II.

    It’s a common claim of liberals, also in politics, that they are always speaking for The People.

  9. LouLou says:

    I went to a convent school in Dublin Ireland in the 70’s. Even though things were a changing I was lucky to know some holy nuns in my elementary school who taught me to learn to love God. I now live in the Midwest with my husband and children, and as insane as the US is, the Ireland of today is an even worse place to raise children. Our holy saints of Ireland are surely turning in their graves. Indeed, contraception and all other evils that come from it and wealth has ruined my beloved Country. St. Patrick, pray for Ireland.

  10. Tony Phillips says:

    There definitely was a desire for more vernacular in sacramental ritual, especially the Mass. Vernacularist societies existed in the US and in the UK–you used to be able to browse the archives of the Catholic Herald on-line (not sure you can anymore), and you’d see letters from the 1950s from members. Of course, the tension between a sacred language and the vernacular goes back centuries, and isn’t confined to the Catholic church either.

    Yes, the trappings of Western culture quickly corrupted Ireland–wealth (much of it unearned, from the EU), motorways, contraception, all-day television, Hollywood films, etc. But the Irish hierarchy are largely to blame as well. Luxuriating in their privileged position, and increasingly infected with homosexual behaviour, they did not oppose but hastened their country’s moral collapse.

  11. Prayerful says:

    The manners clip from the Radharc production unit does show a time when even ‘corner boys’ (to use a term of the time for young lads devoted to wearing the fashions of the time and doing little save smoking in some corner with friends) went to Mass. They provided a great variety of interesting and challenging religious programmes, until Fr Joe Dunn died in 1996. It shows Ireland, and elsewhere in the West, on the cusp of a great wrong turning. If the Church wishes to come out of this time of great trials and tribulations, there will have to be return to Tradition. If a person just thinks of the thriving vocations of the FSSP and other Traditional priestly societies, it works, the present direction, not so much.

  12. PostCatholic says:

    Going back to the way things were in 1962 in Ireland would still result in the Child Abuse Commission. I studied at Maynooth; I can’t say that the priests I met there who were ordained in the early sixties were all that commendable. That’s as sanitized as I can put it.

    My observation about what happened to the Irish church is that, given the chance to exercise its authority by running most of Ireland’s social service and education structure, it did a terrible job and alienated several generations of the Irish people. I think Vatican II and ritual changes have much less to do with its current diminished status than does its pastoral history.

  13. Prayerful says:

    Going back is wrong, as there were a lot of problems with the Church in Ireland from Magdelene Laundries, Reformatories and other places of dentention which the former British rulers had placed with ill equipped religious orders. The infiltration of seminaries by homosexuals was well under way. Micheal Ledwith was just one example.

    However, major errors were made in the wake of V2 in Ireland. Priests thrashed sanctuaries over the objections of parishioners. There was no grounds in Sacrosanctum Concilium for the mess made of churches paid for by parishioners of the past. One notably foolish priest in West Wicklow sold the horribly unpastoral silver hanging sanctuary lamp to itinerants, which he thought was tin.

    Correlation cannot be made cause, but the massive acceleration in the decline in vocations and Mass attendance (the decline which prompted V2) after V2, is suggestive. Paul VI had to made it notably harder for priests and religious to abandon their vocations (reversing a reform of the time), such was the loss of personnel post V2. It doesn’t make sense to hold pastoral activity accountable, as the V2 and Concilium changes were what shaped pastoral changes. Another notable failure was a decline in the quality of religious education children got. They were not taught doctrine or prayers so much as post Marxist developmental junk. Lay people and religious just didn’t like how the Mass and religious life had changed. The interpretation and implemention of V2 was the biggest factor.

    I hope a future Pope has the courage to discard the failed experiments of fifty to sixty years ago.

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