The Way We Really Were

Thanks to Mr James Card for sharing with us this item from the Boston Globe, printed on Good Friday, April 1, in the year 1904, a brief account of the Tenebrae service held the previous evening at the cathedral of the Holy Cross, with Archbishop John Williams in attendance.

No reasonable or well-informed person would claim that everything about the Church’s liturgical practice before the most recent ecumenical council was perfect, or everything it should be. But the liturgical reform enacted in the wake of that council, and in betrayal of it, is not infrequently defended on the grounds that fruitful participation by the laity in the traditional liturgy is per se impossible, and that a radical, top-to-bottom reform of every part of it was the only way to bring about such participation. It is helpful to remind ourselves from time to time that this is a falsehood, and always was.