Rememberance Day

I was going to publish a particular note about the latest Liturgy Lines in the Catholic Leader but since the Warden at Cooees from the Cloister has done this so eloquently I will desist.

The only thing I can say is that this is a regurgitation of another article written in February 2000. Read this:

In Australia, this way of looking at liturgical celebrations began to emerge during the Second World War. Amongst the many things that the Second World War taught us about liturgy, it made us look at liturgical laws a little differently. At this time we were trying to celebrate good liturgy by following the rules. But in extraordinary circumstances like the battlefront, it was not always possible to follow all the rubrics. There was no sanctuary, no altar, no candles, no vestments. Yet the experience of worship in the eucharist was often more powerful and therefore more fruitful than many a "correct" parish liturgy.

In this sense, Australia was well prepared for the liturgical reform of the 1960s. Although we appear to have had little contact with the Liturgical Movement and the liturgical scholarship of Belgium, France and Germany, we have had long experience of adapting the Roman liturgy to the extraordinary conditions of the Australian setting – since the days when our pioneer priests travelled overland on pastoral visitation, celebrating the Mass with what they could carry in a saddle bag. Even today, remote rural churches do not have the facilities of every European or city parish church as presumed by the liturgical books.

The full reference is here.

The whole tone of the article is bizarre. It says that because we were faced with the pioneering days and two world wars we have the ability to make liturgies creative. Not only that, liturgy on the Kokoda trail and Gallipoli seems to form a lesson for liturgy today; no rubrics, no vestments, no churches. The horrors of the World Wars apparently prepared us for Vatican II,as they liberated us from rubrics! This is simply not true. The photographs show the Usus Antiquor celebrated with such reverence and dignity in the most appalling conditions, that is so incredibly moving. Why is it that even with the Classical Mass being celebrated in the mud on a makeshift Altar consisting of basically a plank, that it still has this inspiring beauty? These photographs have a timeless quality that this is the Mass of the Ages, celebrated in particular contexts of world history. And whats more that these Masses were celebrated in a style that EH detests, and yet she says that they were powerful and fruitful.

Frankly the woman has no idea on what she really wants, and she wasnt there. In fact she is insulting the priests who celebrated according to the rubrics in these condtions.

Btw. A story that comes down through our family comes from an ancestor who served at the Altar in one of the field Masses on the Somme in the winter of 1917-18. It was so cold during Mass that the wine and water froze in the cruets. I remind our servers of this when they complain on a winter Sunday morning in Brisbane!

Thats all for tonight. Soon my computer will be back to normal, and pictures will return. St Isidore, Patron of the internet, Pray for us!!