. . . the writer can testify to the Chicago experience!

The Great War over, the liturgical movement kept moving. Special gatherings, liturgical weeks and days, became common, as in the French cities Rouen and Lourdes.

A Congress of Sacred Music in 1919 was attended by cardinals and bishops and bishop-level abbots. Interest was building in high places.

Gregorian chant, approved vigorously by Pius X 20 years earlier, was being taught to children — a half million in New York City, to cite a major effort. People were being encouraged to receive communion at mass — another Pius X footprint — and were in some cases reading Scripture at mass.

Pius XI told of “lively satisfaction” at these developments.

In Holland, the country best organized in these matters, clergy-staffed liturgical commissions were established in every diocese.

The lights of the movement were beginning to shine.

Dom Odo Casel’s calling liturgy a “mystery” rite made him the source of “perhaps the most fruitful theological idea” of the 20th century in the view of then Cardinal Ratzinger.

The prolific Pius Parsch (1884-1954) and the Italian-born Romano Guardini (1885-1968), who was raised in Germany, would be mainstream contributers and theological shapers of the reform in decades to come.

Bonneterre was happy to recall these giants of scholarship but was at the same time critical. In 1920, he noted that their writings “remained moderate, but that did not last long.” In fact, “It was in Germany that the movement experienced its first and perhaps most serious deviations.”

The flourishing was under way, however, including in Italy, Spain, and the United States. In New York in June, 1920, at an International Congress of Gregorian Chant, mass was sung in chant by 4,000 children from 47 Catholic schools where a half million students were learning the chant.

In the Chicago archdiocese in the early ’40s, grade schools were still learning it. They also were taught how to pray at the “dialogue” mass, condemned in our time as “the worm of decay” that “began to devour traditional rites from the inside.”

The year 1909 . . . was the year in which Dom Lambert Beauduin presented his ideas for more “active” lay participation in the liturgy at the National Congress of Catholic Action in Malines on the invitation of Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier.

So. All was not working to tradionalists’ satisfaction. Back to main theme:

I was in such a school — and sang too in the men and boys choir, where the music was the church-approved, magnificent polyphony of the Renaissance, and the choir director scorned chant!

Meanwhile, Fr. Lasance produced his Sunday missal, Dom Lefebvre his Catholic Liturgy, translated from the Italian.

In 1921, the St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota, Benedictine Virgil Michel published My Sacrifice and Yours; and Dominican sisters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, published brochures for classroom use in teaching liturgy, titled With Mother Church.

Only later, in the ’50s, would the “American Movement” fall under what Bonneterre considered the very bad influence of “the French and German movements.”

Indeed, even at this early date, the pastoral-vs.-God-centered liturgies conflict was in the mix, Bonneterre explained.

The pastoral approach emphasized the “apostolic” character of liturgy as emphasized by the Belgian, Dom Beauduin, who “tended” to overemphasize it, he wrote.

This conflict was to become increasingly pervasive as the movement faced “the great temptation . . . to make liturgy above all a means of apostolate; to bend [it] to the needs of the apostolate.”

Of which more later.

Here was the danger, said Bonneterre in the 1980s: the movement could not “withstand this temptation” to subordinate worship to pastoral technique, and “this magnificent work [of reform] broke down, bringing with it nearly the entire fabric of the Church.”

Big stakes, to say the least.

But zest for ecumenism remains a key part of the problem . . .

First of all, there are such married priests, as we many if not most know already. Not Roman Catholics but Eastern Rite, long-ago created in all-systems-go efforts at unification with once-schismatic Orthodox worshipers.

I stood chatting with one some time back a few blocks from where our two sons were living, upstairs from the art gallery they were running on California Ave., where the Ukrainian Catholic church was for which the priest was pastor.

As a one-time religion reporter and before that a Jesuit, I thought we might take a look inside. We did, but no more than a look. It was Easter Day, the pastor had been there since six o’clock, and he was closing shop. Had to join the wife and kids at home.

Yes. The man was a couple decades or so older than my sons. He had found his way in life that included two sacraments, Matrimony and Holy Orders. And I bless him to this day.

He and I and my son Pete had a pleasant half-hour chat and returned to the flat, joining his mother and others.

Another married-priest syndrome were the Anglicans who in the last several decades pulled a John Henry Newman on the Church of England and joined up with Roman Catholicism and now function as pastors throughout the U.S. and U.K.

These took Romanism on at the behest of our last pontiff but two, Benedict XIV, who in the year of Our Lord 2009 said come one, come all to Anglicans in search of old-time religion which they used to have in Merry England but had no more.

Alas, something went wrong with that invitation. It’s been withdrawn. By a pope named Francis, now gone for his reward, and not reinstated by his successor named Leo. No sir, no sirree.

One one single news day in the world of what this writer could find on his google, there a dozen links to the story about widespread former Anglicans become full-fletched Romans, lots of them, and one, 7-31-25, about Francis withdrawing same.

The Vatican has made a decisive move by ending a special provision that allowed Anglican priests to convert to Catholicism while retaining some of their traditions. This pathway, established under Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, was designed to welcome disillusioned Anglican clergy, particularly those opposed to the ordination of women and LGBTQ+ rights. [emphasis added]

Lot there, to be sure. The top man of Anglicans not happy with this doctrinal exposing as cause of hundreds of his people packing up for greener pastures in Rome. Come on, he says, you open your doors and we watch our people hustling through.

In hundreds, wives and families and all, as reported 11-21-25 as regards the United Kingdom, home of the worldwide English-speaking priests and bishops (!):

A new report reveals that significant numbers of Anglican clergy have converted to Catholicism in the United Kingdom since 1992.

The report, “Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain,” released 11-20-25, shows that approximately 700 clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales, and Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992. The number includes 16 former Anglican bishops.

This equates to approximately a third of all Catholic priests ordained in England and Wales during this period.

And then there is the US and Canada situation.

1-1-12,

Benedict XVI announced creation of an ordinariate – similar to a diocese, but national in scope – for Anglican groups and clergy across the United States who wish to become Catholic. The ordinariate will be based in Houston.

Yes indeed, the Spirit moved Benedict to make it international. Anglicans shocked and disturbed by their religion and wanting out were given it.

The pope also named Father Jeffrey Steenson, a Catholic priest serving in Houston since 2009, to lead the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

Married and the father of three children, Father Steenson was an Episcopal bishop before becoming Catholic in 2007.

He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2009, the same year he came to Houston to teach patristics (the study of the Church fathers) at St. Mary’s Seminary.

Two years later, Benedict opened the gates.

Pope Benedict XVI promulgated the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, permitting erection of personal ordinariates equivalent to dioceses, on November 4, 2009.

By 2017, there were 43 ordinariate parishes and missions in the in U.S. and Canada, headed by priests named by the equivalent of monsignor but not bishops, who had to be unmarried.

So 43 married priests and parishes, what do you know about that? Adding to the Eastern Catholic pastors like him who took time for a half-hour chat in mid-afternoon on Easter Sunday but had to get back to his wife and kids.

It can be done. Holy Mother Church is pastored almost but not entirely by celibates including the same-sex-attractive who currently number as high as eight out of every ten, some of whom live up to their state of life but others who don’t.

For these same-sex attracted one might (I did) go to what’s said prolifically by a priest of long experience who makes this proposal: Mix up your (presumed) 80% of them with ministerial colleagues who have wife and kids and you have, shall we say, a calming effect on the church of today.

— more to come on this, to say the least, unusual proposal —

We met each other in 3rd grade in St. Catherine of Siena school in Oak Park IL in 1939, stayed in touch over the years, more recently via telephone, Chicago to his house in California.

His son called the other day, suggested I might talk to him. Not that he was talking any more but he was listening, which I verified with the help of the son’s  wife, who had put her phone next to his ear and later told me he was reacting to my voice.

Hearing is the last thing to go, she said, and I can testify three other death beds over the years, when mourners-to-be addressed the soon-to-die, one of whom, another from our youth, bed-ridden on a coma, pressed my hand, showing he’d heard.

As I told our #1 daughter, I talked to Bill a lot over the last several years, hearing what he had to say about lots of thinks, toward the end doing a lot of listening, let me tell you, but from now on doing all the talking, to him in the next life.

I love that part. Already have my sister Mary Clare Penney, who much appreciated Bill by the way, from conversations at our house and told her children about him. Bill told me he appreciated seeing siblings relate to each other, having had none himself.

Bill and I in days gone by played baseball on Sam’s Lot, as we called a vacant stretch on a corner near us. He considered himself a pitcher and made an art creation of it. Very serious about it.

On another of our locations, Columbus Park, on the Chicago side of Austin from the el and metro tracks station on the south to tennis courts on the north.  We played on the southern-end open space with diamonds on either end. Commuters would stop to watch on their way home from work.

One of our games had a score in the twenties, leading a religious-order priest assigned to St. Catherine’s, who played touch ball with us on after-school hours, observed it had been a pitcher’s duel.

Let’s leave it for now. Praying that Bill rests in peace, of course . . .

Brothers and sisters,

This evening, we gather in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, just as the early Church in Jerusalem did (cf. Acts 1:14).

Let us all together, persevere tirelessly in praying for peace, a God-given gift that we must strive to receive and to which we must make a strong commitment.

Indeed!

And while we’re at it, a good word for Donald Trump, who has done so much for world peace?

Even if you are a Democrat, Your Holiness. Go ahead. You’ll be glad you did.

Meanwhile,

Younger American priests more conservative, traditional, survey shows

An extensive new survey of American Catholic priests has found major differences between older and young priests, strong confidence in Pope Leo, but less confidence in the American Catholic hierarchy.

Well!

A report from the National Study of Catholic Priests, reflecting the results of a survey of over 1,000 priests, was released on October 14 (2025).

The study—conducted by the Gallup Poll and commissioned by Catholic University—found that younger priests were markedly more likely than their older counterparts to describe themselves as theologically and politically conservative, to favor broader access to the Traditional Latin Mass, and to have reservations about the concept of synodality.

The latter being in laymen’s language, a process of group discussions about church matters that brings bishops and lay people into decision-making]

Specifically, the study found that:

• Among priests ordained before 1975, 70% described themselves as “progressive.” Among those ordained since 2000, only 8% accept that description. In the younger group, 70% describe themselves as conservative/orthodox.
• Similarly, while 61% of the older priests say they are “somewhat” or “very” liberal in their political beliefs, only 10% of the younger priests do, and 51% of the younger cohort is “somewhat” or “very” conservative.
• When asked to list pastoral priorities, younger priests emphasize Eucharistic devotion. Older priests were more likely to cite climate change, immigration, and social-justice issues in general.
• Among those ordained before 1980, 77% said listed “synodality” as a priority, as against 29% of the younger priests.
• 86% of all priests expressed “a great deal” (43%) or “quite a lot” (43%) of confidence in Pope Leo XIV, while only 1% reported “very little” confidence.
• Only a bare majority (52%) of priests said they trust their own bishop—down from 63% in 2001, before the explosion of the sex-abuse crisis. The best predictor of whether a priest trusted his bishop was that priest’s answer to a question about whether he felt the bishop “cares about me.”
• Priests’ confidence in the US hierarchy as a whole was even lower, with only 27% reporting a feeling of trust.
• Younger priests were more likely to report feeling lonely, and to say that they were “expected to do many things that go beyond my calling as a priest.”
• An overwhelming majority (79%) expected substantial improvement in the relationship between the Catholic Church in the US and the Vatican, with only 3% thinking that relationship would deteriorate.

Well again. Fairly old news, but nice to hear nonetheless.

The last of writer’s introduction to his coming book . . .

We left off with this about the book as work in progress:

Part 5 of his coming book. . .

. . . traces the aftermath from Paul VI through the present pontificate, asking how the conciliar vocabulary ripened into the theology and pastoral practice of our own time.

It’s been at work, he says, in Council documents and encyclicals and explanations inspired by them, and official catechisms and codes that attempted to “domesticate” their language.

Getting us used to them, the better to have us take them for granted.

The book’s goal [will be] not to build a psychological portrait of “the spirit of the Council,” but to show, line by line, how certain sentences and choices of vocabulary made the present collapse possible and, in many cases, almost inevitable.

One long fait accompli.

He sees a grim picture, of “disoriented faithful — empty seminaries, closed parishes, profaned liturgies, catechisms that no longer catechize — the lived outcome of decisions made in aula and ratified in ink. In theology, words are deeds.”

Oh?

An adjective can shift the burden of a sentence. An adverb can hollow out a command. A cautious footnote can sabotage a dogmatic paragraph.

Catholics who kneel in half deserted churches, or who have had to seek refuge in marginal chapels and improvised altars, are living in the echo of those [phrases].

We don’t have to assume that “the true Church has perished or Christ has abandoned His promises.”

We do have to “face the possibility that . . . the official continuation of that Church has . . . become a counter witness to her own past, a counter church that survives by parasitism on the language and structures it inherited.”

Confusion.

And “recent claimants to the papal throne”? They either “lack authority” or “have abused it to the point of moral unusability.”

Yes, Virginia, there is such a word. Point being, morality be damned, full speed ahead to a new world out there, my friends, where the livin’ is easy . . .

“We must look honestly at what they have done with the Council they celebrate as their charter.”

Namely?

Calling a council in the first place “in an age that no longer believed in councils or in truth itself.”

The age itself being nothing to match up with., or accommodate. Lost cause, Newman would have said.

Look to the last years of Pius XII leading up to the John XXIII election, and “the strange confidence with which the Church opened her windows to a storm she could not control.”

“Only by returning to that moment,” says our man, “can we see the scale of what followed.”

Nothing beats hindsight, of course. It’s why people write books.

In his book our man raises the curtain “on the last years of a world that still believed the Church could not change because God did not change.

“Pius XII reigned over a hierarchy that seemed unshakable.” he says. But “the soil beneath it was already loosening.”

As a Jesuit trainee in the mid-’50s in a three-year stint as a philosophy student, there were distinctions between new and old thinkers.

Our man about these days:

Theologians who once whispered their theories in seminaries had begun to speak them aloud. Bishops who had sworn to defend tradition learned to speak of adaptation.

Surrender was in the air.

John XXIII called for a council which was greeted by most “as a curiosity.”

Nothing to get excited about, a “tidying” of things Catholic, “not a revolution,” begun quietly, ‘in offices and corridors.”

It’s what this book is about.

— That’s all for now. Next comes the book . . .

Take First Timothy 6, 6.2c-12 for a start, Paul at his best getting down to brass tacks about day-to-day issues.

On this day, 9/19/25, Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time, we have advice from him understandable by all and rich with sermonic possibilities.

“Beloved,” he says, “Teach and urge these things.”

He who “teaches something different” from what our Lord Jesus Christ taught “is conceited, understands nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.”

Paul minces no words.

He calls them conceited know-it-alls with a yen for arguing, says from them come “envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,” who cause “friction among people” whose minds have been “corrupted.”

Heretics there were even then, “deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain,” a this-world kind of thing.

He allows that with “contentment,” religion provides “a great gain,” in the realizing that we “brought nothing into the world . . . just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.”

You can’t take it with you, as the movie title had it ages ago.

With true religion, he says, “If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.”

On the other hand, “Those who want to be rich . . . are falling into temptation.”

The greedy find themselves dealing with “harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.”

“For the love of money,” he says, in what became a go-ahead line, “is the root of all evils,” leading some to stray from the faith and suffer “many pains.”

The perils of greed.

“But you, man of God,” he tells Timothy, are to “avoid all this,” instead pursuing “righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.

“Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made your commitment in the presence of many witnesses.”

And the day’s gospel, Luke 8:1-3, I must say, added little to all this . . .

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another,
preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.

Contrast that with the Old Mass gospel:

 GOSPEL Matt. 24:3-13
At that time, as Jesus was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: “Tell us when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the consummation of the world?” And Jesus answering, said to them: “Take heed that no man seduce you. For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ. And they will seduce many. And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass: but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places. Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”

So be it in the ongoing parade of differences between our two Masses . . .

Brother Joe Hoover, S.J., America Magazine poetry editor, has been doing more than showing up at mass.

“O priests, who improv prayers at Mass!” he writes. “Who give opening monologues to start the show!

“Who deliver closing arguments before the dismissal!

“Who make meaningful statements in between the ‘Lord have mercy’s’! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.”)

Or “deliver closing arguments before the dismissal! . . . make meaningful statements in between the ‘Lord have mercy’s’! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.)”

You know who are. . .

You “feel the need to make Mass personal or interesting or more spiritual than it appears on the surface to be . . . suddenly put the sign of peace at a different part of the Mass or change up in some fashion the standing and kneeling and sitting.”

You “do not want to appear . . . cold, officious church functionaries just rattling off words handed to them by a hyper-literal worship committee in some cold cellar of the Vatican.”

Are you listening?

O priests, trust yourselves! Trust that you are interesting and personal and spiritual as you are. [But what if you’re not?]

Trust that the energy you exude, your presence, your physicality, your posture, your voice is spiritual enough. [You’ve got it, show it.]

Trust that, and just say the words! Do the gestures! They are enough! It is like the old actor’s maxim: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

It’s you he’s talking to.

Joe accuses, but he also advises:

Even if parts of the liturgical script have been changed (some of it quite tragically—when you lose good poetry you lose good theology), even if it is not as lovely anymore, even then: Adding more words will not make Mass “better.”

No sir!

What you do is this:

“. . . cleanly speak the words as they are . . . let them flow through you, [and] the people in the pews may hear the Mass as they have never heard it before. “

Can you do that?

Yes you can!

“The Mass will . . . become interesting and personal and new. You do not need to do more. It’s not about you,” Brother Joe says.

Well maybe Joe would like to adjust that last sentence, in that the whole business seems to be about these priests . . .

Forget that. He means the congregation. As for himself, he can say all this because he’s a brother, not a priest, no “student of . . . the negotiables and non-negotiables of Mass-saying.” He has “no canonical agenda.”

He better not, of course, even if he were a priest — or a bishop for that matter. Trouble could become his middle name.

No, he’s “an actor, a playwright and someone who sits in the pews watching priests who feel that to follow the script is to essentially slice their brains out of their body and hand it over to Holy Mother Church.”

Can’t stand it, have to improvise, apparently.

Whatever. Joe is not all that opposed to improvising. Depends how it’s done.

Seeing the priest as an actor, he urges him “not simply to speak the text,” but also to give his audience “an experience,” as one “on stage” portraying his “spontaneous reactions,” keeping in mind that the point of it all is to help people “to pray.”

In pursuit of which he can do the opposite of what Joe’s been saying, “make comments during Mass.”

“Something falls and you acknowledge it; an altar server yawns dramatically, a baby cries with some kind of perfect timing, respond! Be human!” Joe urges.

Yes and no, Joe. He’s more than a functionary but he’s also more than — what? — an entertainer. And he owes it to pew-sitters to reflect his divine office, referring here not to the once-required daily prayers of the priest but to his unique role in re-enacting Calvary.

Joe has something else in mind. It’s the performance that counts.

He knows a priest who “during a chapel Mass, after holding his hands over the bread and wine and reciting ‘Make holy these gifts,’ then gestured to [his] small congregation,” adding “and these gifts.” Joe found it a “stunning” moment.

This man “could bring it off,” he says.

“Liturgy is not a science,” he explains. “If prayer were to become math, God help us all.”

“So yes,” he says, “if in some inspired moment at Mass you let go with something beautiful or funny or timely—unforced, not cloying, not ingratiating—fine. Pay attention. Live within the context. Don’t be rote and unaware.”

Let the spirit (of the moment) move you, but do it tastefully. And with your audience in mind.

I’ve been there for that sort of thing gone wild, and been appalled, amazed at the sacrilege involved, flip commentary and the like. And feel certain that’s not what Joe has in mind.