Those were the days.... (ii)

Now crawling round the blogs of the traditional world you occasionally come across reports of horrendous liturgical abuses that have been the 'straw that broke the neo-con's back' and sent them hurtling into the twilight zone of the traddie. Tales of abuses from the other end of the liturgical pendulum, certainly on liberal blogs, are as rare as a black tabernacle veil- or at least I thought so until I came across this anecdote from a contributor on the  Benedictine Fr Anthony Ruff's blog Pray Tell.

..... but I remember a now-senior priest friend telling a rather unflattering story of the monsignor/pastor of his first cure. At High Mass, it seems that when the good monsignor had finished reciting the Gloria at the altar and returned to the sedilia, he’d pull out his nail-clipper and start his weekly trim while the choir went to work. “He’d get the left hand done before the Collect, and then finish up the right hand during the Credo.

Now it would be obtuse not to recognise that abuses did occur, even in the good old days, and it was these abuses that partially contributed to that aspect of the liturgical reform that actually wanted to clarify and make quite clear what was quite acceptable. To the anecdote above  I could add the account of a priest who admitted that he used to leave out all the 'unnecessary' bits before the changes of the 1960s. I didn't dare question him any further- the way he celebrated the new rites seemed to continue his earlier principles. The great Adrian Fortescue was not really that interested in the Roman Rite and his own celebration of low Mass, was by some accounts....  shall we say charitably, could be slightly confused. In more recent times I remember one Anglo-Papalist friend waxing eloquently that the servers at her church ('San Marco') always affected rather worn running shoes in imitation of what went on in the local Catholic Church ('Tutti Santi').

Now there is a difference between the abuses of the past and those of the present. It is certainly far more difficult in the traditional rites to commit an abuse intentionally. I suspect also that the abuses of the 'good old days', whilst opening the question of licitness, rarely opened the problem of actual validity. The danger was recognised however and the main dangers were actually included in the Missal as sort of a warning.

Back to the 'good old days'. It would be ridiculous to think that the traditional rites are not subject to varying interpretations certainly as to the question of rubrics. All involved need to take a reality check and accept that local custom did apply in the 'good old days'. What was perfectly normal in one place, for example the places where bells were rung, was just unheard of in other places. 'Dialogue Mass', apparently almost the norm in some places, didn't exist in other places. All of this within the one Catholic Church using the Latin Rites. We have to be very careful, as Mrs Malaprop might have said, before casting asperges.

There is however the danger that an attitude in some corners of Catholicism that an old problem may prevail- actually this applies to all ends of the spectrum. There is a 'fear of excellence' in many quarters. The old chestnut 'If a things worth doing it's worth doing badly' should not be the automatic fall back position for all things liturgical. How many quite acceptable altars are defaced by the presence of the ubiquitous, and often thirsty, 'spider' plant? How many quite acceptable buildings are cheapened by what can be best described as 'transitory' art work in the form of posters advertising whatever happens to be the theme of the day? It seems that some sort of 'guilt complex' towards balance and beauty continues to undermine clear judgement.