Guest of honour and keynote speaker at the conference was the Argentinean Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, who was also the principal celebrant at the concelebrated Mass in Latin (Ordo Missae of Paul VI) in Cobh Cathedral. The Lassus Scholars of Dublin provided Palestrina music for the Mass.
The conference was chaired by Dr D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, professor emeritus of Moral Theology, Maynooth, a former doctoral student of the then Joseph Ratzinger.
Liturgy is no stranger to controversy and initiatives by Pope Benedict and the Congregation for Divine Worship have been meeting with some resistance.
Many liturgists are not happy with the forthcoming imposition of a revised English translation of the Roman Missal.
Some bishops were reported as unenthusiastic at the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (7-7-2007) urging extended permission for the use of the Tridentine Mass.
Another proposal – to return to the translation “for you and for many” in place of “for you and for all” as the words of Jesus said over the “cup of my blood” at Mass – is also questioned.
Recently, the Pope’s master of ceremonies, Monsignor Guido Marini, said he believes that kneeling while receiving communion, and on the tongue instead of in the hand, as was requested by the Pope at the Pentecost celebration in the Vatican, will become common practice.
Locally, two years ago, the Friends of St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, succeeded in a civil action blocking proposed changes to the cathedral sanctuary by Bishop John Magee of Cloyne. One of the speakers at the conference, Fr Alcuin Reid OSB, a monk of Farnborough, had made a submission to the hearing that the sanctuary changes were not liturgically necessary.
A wide range of scholars of international repute addressed the conference, supporting the Pope’s initiatives and explaining the thinking behind them.
James Hitchcock, professor of history at St Louis University, said that much liturgical change since Vatican II seemed unaware of the principles of good ritual. There was too much explaining. In stressing the community dimension, the trancendent was lost. When the liturgy becomes the priest’s soap-box, he said, the people sense that God is no longer there.
Dr Alcuin Reid, spoke on “The Liturgical Reform of Benedict XVI”, which he said is based on four pillars. These are: firstly, correct celebration of the liturgy in all its sacral character according to the liturgical books; secondly, an intellectually honest critique of erroneous practices; thirdly, fidelity to received liturgical tradition – it surprised many, when in Summorum Pontificum the Pope said the Tridentine Latin Mass had never been abrogated and could now be more freely celebrated; and fourthly, his own example as a liturgical minister, seen especially in the funeral Mass for Pope John Paul II where the world witnessed on television his dignity as a servant of the liturgy and his recollection of the divine realities.
Professor Manfred Hauke of Lugano, Switzerland, spoke of the work of Klaus Gamber (+1989) as the “father of the new liturgical movement”. Gamber had critiqued many aspects of the liturgical reform since Vatican II, saying it was a “fabrication according to the model of technical manufacture which replaced the living process of growth and development throughout the centuries”. Among a range of issues, Gamber questioned the total use of the vernacular, the priest facing the people during the Eurcharistic Prayer, and communion in the hand. Pope Benedict, Hauke said, praised Gamber as “a true prophet opposed to falsification”.
Hilda Hull Hitchcock, editor and founder of Adoremus: Liturgical Bulletin, spoke on “Benedict XIV and the Reform of the Reform”. She said that even at the end of the Council Ratzinger had seen internal conflicts in liturgical reform; it was seeking modernity at the expense of truth. His concern for what he called the ars celebrandi (the art of celebrating) in the Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (22-2-2007) shows he wants the liturgy to be beyond manipulation of those who celebrate it.
Dr Uwe Michael Lang, a German Oratorian priest, spoke on “Sacred Art in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger”. The Pope is aware of the transcendental nature of beauty (along with truth and goodness). Modern art seems to have lost this dimension. There has been an iconoclastic removal of statues and images from churches.
Ratzinger has said that the absence of images is not a Christian option. But neither, Lang insisted, has the Church adopted any one particular style. Pugin opposed classical forms as pagan, holding rigidly to romantic medievalism. The Pope, like Newman, urges an eclectic freedom; new artistic forms can emerge from all cultures in harmony with the Christian tradition.
Canadian Dr Neil J. Roy, editor of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, spoke on how beautifully and ordered are the two lists of saints mentioned in the Roman Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer) before and after the Consecration. They are arranged in two groups, led by Our Lady on the one hand and John the Baptist on the other. These two are the saints most frequently depicted in sacred art both East and West as petitioning Our Lord on behalf of sinners.
In the opening address Cardinal Mejia spoke on the problem of translation. The Bible understands the problem of languages as coming from sin and the Tower of Babel, he said, but healing came at Pentecost with the gift of the Spirit and the common language of faith. He urged a wider focus than the simply linguistic in translations, pointing out that every translation has intrinsic limitations.
Prominent among the organisers of the conference were: Mgr James O’Brien, a priest of Cloyne diocese working at the Vatican with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments and Mrs Terry Pender of the St Colman’s Society for Catholic Liturgy.
