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<\/p>\nAs a liturgical historian, I\u2019ve spent most of my time in the first two quarters of the twentieth century-United States. And yet, of late, I\u2019ve been doing a lot more reading about what happened in the years immediately following the Council.\u00a0 I must read about it, because I am one of the ever-growing pool of Catholics who has no memories, and no experiences, of the 1960s, or even the 1970s!<\/p>\n
As a historian, however, I\u2019m somewhat frustrated when I try to learn about this era, with respect to liturgical practice.\u00a0 While Worship <\/em>(formerly Orate Fratres<\/em>) studiously reported on the everyday goings-on of liturgical hopefuls in its three decades before the Council, by the 1960s it turns to analysis of much bigger-picture ideas, and technical liturgical-historical studies.\u00a0 No more delightful \u201cLiturgical Briefs\u201d from around the United States (and the world!).\u00a0 Likewise, Georgetown\u2019s excellent Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), even with its some 2,000 studies on Roman Catholic life, vocations, and parishes, has no data regarding the reception of the liturgy and liturgical practices in the decade following the Council.<\/p>\n And, feel free to tell me I\u2019m exaggerating, but when perusing the work of liturgists and professional ministers contemporary to <\/em>the some 15 years following the Council, I feel I inevitably find one of two threads:\u00a0 1) The post-Conciliar period was innovative, freeing, and expansive, throwing the doors open to the bright new world, and drawing the People of God to the center of the Mass in a way in which they had never been so alive.\u00a0 OR<\/em> 2) The post-Conciliar period was a vast storm of untested, unbridled, and uninformed decisions which systematically dismantled the Church\u2019s liturgical ritual, shattered vocations, and left a vapid shell of aesthetics in its wake. Yikes.<\/p>\n Surely there is some middle ground between these two extremes?\u00a0 And, while some parishes were probably \u201cinnovative, freeing, and expansive\u201d in their worship style, what<\/em>, exactly, did it look like?\u00a0 And how many parishes were really making any changes?\u00a0 On the other extreme, who was trying to \u201csystematically\u201d dismantle the Church\u2019s worship?\u00a0 Historical investigation into the practice of liturgical worship in the period between 1964-1979 seems to be an exercise in discovering the aesthetic preferences held by the most vocal minorities.<\/p>\n Before you ask, I\u2019ve done my own informal querying of members of the faithful who have memories of this period.\u00a0 I have anecdotes about composing music on the fly; about a disembodied voice floating over a creaky 1960\u2019s microphone set-up in a sacristy; about parishioners sledge-hammering apart an altar rail imported from Italy and chucking it in the parish basement (while other parishioners snuck in to take away \u201csouvenirs\u201d of the dismembered marble).<\/p>\n In this volume, McNierney describes how the \u201cunderground [Mass movement] has proliferated,\u201d but has felt if must maintain \u201cat least a semblance of secrecy\u201d (McNierney 11). \u00a0In editing the resource, McNierney hoped to both help \u201cliturgies of\u00a0 the underground\u201d draw on each others\u2019 experiences, and to include some resources which were \u201cused most widely\u201d but had heretofore \u201cnever appeared in print\u201d (McNierney 18, 15).<\/p>\n But\u2026were people really, actually doing<\/em> such things?\u00a0 Did Catholic folks gather together, explicitly identifying as \u201cliturgies of the underground,\u201d and pray \u201cThe Jesus Canon\u201d instead of what was in the Missal-soon-to-be-Sacramentary?\u00a0 Did everybody <\/em>play folk music with three chords on two guitars?\u00a0 Did the infamous \u201cbeer and pizza\u201d Mass really <\/em>happen in the vicinity of Notre Dame?\u00a0 Is this all just an incredibly elaborate urban legend fabricated by so-called Latin Mass Catholics seeking a return to the 1962 Missal???<\/p>\n And so, I ask you:\u00a0 What were you doing in 1964?\u00a0 Were you part of the \u201cunderground Mass movement\u201d?\u00a0 Were you sitting upstairs in the nave, sad and disappointed about what liturgical aesthetics were unfolding as your altar rail was carted out the door?\u00a0 Or did the Mass simply \u201cchange\u201d overnight, gradually, or amorphously, into some bright, new, and hopeful vision of the People of God?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Historical investigation into the practice of liturgical worship in the period between 1964-1979 seems to be an exercise in discovering the aesthetic preferences held by the most vocal minorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":53484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[3118,32],"tags":[3448],"class_list":["post-53477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ars-celebrandi-new-ws","category-vatican-ii","tag-folk-mass-underground-mass-liturgical-reform-vatican-ii"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/guitar-mass-with-priest-and-young-men-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Underground-Mass-Book-image-188x300.jpg\")
I\u2019ve also done my own researching\u2026ever hear of the Underground Mass Book <\/em>, edited by Stephen W. McNierney and published in 1968?\u00a0 It\u2019s fascinating, with the inclusion of \u201cnew Canons,\u201d a set of \u201creadings\u201d from (male) authors of classic texts like Hemingway\u2019s A Farewell to Arms<\/em>, and Merton\u2019s Ode to the Present Century<\/em>.\u00a0 A lyrics section provides words to 27 songs (all but one by male composers, and 1\/3 are by Ray Repp, of blessed memory).<\/p>\n