My understanding is that the changes were not enthusiastically welcomed by the laity in and after 1965, in England, but most merely grumbled a bit. Many priests were very enthusiastic and there was a period of liturgical experimentation in many parishes going well beyond anything you'd be likely to see at an average parish mass in England now, this wasn't just about tedious guitar music. Cardinal Heenan certainly thought his own flock were reluctant and was very concerned that it would have a devastating effect on the faith - he said as much in a speech after a presentation by the concilium of what was intended, and a homily he gave in Westminster Cathedral is very much on the lines of "yes I know this is all very unsettling and lots of things you love have gone, but there are Good Reasons". In letters to Evelyn Waugh he was rather less guarded (the correspondence with some other bits and pieces relating to Waugh and Heenan's views on the subject is collected in "A Bitter Trial" by Dom, Alcuin Reid OSB.). I don't think Patrick is referring to Heenan as one of the "Cardinals who have gone on record as saying the whole thing is heretical, more or less" - that looks to me like a slightly over the top reference to the views of Cardinals Ottaviani and possibly Siri (Ottaviani did I think say something of the sort about an earlier draft that went into the bin).
It's all made rather more complicated by the fact that as we've discussed before English Catholics were and to an extent remain several quite-distinct camps separated by, among other things, class and also by some other things - there have been wars within English Catholicism since the day the Jesuits decided that the remnants of the Marian secular clergy weren't up to the job and took over the English Mission, and they only got nastier when O'Connell managed to get emancipation through. Recusant English aristos and middle class Anglican converts do not typically see themselves as one with the Irish and the same is true with interest the other way. Heenan was motivated by a - arguably slightly patronising - concern for the faith of his working class Irish flock. The middle-class converts (there had been several waves since Newman) of whom Waugh was one and Forest another (and then there's Greene, Knox, Tolkien's mother, the list goes on) lived in an entirely different world and tended (being converts) to have decided and thought out views on theology and liturgy, also they often came from a nose-bleedingly High Anglican background, the recusant aristocracy were slightly different from them, though closer, and then there are the bits of the country where you did get reasonable numbers of rural non-aristocractic recusants (Durham, Lancs, bits of the east midlands). It is quite difficult to generalise. And the pre-conciliar experience of all those groups would have differed markedly. (one last bit to come)
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timeasmymeasure
RE: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?
Date: 2015-02-14 01:01 pm (UTC)My understanding is that the changes were not enthusiastically welcomed by the laity in and after 1965, in England, but most merely grumbled a bit. Many priests were very enthusiastic and there was a period of liturgical experimentation in many parishes going well beyond anything you'd be likely to see at an average parish mass in England now, this wasn't just about tedious guitar music. Cardinal Heenan certainly thought his own flock were reluctant and was very concerned that it would have a devastating effect on the faith - he said as much in a speech after a presentation by the concilium of what was intended, and a homily he gave in Westminster Cathedral is very much on the lines of "yes I know this is all very unsettling and lots of things you love have gone, but there are Good Reasons". In letters to Evelyn Waugh he was rather less guarded (the correspondence with some other bits and pieces relating to Waugh and Heenan's views on the subject is collected in "A Bitter Trial" by Dom, Alcuin Reid OSB.). I don't think Patrick is referring to Heenan as one of the "Cardinals who have gone on record as saying the whole thing is heretical, more or less" - that looks to me like a slightly over the top reference to the views of Cardinals Ottaviani and possibly Siri (Ottaviani did I think say something of the sort about an earlier draft that went into the bin).
It's all made rather more complicated by the fact that as we've discussed before English Catholics were and to an extent remain several quite-distinct camps separated by, among other things, class and also by some other things - there have been wars within English Catholicism since the day the Jesuits decided that the remnants of the Marian secular clergy weren't up to the job and took over the English Mission, and they only got nastier when O'Connell managed to get emancipation through. Recusant English aristos and middle class Anglican converts do not typically see themselves as one with the Irish and the same is true with interest the other way. Heenan was motivated by a - arguably slightly patronising - concern for the faith of his working class Irish flock. The middle-class converts (there had been several waves since Newman) of whom Waugh was one and Forest another (and then there's Greene, Knox, Tolkien's mother, the list goes on) lived in an entirely different world and tended (being converts) to have decided and thought out views on theology and liturgy, also they often came from a nose-bleedingly High Anglican background, the recusant aristocracy were slightly different from them, though closer, and then there are the bits of the country where you did get reasonable numbers of rural non-aristocractic recusants (Durham, Lancs, bits of the east midlands). It is quite difficult to generalise. And the pre-conciliar experience of all those groups would have differed markedly. (one last bit to come)