Evelyn Waugh on the Liturgical Reform: An Article in The American Conservative

The American Conservative published an interesting article yesterday by Casey Chalk, a student at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Theology at Christendom College, on Catholic author Evelyn Waugh’s assessment of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform. It must be remembered that Waugh died in April of 1966, over three-and-a-half years before the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, but like many others his period, saw very clearly to what pass the process was already bringing the Church. Many of our readers will be familiar with the exchange of letters on the subject between him and John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, which was edited by Dom Alcuin Reid and published in 2011. The title of that book, “A Bitter Trial”, comes from one of Waugh’s letters, in which he writes of those early changes, far less radical than those still to come, “Church-going is now a bitter trial.” But it was not only for himself and his own preferences that he said and wrote such things; as Mr Chalk writes,

One of Waugh’s most persistent criticisms of the liturgical changes is that progressive, elitist-driven experimentation hurts ordinary people the most, undermining their confidence in important institutions. Vatican II represented, in Waugh’s mind, a rejection of the needs and opinions of local people. “A vociferous minority has imposed itself on the hierarchy and made them believe that a popular demand existed where there was in fact not even a preference,” he warned.

Likewise Cardinal Heenan, who “observed that the reform was driven by self-described ‘intellectuals’ whose ‘constant nagging’ and ‘tiresome letters to the press and articles in the Catholic papers may eventually disturb the faithful.’ ... ‘the voice of the laity’ was largely ignored by the media, as were conservative leaders in the Church, whom intellectuals painted as ‘mitred peasants.’ Waugh argued, ‘the function of the Church in every age has been conservative—to transmit undiminished and uncontaminated the creed inherited from its predecessors.”

Read the whole thing over there. I make bold to add only one observation. The title of the article is “Evelyn Waugh Predicted the Collapse of Catholic England”, and Mr Chalk goes on to note the dramatic decline in church attendance in England, which is similar to that in most historical Catholic countries or regions since the post-Conciliar reforms. It has been fashionable for a long time to deny that the liturgical reform has been the cause of this decline and fall by citing the famous dictum that “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” is a logical fallacy. It must never been forgotten that “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” is indeed a fallacy in logic, but does not change the fact that causality moves forward in time.

The future of the Church, ca. 1965.

“What Were They Smoking?”: On Liturgical Art from the 1970s

My liturgical library contains two types of books: ones that I look at because they are beautiful, edifying, or full of wisdom and piety; and ones that I keep precisely because they are the opposite. As I once said to a friend, “You need to know what people were thinking when they destroyed the liturgy. We can make all the guesses we want, but if we don’t actually read the authors of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, we won’t be able to get into their mindset and see what makes them tick.” In this latter category of my library would be such recently added gems as the collection of essays Secular Priest in the New Church (Herder and Herder, 1967), George McCauley’s Sacraments for Secular Man (Dimension Books, 1969), and Leonardo Boff’s Sacraments of Life, Life of the Sacraments (a translation of a 1975 book). Boff’s book is notable for the coffee cup, hunk of bread, and burnt-out cigarette on the cover, which allude to the chapter “My Father’s Cigarette Butt as Sacrament.”

Among these peculiar treasures is a smallish fake-leather-covered red book called The Sunday Missal, first published in 1975 by Collins in London. Here it is, in all its faded glory:

The book opens with a hauntingly melancholy Preface by the long-suffering John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, well known to traditionalists for his correspondence with Evelyn Waugh, in which he repeatedly stated that the liturgical reforms were just about over -- right when they were going to get worse and worse. Heenan’s Preface is pathetic, as he palpably longs for a better past and half-hopes that this missal will half-match up to it:

The Introduction, while not heretical (unlike the original version of the General Instruction that was hastily rewritten after the Ottaviani Intervention), nevertheless displays the same sort of “theology lite” that was and still is characteristic of the post-conciliar period. Characteristically, “eucharist” is not capitalized. Jesus gives himself “under the eucharistic signs of bread and wine to be the life and food of the community.” (This could be straight from Boff, incidentally.) “When the priest greets the people with the words ‘The Lord be with you,’ he is stating a fact -- the Lord is with his people as they gather to celebrate the eucharist.” Curious how a blessing in the subjunctive has turned into a declarative statement. The second paragraph is actually pretty Tridentine. The third paragraph apologises for the length and number of the readings. In the fourth paragraph we see the conciliar tricolor waved from the barricades as the old city smoulders below: “The more the people enter into the mystery of the eucharist by conscious, active, and fruitful participation, the more they grow in holiness.”

The real wonders begin when we start to see the block prints that are, it is to be believed, meant to depict in graphic form the wonderful liberating energy, the controlled chaos as of split rocks, and the implicit but nearly emergent parousia brought to the People of God by the renewed rites.

Since the art speaks for itself, no more words are necessary. Enjoy!

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