Virtual Catholicism
Long, J.V.
VIRTUAL CATHOLICISM J.V. Long L ast fall and early winter I had occasion to t r a v e l through the upper Midwest and South on business. A couple of side trips continue to play in my...
...not exactly entertainment and not quite camp, there is a kitsch quality that's oddly compelling when not completely infuriating...
...It's like a gilt cage, with images only slightly less vivid than the Mormon diorama in Salt Lake City...
...Allegedly healed through the mediation of a foreign woman with close ties to Our Lady, Mother's timing was nothing if not opportune...
...I stood for a few minutes, said a prayer, and then drove back to Minneapolis...
...Quarters are close but not congested...
...For those who have forgotten, last year Mother Angelica accused Mahony of teaching heresy about the nature of the Real Presence (see, "Liturgical Confusion," Commonweal, January 30,1998...
...During a recent broadcast, for example, Mother handles an obviously distraught caller afraid she hadn't been forgiven because her confessor had not required an Act of Contrition, by insisting, "What formula did he use?...tt might not have been valid...
...The chapel and its appointments have been designed by a sensibility that is not intimidated by the ornate...
...I sat in the back for a few minutes, irrationally mindful of the cameras, wondering who was watching...
...THAT'S THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA...
...Cloistered gardens appear to extend beyond the back of the buildings...
...OUR COMMITMENT IS AS FUNDAMENTAL AS A-B=C: TO HELP PROVIDE THOSE WHO WORK IN ~ PUBLIC SERVICE - - A FUTURE BASED ON SOUND GROWTH, NOT UNDUE RISK...
...The front hillside is dotted with shrines--groups of statues that, even on a weekday afternoon, had a number of kneeling pilgrims in attendance...
...So, when I was in the neighborhood, shortly after reports that Mother Angelica had been cured of the effects of an injury that had hampered her mobility for years, I wanted to see the place for myself...
...When our local cable company removed EWTN from its roster a couple of years ago, it was replaced with the SciFi Channel...
...To say the least, the spirit of Virgil Michel, with its clear-eyed traditionalism and emphasis on corporate lay participation in the liturgy, seemed even farther away in time and space than did Minnesota...
...Once past the guard in a glass booth, who lifted the traffic barrier without question or interest (raising doubts about security in the same instant that one wondered why there was security), there is ample parking down a small hill...
...Visiting Mother's sacred precincts is something like taking the Universal Studios Tour in Hollywood or Orlando...
...I walked up and down the aisles between the monks' crosses until I found the grave of Virgil Michel--the visionary American Benedictine who pioneered the midcentury liturgical renewal movement...
...Taken as a whole, the Mother Angelica phenomenon is more mystifying than entertaining...
...The choreography was as elaborate as the d6cor...
...There were a number of worshipers in the chapel and a steady stream moving in and out...
...Explaining one's taste for the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is tricky...
...I found the community cemetery on a hill...
...A phalanx of young men with very important looking ID tags hanging around their necks bustled outside the TV studio...
...MUTUAL OF AMERICA . . . . 320 PARK AVE., NEW YORK, NY 10022 ~ I 800 468 3785...
...The church, TV studio, nuns' monastery and another for the male minions, are laid out in a bowMike area along the hillside...
...In February, in a significantly different climate, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, near Irondale, Mother Angelica's base of operations...
...It's the insularity (hence the gatekeeper) and the self-righteous impermeability, which is both smug and judgmental (hence the casual charges of heresy and the "It might not have been valid" alarums...
...the monks are all memorialized with identically carved granite crosses that seemed ready to withstand both the impending winter and the ages...
...As I pulled away from the gates, I again thought of Virgil Michel...
...On a barely sunny, cold Sunday morning in November, I drove from Minneapolis to CollegeviUe for Mass at Saint John's...
...Commonweal 3 | August 14, 1998 THE BELL RINGS AT 8 : 3 0 , AND A ROOMFUL OF KIDS PILE I N . BUT FOR SOME, SCHOOL IS NEVER OUT, AND CLASS 1S NEVER DISMISSED...
...It's not the bad art or the practiced conservatism that's disturbing...
...After Mass, I spent the better part of a couple of hours walking around the campus and along the lakeside next to the monastery...
...A couple of side trips continue to play in my imagination, antiphonally...
...Added to the mix are the cameras that broadcast the daily Mass (that, pace Mahony, is said in Latin and accompanied by nuns fully prostrate behind the grille but not beyond the cameras, which are mounted on the wails like a series of surreal, postmodern Stations of the Cross...
...But, then, as long as Michel was prone, I'm not sure anyone in Irondale would notice...
...I can only catch EWTN in hotel rooms now...
...I haven't seen such profound bows since the last time The Egyptian was shown on the American Movie Channel--I kept remembering the booming voice of Mekere the high priest, "Bow down...on your faces...bow down to Pharaoh...
...THESE ARE EVERYDAY HEROES, AND AS THEY LOOK OUT FOR US, WE LOOK OUT FOR THEM - - WITH DIVERSE PENSION AND RETIREMENT PROGRAMS...
...One friend from another city asked how we could tell the difference...
...Surely, for those with eyes to see (especially in Rome and weasely American chanceries), heaven was signaling its interests in the Poor Clare network executive's contretemps with Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles...
...The aesthetic is unambiguously religious, to be sure, but the effect is closer to Kundun than it is to The Song of Bernadette...
...He lives in Portland, Oregon...
...I especially wanted to see the Marcel Breuer church, which was startling in its monumentality...
...hoping that God wasn't...
...Long's most recent article for Commonweal was "Clerical Character(s)," May 8, 1998...
...I imagined that he would be spinning in his grave at the return of this essentially anachronistic liturgical piety passing itself off as the authentic tradition...
Vol. 125 • August 1998 • No. 14
