Michel blows his horn:
Smith, Karen Sue
THE MAN FROM CQLLEGEVILLE MICHEL BLOWS HIS HORN SOCIAL JUSTICE & THE LITURGY In 1938, a forty-eight-year-old Benedictine philosopher-monk named Virgil Michel died unexpectedly. Commonweal's...
...Michel saw the Depression as judgment upon capitalism, and-perhaps uniquely-he saw that liturgy provided an instrument of social reform, and the church a model of human community...
...afraid of no labor," who "got an incredible lot of work done...
...the Liturgical Press...
...Today, one can find in Michel's writings striking similarities with the bishops' pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All...
...Michel once wrote to a friend that he was to ' 'take part in a symposium at Notre Dame with some big bugs including Maritain and Gilson...
...Orate Fratres magazine (now called Worship...
...Franklin and Robert L. Spaeth, a brief, informative, and engaging book, suggests that society today stands in need of the type of moral analysis Michel engaged in...
...The monk described as "out front in alertness" is still leading Catholics to reform...
...John A. Ryan, Fulton Sheen, and Michel's correspondents, Mortimer Adler and Donald Attwater...
...Michel, the social analyst, found unconstrained individualism and a complacent bourgeois spirit at the root of our social ills...
...Also, the May issue of Worship is devoted to Michel's work...
...But Michel also saw that to accomplish these, the liturgy had to be reformed...
...and new methods of religious education...
...In Commonweal, Michel's articles-on labor, capitalism, agriculture, the common good-appeared alongside those of Willa Cather, G.K...
...This year, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Catholics are celebrating Michel's considerable legacy: a body of ideas and penchant for organization that launched the liturgical reform movement in the U.S...
...Virgil Michel, American Catholic by R.W...
...What troubled Michel was the devastation wrought by industrial society...
...In July, liturgists and social activists met together for the Virgil Michel Symposium at St...
...How might this society be transformed in accord with Christian values...
...The Mass itself, Michel believed, could counteract the destructiveness of individualism by its communal banquet, its transcendence of class barriers in admitting all equally to the celebration, its eucharistic ministry to the sick, its prayers that those in positions of worldly power would act justly, its collections of money and goods for the needy, its biblical injunctions to live in solidarity with the poor, and its warnings against a materialistic lifestyle...
...Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Msgr...
...The Social Question: Essays on Capitalism and Christianity, edited by Spaeth, is a selection of Michel's essays...
...About poverty, Michel wrote: "If individuals do not attain the good life through their own negligence, then society must still come to the rescue of any who suffer innocently from such negligence...
...John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota-Michel's former home-to explore the undeveloped but vital link between social justice and liturgy...
...It would have to expel clericalism and promote active lay participation, symbolize an authentic community, and inspire service to the world at large...
...Two commemorative books have been published by the Liturgical Press...
...and a full reawakening of the Christian habits of sacrifice, simplicity of life, and charity...
...and if the negligent become a menace to the common good of all, then society must defend itself...from their negligence...
...Commonweal's obituary referred to him as "a strong, iron little man, full of initiative...
...KAREN SUE SMITH Karen Sue Smith is an associate editor of Commonweal and the director of the lona Center for Pastoral Liturgy at Iona College, New Rochelle, New York.le, New York...
...As a remedy, he proposed: "a reconstruction in the direction of human solidarity...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 15
