MASS APPEAL.

The Unread Vision

The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America: 1926-55

Keith F. Pecklers

The Liturgical Press, $24.95, 333 pp.

In hindsight many writers assert that it would have been better if the Second Vatican Council had not begun with such a sensitive subject as liturgy. They often add that liturgy should have been treated after the completion of the document on the church, since any change in liturgy should have reflected the newer emphases in ecclesiology. Some also claim that the faithful were totally unprepared for these changes, that these represented the views of but a few scholars working at their desks in German universities or in monastic cells.

Yet, the bishops felt at ease in beginning with the schema on liturgy. At least in Europe, the bishops had had sufficient acquaintance with the liturgical movement to see liturgy as ripe for some major decisions. This schema received the most thorough debate of any document of the council, since the procedures had not yet evolved and everyone had several chances to express his opinions on every sentence and paragraph. On December 4, 1963, the definitive vote on the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy took place with an overwhelming vote of 2,147 affirmative and 4 negative. Pope Paul VI then proceeded to promulgate the document. The unanimity of the bishops was encouraging and gave hope for the whole council.

All of these facts might seem surprising in the light of subsequent developments and current controversies. How well prepared were the bishops and how well prepared were the faithful for these liturgical changes? Keith Pecklers's excellent study seeks to answer this question for the United States. All the liturgical ferment here before the council, both the events and the people that created them, are thoroughly discussed. For those of us who lived through many of those events, reading the book is a nostalgic trip into a moment that was full of excitement and promise.

First, the European roots of the liturgical movement are examined, with ideas coming from Belgium and France, Germany and Austria. Next, how those ideas reached the church here, especially through the work of Father Virgil Michel O.S.B., is outlined in detail. Nevertheless, one would have to say that the liturgical movement "caught on" more in the areas of the country with a heavy German immigrant population than on the East Coast with its stronger Irish influences. The Midwest, under the influence of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, and a few pastors of German origin, became the center of the liturgical movement in the United States. Although the roots were often European and scholarly, the people involved were from all walks of church life. Pecklers states: "As in Europe, the American movement was fostered by Benedictines, but unlike its European counterpart, it was not overly academic or theological in nature. Rather, it was fundamentally a pastoral, grassroots development within the church."

Nevertheless, that development was uneven and did not prepare many segments of the American Catholic population. It was considered an elitist movement by many in the hierarchy and a divisive one. During the debate on liturgy at the first days of the council, the interventions by Cardinals Spellman and McIntyre showed that they had not been influenced the least bit by this movement.

After describing the European origins of the liturgical movement, Pecklers does not treat the movement in the United States chronologically but divides his study into four thematic areas: participation, social justice, education, and the arts. He rightly points out that many of the European ethnic groups were well prepared for the introduction of the vernacular because of the practice of the "Singmesse," a tradition of singing, especially in German, Slovak, Polish, and other middle European languages, hymns that corresponded to the various parts of the Mass. (My earliest "job" as an organist in 1939 at the age of twelve was in a Slovak parish in my hometown in Pennsylvania where the "Singmesse" in Slovak was regular Sunday fare.) In addition to the growth of the Vernacular Society-a movement that did not involve many people-the general lack of education in Latin among the ethnic immigrants made introduction of the vernacular a natural phenomenon in the United States, in spite of the wide use of the daily and Sunday missals for the laity that abounded in those days.

The surprising chapter in Pecklers's study, however, is the one on social justice. The early liturgical movement in the United States, mostly through the emphasis on the Mystical Body of Christ, was very much a part of the justice movement as well. Not just Father Virgil Michel but also Fathers Hans A. Reinhold and Reynold Hillenbrand played important roles in integrating justice issues and liturgical renewal. Pecklers writes: "Reynold Hillenbrand rightly deserves credit for Chicago's leading role in American Catholic liturgical and social activism, but Chicago's centrality was not only because of Hillenbrand. Although liturgists and social activists like Dan Cantwell, Jack Egan, Pat and Patty Crowley, Bernard Laukemper, Ed Marciniak, Joseph Morrison, Sara Benedicta O'Neill, Nina Polcyn, and John K. Ross-Duggan were influenced directly or indirectly by Hillenbrand, they made very significant contributions on their own. Together, these Chicago Catholics formed a network that extended far beyond the shores of Lake Michigan." The social justice aspect of the liturgical renewal was lost in the period after World War II as Catholics moved out of the inner cities to the suburbs and forgot their interest in social questions.

From my point of view, Pecklers is right in rejecting historian James F. White's view that the liturgical movement was highly influenced by Protestantism and thus flourished most in the Midwest. Closer to the truth is the fact that that area of the country had closer bonds to the liturgical centers of Europe, to Maria Laach and Beuron, to Maredsous and Mont Cesar, through the work of the pioneer monks of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, and their publication Orate Fratres, now Worship.

Even if the preparation here in the United States for the liturgical renewal of Vatican II was uneven, it was full of excitement and freshness. Pecklers catches that spirit perfectly in this well-written and well-documented work. The loss of that excitement several decades after the council will have to be documented by someone else a few decades from now. I hope it is done with the same thoroughness and perception that Pecklers brings to the preconciliar period.

Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., is archbishop of Milwaukee.