My first rite re-enacted by
Ref. Thomas Day wrote correctly
that the unpretentious low Anglican church
down the road can have more of a sense of the Catholic religion than St Novus Roman Catholic Church.
At least I’ve always found it so. Godwardness.
I love the description of High Mass at
Clem’s
from the Ship:
a Roman Catholic service circa 1905 as staged
by Fellini. I think I know everybody in the picture.
The holy,
Catholic, apostolic and Roman Church just like in the
movies
Actually this is of a Polish National Catholic parish but
it’s the same idea. What I thought church should look like when I was
about 17.
This is
the Canon (consecration) at a
missa cantata (sung Mass). The local
SSPX church does this every Christmas at midnight
and it’s packed.
These happen
to be Benedictines in France. You actually don’t need a lot of stuff or
show to have the Catholic religion (after all look at Ref’s Communion
service above, the equivalent of the Low Mass shown to the right); it’s to
do with how you use what you’ve
got. Of course I still love the baroque and Victorian stuff but
Orthodoxy and the liturgical movement
(which admired the Orthodox) have influenced me in this direction.
Just like in Western Catholicism there’s a divide in Orthodoxy between the
romantic Victorians like the Russians (with whom I’m at home) and the
‘purists’, often converts, who want only Byzantine
icons and chant (with the deep
ison bass line).
Crisp, austere liturgical-movement dreams
