The Mass and the Movies

...January i9, r927 THE COMMONWEAL 289 No very great stretch of imagination is necessary to understand that the Acts of the Apostles, where there is question of "the breaking of the Bread" in the Upper Chamber at Jerusalem after the Ascension of Our Saviour, might be profitably amplified and made vivid for our people by means of the movies...

...Anyone who has read a book about Spain has asked himself what the Mozarabic rite is like...

...Who has not realized that a pic- ture of Mass, offered up in Notre Dame, Paris, after its desecration by the enthronement of Citizeness Aubrey as the Goddess of Reason, would help power- fully to a realization of the need of expiation...

...The Protestant public is beginning to desire that larger use be made of the appealing charms of sacred music, and is quick to confess that color helps to reach the heart through the eye...

...Who has not desired to see Urban II offering up the Holy Sacrifice at Clermont just prior to proclaiming the first Crusade...

...But only too often these Catholic touches, which are always brought in incidentally, appear side by side with scenes which no Catholic would care or dare to approve...

...Certainly, if he saw Io,ooo,ooo Catholics going to the movies every week he would leave no stone un-turned to harness up this great engine to the service of religion and especially to the service of Jesus re-maining with us really and substantially in the Eucharist...

...There is music, color and action...

...If outside the Church, people are tremendously interested in Catholic cere-monial and ritual it is almost exclusively due to the fact that they have seen snatches of them portrayed upon the screen not always with fidelity to the prescrip- tions of the caeremoniale and the rituale...

...GOUVERNEUR PAULDING...

...These and a multiplicity of other Eucharistic subiects might easily be made vivid to our people by means of the silver sheet...

...Who has not desired frequently to see portrayed the touching scene of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered up at the midnight hour in Ireland during penal days when that meant such fateful consequences for the officiating priest...

...If we have failed so far to produce a really master- ful screen portrayal of the Mass, it is owing no doubt to the great expense which such an undertaking would involve...

...What they see they link up with what they have heard or already know...

...Now this trinity of qualities is present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in a striking and unmistakable way...

...To reproduce the Mass in a cheap, make...

...Besides there is not that drama in their religious actions into wkich a man naturally falls when he thinks and feels deeply on such all-important questions as the worship of God, the interest of his soul, and the patient bearing of the whips of fortune...

...If we can show them the Mass, in all its parts, in its origin, in its history, in its liturgical bearing, thenwe may be sure that whatever knowledge Catholic people have regarding the Holy Sacrifice will freshen up like a withered plant after a summer rain...

...It is really remarkable how many of our people are anxious to see carried out the various oriental rites approved by Rome...

...If Albert Hammenstede in his Die Liturgie als Erlebniss proved beyond cavil that the Mass is the highest form of drama because of the actuality at-tached to it as also the symbolism by which that actuality is shadowed forth to the faithful, then we find another reason for a film on the Mass in the fact that the Holy Sacrific is bound up intimately with many of the outstanding events in the history of the Church...

...288 THE COMMONWEAL January 19, I927 THE MASS AND THE MOVIES By THOMAS M. SCHWERTNER C OUNTLESS films with a Catholic coloring have elicited expressions of approving pleasure from those who are wide-awake enough to know that the Catholic Church is an appreciable body...

...Even the catechetical answers learned by rote in youth have an unhappy faculty of evaporating from the memory...

...There are those who be- lieve that even with the magnificent numbers in at-tendance at Sunday Mass there is a gradual lessening of interest in it through a lack of understanding of its meaning and riches...

...That this prejudice is entirely unfounded is abundantly plain from the conduct of the French who long since pressed moving pictures into service as a powerful agency of Eucharistic education...

...It is also due in part to the fact that the modern man, anxious to know the reason why and wherefore of things, is desirous of ap- prehending something of the history of the origin of the Mass and its vicissitudes throughout the ages...

...This arises probably from the fact that the Mass does not form more frequently the topic of parochial sermons...

...The same was done by Monsignor Herscher, Archbishop af Laodicaea...

...First of all, no moving picture is ever presented with- out accompanying music and any screen representation of the Mass would afford the organist or orchestra an opportunity of introducing music which far transcends the jingles of the day...

...We have even seen the full splendor of a Papal Mass with the attendant services of canonization of saints in Saint Peter's...

...We whom he choseas friends could not betray His trust--knowing he had not long to stay-- And while he stayed with us at least no blow, No sneer should hurt the constant dream which lay So close behind his eyes, nor overthrow Such happy certainty of wedding day...

...In the next place, even in the flat black and white type of picture the idea of color is easily conveyed to the audience as Hugo Munsterberg clearly showed in The Photoplay (New York, I916) which is the best and most physchological treatise on the powers of appeal and the potentialities of the mov- ing picture...

...The latter played a leading part in another film showing the dilemma of a young man brought face to face with the necessity of choosing between a secular career and the Church...

...Persons outside the Church are beginning to realize that colorless religious services do not answer those deeply lodged longings of the human heart for a form of religious adoration which by its very nature lifts men easily into the pres- ence of God...

...Of course, these were produced for apostolic reasons by that ever active agent of Catholic propaganda and education, La Bonne Presse...

...But what men see they do not soon forget...

...And, of course, a screen portrayal of the Mass would bring out clearly the intrinsic dramatic appeal of the sacred Action...

...Those who look upon the thousand turrets of the Milan Cathedral must have desired more than once to see just how the Ambrosian differs from the Roman rite...

...In the Pathe News, we have seen the Mass on the battle-fields of Europe or at the nuptial service of prominent Catholics...

...In fact, it may not be put- ting the point too strong to say that if our people are awakening gradually to such a contemporaneous phe- nomenon as the liturgical revival, it is in no small measure due to the fact that they have learned from the silver screen the intrinsic beauty and appealing force of our liturgical services...

...Who has not desired at one time or other in his life to see just how Mass was celebrated in the second or third centuries in the Catacombs...

...Because every- thingpertaining to the Mass is surrounded with ven-eration and reverence there are those who feel that to film it would smack somewhat of commercialization...

...artd Cardinal Dubois of Paris...

...shift and inadequate fashion would, of course, defeat the very purpose which such a film should serve...

...He may not always know that these services are not faithfully and accurately depicted on the screen...

...There are French films which depict the Mass in its entirety...

...For that rea- son it would seem the most natural thing in the world that the Mass would lend itself easily, and one might almost say naturally, to portrayal on the silver screen...

...In the second place, there is an unreasonable prejudice against filming the Mass in the minds of those wh6 have not, as yet, learned that the latest and best in- ventions and devices of our modern life should be pressed into the service of religion...

...It may be interesting to note that no less a personage than the late Cardinal Mercier gladly volunteered to enact before the camera an ordi- nation service...

...And on the other hand, what Catholic would long remain indifferent about pictures showing the different rites which are not only permitted but approved by the Church...

...With all our numbers we have not exerted a sufficiently powerful influence upon the moving-picture industry to warrant production of a religious film, such as The Miracle Man, for instance, which was really an exposi- tion of the tenets of Christian Science...

...If it is true, as Augustine Birrell in a famous essay says, that "it is the Mass that matters," then that selfsame dictum is backed up by the uniform interest of a miscellaneous audience in the Holy Sacrifice as shown fragmentarily, for the most part, on the screen...

...A Mass film, accurate, adequate, historically true, theologically orthodox, is a real need of the hour if our people are to keep alive in their hearts that love for the Mass which they have inherited from forbears who often enough suffered in their bodies to attend und keep in their Catholic life...

...But his taste for liturgical pageantry has been whetted, and it is safe to say that many a non-Catholic has been lead to visit a Catholic church in the sole hope of seeing carried out there in its entirety services which he witnessed only in part on the screen...

...Not only did it produce superior films of the Mass, Low and High, but such significant and absorbing services as the ordination of young men to the priesthood were portrayed elaborately, with impeccable fidelity to rubrical prescription and perfect technical artistry...

...And, since we felt at home in our caf~, If any stranger laughed we told him: "No, We never laugh at that old man and so If you must laugh go laugh across the way...

...A film on the Mass will not only enliven preaching on the subject but will drive home whatever is said from the pulpit into the hearts and memories of men...

...Improving upon that famous saying one might pre-sume to declare that were the great Apostle, vigilant as he ever was for the instruction of his converts and ever ready to make use of any means at hand to tighten their grasp upon spiritual truths, to return to the world today he would not be unmindful of the power of the moving picture as an agency of religious instruction...

...It was Bishop Ketteller who years ago shocked his contemporaries by saying that if Saint Paul were to return to the world he would undoubtedly be a power- ful advocate of the press, if not a journalist himself...

...in Caj "Tomorrow is the marriage" he would say, This ancient man whom we had come to know, Then we would lift our hats and watch him go Before we dealt the cards again to play...

...For words are soon forgotten...

...Now, it is worthy of note that the majority of Catholic scenes which have filtered into secular films have to do with the liturgy...

...Since that is the case, one is at a loss to understand why moving-picture producers have not long since hit upon the idea of giving us a full colorful portrayal of the Mass from start to finish...

...The aver-age movie fan has enough sense of the dramatic to appreciate the beauty of Catholic services...