A sacred place...still
McCarthy, Abigail
It is not clear what cultural role is to be played by those of us descended from what might be called the vanquished races of Europe. My own ancestry, for instance, is Celtic. Time was when my...
...One point of departure for a refutation is to note that the anti-Eurocentrists con- found two quite distinct notions of culture...
...The lift of the "Pange Lingua" and the monotony of the sung litany...
...Agnes and St...
...Theodore Marier, Director, Center for Ward Method Studies Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 20064 Tel: (202) 319-5417 or (202) 3~[9-5420 216: Commonweal...
...Shall we learn Gaelic...
...The bulletin abounds with invitations to the lecture series and festivals of neigh- boring parishes...
...They are cool and dim, faintly redolent of the incense of decades, and reminiscent of encounters with the sacred...
...Homilies are brief and concentrate on the "good news" of the gospel...
...On the other hand is the Matthew Arnold notion, where "culture" means "the best that has been thought and said in the world...
...Felix, the windows were thrown open and the aggiornamento of John XXIII of blessed memory really took place...
...Felix, of whose biography we were never sure but for whom the first pastor, a French mis- sionary, was named, rode high above...
...Later Julius Caesar gave u~- a terrible drubbing...
...Why would such lively youngsters want to return to the church when they had a whole town to roam...
...Father John was the church, and the sisters, too, in a subordinate way...
...Culture in the anthropological sense is by definition particularistic, therefore unsuited for the human race as a whole...
...To me, today, the wonder of St...
...What shall our part be under the new dispensation...
...To confound these two concepts of cul- ture, to denounce St...
...And, like our St...
...It is the sternest critic of ordinary culture...
...If we act quickly we may yet rescue the poor Patagonians from the poisons of cultural imperialism...
...Babies--unwelcome in my day-- cry, toddlers fuss, and parents cope with no sense of strain...
...Of midnight Mass, glorious with candles ablaze in all the available candelabra and the full-throat- ed caroling of the choir...
...For, nonsensical though it may be, it is a fashionable kind of nonsense, the kind that has wide appeal nowadays...
...An invitation to the World Day of Prayer service from the United Methodist women is published, as is one from the local Episcopal church...
...The procession to end the Forty Hours devotion, with all the girls wearing the white dresses of last summer over lumpy winter underwear, strewing blossoms of begonia and gera- nium (mine from my grandmother's kitchen) before the Blessed Sacrament...
...It is only insofar as ordi- nary culture takes this criticism to heart and allows itself to be permeated by ele- ments of the higher culture that it rises somewhat above its merely local nature and takes on the flavor if not the full sub- stance of cosmopolitanism...
...and every individual is just as cultured as every other--Billy Sunday and Reverend Ike no less than Erasmus and Thomas More...
...One-dollar Masses were consigned to the missionaries elsewhere, a source of conflict for my great-aunt Nell who had to balance her belief that more Masses were better with her desire to have Masses for the family dead announced from the pulpit...
...Ecrasez l'inf6me...
...The Blessed Virgin, on her altar, was accompanied by two saints chosen as models for Catholic youth, St...
...Gregorian Chant An intensive, three-week accredited course Weekday afternoons: June 24 - July 12, 1991 "Timely and practical -developing a prayerful and artistic interpretation of the music of the Church...
...Alas...
...Societies and individuals can be ranked in a hierarchy according to how much of this high culture they possess, most possessing very little...
...I can shut my eyes and see it as it was in my time...
...At St...
...Practice Druidism per- haps...
...Perhaps it takes this journey in time, a return to the church of the thirties in one particular place and back again, to realize the extent of change since Vatican II...
...Yet refuted it needs to be...
...Requiem Masses were sung by the school children on weekdays for dead parishioners five-dollar Masses we called them...
...my grandnephews asked after a family funeral in my hometown...
...Unlike the vile Eurocentrists, we are not bigots, we have not sinned against the light, we don't have the blood of Montezuma on our hands...
...Or go on pilgrimage to Stonehenge...
...When I was in grade school, daily Communion was unheard of--only one cadaverous maiden lady approached the altar at daily Mass, and there was debate over whether she was a saint or a bit mad...
...Time was when my forebears ruled nearly all of the European subcontinent...
...But culture in the Arnoldian sense is the diametric oppo- site of this...
...Felix is not that which is unchanged but that which has changed so much...
...and at the very moment we are indulging in this laziness and irrespon- sibility, we are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for having risen to a level of moral and intellectual superiority...
...Then the Germans drove us out of all the good real estate in Britain...
...We knew all the arguments in defense of the one true faith and all the errors of Protestants and non- believers...
...Women lectors and min- isters of the Eucharist join lay men in the sanctuary as a matter of course...
...and the more this culture is unleavened by culture in the high- er sense, the more complacent and even xenophobic it tends to be...
...We patronized the Catholic undertaker and subscribed to the local newspaper owned by a Catholic...
...Wear a kilt...
...The endless High Mass, with its hour-long ser- mon, was a test of endurance...
...Anti-Eurocentrism is but the latest disguise worn by the children of darkness, who are now what they have always been, the enemies of humankind's enlightenment and emancipation...
...But in the Arnold sense, culture is a rare and high achievement...
...The question, posed to their mother, surprised me...
...Patrick on the other, sealing the uneasy union of parishioners of German and Irish descent...
...but the Celts are a lost cause...
...9 Abigail McCarthy A SACRED PLACE...STILL WHERE BABIES CRY & TODDLERS FUSS ould we go back and look at the church again...
...Mixed marriages were cold affairs, performed before the fireplace in the rectory parlor, sans flowers, music, and blessings...
...We saw the bishop every four years or so, when he came for confirmation, but we felt little connection to him...
...Anti-Eurocentfism is so foolish an enter- prise that it is difficult to know where to begin its refutation...
...But culture in the higher sense is univer- salistic, therefore indispensable for the cre- ation of a worldwide culture...
...Today, sad to say, the only remnant of our ancient glory is a basketball team in Boston...
...Oppressed though I am by such Mediterranean types as Cicero, Leonardo, and Puccini, I'm not sure I am up to this species of liberation...
...It was a self-enclosed parish life...
...For information, please contact...
...The pope was a dim and distant figure, certainly never in the newspapers or on the radio...
...The year went by in a series of devo- tions and novenas--rosary devotions in October, Stations of the Cross in Lent, Marian devotions in May, Rogation Days in summer, evening Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday all year round...
...Since birth they had been taken to worship in the mul- tipurpose halls and auditorium-like church- es of sprawling new parishes...
...Boniface flanked the center on one side, St...
...There are many such neo-Gothic, steepled brick churches in old neighbor- hoods and small towns all across America...
...In fact, before OF SEVERAL MINDS Arnold hit upon the word "culture" he used the term "criticism" to designate essentially the same thing...
...Teresa of Avila...
...Once we were even on the verge of seizing the Roman Capitol--until those damned sacred geese began honking...
...In the name of tolerance and open-minded- ness (who could oppose such virtues...
...The crucifixion group 5 April 1991:215 dominated the altar piece...
...Culture in the anthropological sense is inevitably ethnocentric, subject to all the shortcomings of ethnocentrism: it is nar- row, prejudiced, chauvinistic, inclined to overrate itself and its people while under- rating the outside world...
...This higher culture is broad, enlightened, and catholic...
...The reading recommended for Lent is that authored by Joyce Hollyday, a writer for the evangelical Sojourners magazine...
...Those who live with gradual change are often unaware...
...Rome is a place of fre- quent pilgrimage...
...It is the kind of mistake made by the men tied up in the dark Platonic cave, who so loved their darkness that they killed the liberator who was about to lead them to light...
...Our faith was militant...
...Our faith was also a wary walk between the safety of rule and the always present possibility of sacrilege and sin...
...Aloysius Gonzaga and another whose name every- body now seems to have forgotten...
...Memories crowd back...
...The biggest change of all, however, is the willingness to share faith with other Christians...
...On the one hand is the anthropological notion, where "culture" means the way of life of a people: its language, religion, moral code, political system, etc...
...But then I realized that they, chil- dren of suburbia, had never seen a church like the church of my childhood...
...Those who crowd into the pews of St...
...The towering high altar in our century- old church, with its painted and gilded stat- ues carved of wood, the graphic Stations of the Cross marching along the walls, the stained glass windows, the vaulted ceiling, all were sources of wonder and curiosity to them...
...Paul and Mozart because of the deficiencies of ordinary European culture, is not just a mistake...
...it is a mistake of a particularly perverse type...
...In the former sense of the word, every society is equally cultured--a forest tribe of New Guinea no less than Periclean Athens or Elizabethan England...
...The parish is no longer an isolated unit but clearly a part of the church universal...
...Parishioners have adopted a church in Haiti and offer hospitality and sponsorship to its boys' choir on fund-rais- ing concert tours...
...Sunday Communion was allowed only at the early Mass...
...The relief when the "orapro nobis" and the "orate pro nobis" gave way to "libera nos, Domine...
...we are permitted to abandon the hard work that goes with maintaining cultural stan- dards and keeping an ancient heritage in good repair...
...My Celtic soul, I fear, lost its native hue somewhere in the labyrinthine ways of history, till now it is rinsed through and through with the deep and alien dyes of Judaism, Hellenism, Romanism, and Germanism...
...D The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C...
...Felix on a Sunday now, for example, take for granted the atmosphere of a family gath- ering...
...That was our high-water mark...
...Joseph, on his altar, stood between St...
...Felix, their impress on the con- sciousness of generations of Catholics was deep...
Vol. 118 • April 1991 • No. 7
