This past Sunday, St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT held its annual Corpus Christi Mass and procession.

Today Regina Pacis Academy, the Catholic classical preK through 8 school in Norwalk, Connecticut celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi with a Solemn Mass, Procession and triple Benediction at the church of St. Mary.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend services several times at the Church of Saint-Eugène, Paris. This is a diocesan parish. Here the Traditional Mass is celebrated and a splendid musical culture is cultivated led by several noteworthy musicians. The Traditional Sunday Mass (the main Mass of the day) was thronged by an overflowing congregation of all ages – a rarity in France! The music, although in a style somewhat unfamilar to me, was of course most impressive. The Novus Ordo is also celebrated but in a manner extremely traditional. Even the parish bulletin grappled fearlessly with major issues of the day.

It was here that the late Nicholas Krasno – a long-standing member of this Society – sang in the schola. Indeed, it was the opportunity, after Summorum Pontificum, to attend and sing in such a church that inspired him to join the Roman Catholic Church. For it was after Summorum Pontificum that a Catholic could, at least in some places, regularly experience the fullness of the traditional liturgy in ceremony and music.

And perhaps for Nicholas Krasno there were additional factors that explained his attachment to this church. For does not Saint-Eugène in several respects resemble Krasno’s former beloved Anglican parish of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City? Both are 19th century recreations of the style of the high French Gothic. Both used innovative construction methods, the earlier Saint-Eugène was built around an iron framework, while Saint Mary the Virgin was the first steel-framed church.

(St. Mary the Virgin) is in fact the earliest ecclesiastical use of constructional steel – a technique that had been first tried for office buildings in Chicago only 4 years previous. 1)

Both churches feature beautiful windows and decoration. In both the musical culture was fostered:

The musical program of St. Mary’s expressed an unabashed preference for works of the great musicians of the Roman Church: favorite composers included Beethoven,Haydn and Weber, and most of the French romantic school – Gounod, Franck. Faure and Guilmant. 2)

And both were despised by modernist taste – only to experience a reassessment in more recent years.

1. Krasno, Nicholas, A Guide to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City at 17( 2nd edition revised, New York, 1999). The architects, Napoleon and Pierre Le Brun, were Roman Catholic. For Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile#History.

2. Krasno, op. cit. at 63- 65. Of course, in the Roman Catholic Church these works later fell victim (in the US) to the strictures of Pius X.

Yesterday evening, Traditional Mass of the Lord’s Supper was offered at St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT.

A beautiful Tenebrae was sung at St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT yesterday evening.

We received word that David Hughes will be moving out of Connecticut to the Denver area soon.

SOURCE

It is a tragic loss for the Catholic Church in this region. David Hughes was instrumental in creating a culture of musical excellence, especially for the celebration of the Traditional Mass, in Fairfield County and surrounding areas. He was an early, passionate advocate of the Traditional Latin Mass and of the music written for it. For many years he directed the music of St. Mary’s Norwalk, where he led a professional schola, the parish choir, a men’s schola, children’s choirs–I think at one time there were 5 or 6 groups simultaneously under his direction. He travelled around to other churches, helping to establish in the Catholic Church a new level of outstanding musical performance. He provided the music at many masses and events this society sponsored (you can find the exhaustive photographic record posted on this site). David also has had national and international success – for example, he led a large schola of children to sing at World Youth Day. More recently, he formed and directed the Viri Galilei, a group of men who sing chant all over the region.  

Since 2019 our contacts with David have diminished. A whole new set of great musicians has appeared at local Catholic churches. Yet David was the first – and he demonstrated the greatest flexibility of all in leading every kind of musical group. We will miss him here – but we wish him luck and hope to welcome him back often!

Friday was a very special evening at the Princeton University Chapel: First Vespers of St. Chad of Mercia, bishop, according to the use of the Church of Salisbury (the “Sarum Use”). The Use of Sarum was the main form of the Roman liturgy in Pre-Reformation England. It was celebrated now and then by Catholics as late as the 19th century, but was regrettably entirely superseded by the “Tridentine” liturgy. Perhaps that was because the Use of Sarum obviously makes considerable demands upon a church’s staff resources and available time….. First Vespers refers to the fact that St. Chad (whose feast is on the following day, March 2) was commemorated. 1)

Music and ceremonial were of outstanding quality. A congregation of around 1,000 was in attendance. The demeanor of all was reverent. An introduction preceding the Vespers and the informative program emphasized the spiritual nature of what was happening. In no way was this liturgy presented as a secular concert.

I must admire the creativity (in an appropriate sense) of the organizers. If the basic elements of ritual and music were supplied by authentic texts of the period, features of other traditions were freely drawn upon to complete the liturgy. So, German and English organ music of the 20th Century preceded and followed Vespers. A Byzantine icon was displayed. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament ( a ritual not a part of the Use of Sarum) concluded the evening. It was a rare instance of how the various strands of Tradition can mutually complement each other without falling into arbitrary eclecticism.

Achieving all this was a truly a remarkable effort. 2) It illustrates that if such an effort is made, while preserving the spiritual basis of art, music and ceremonial, people will come. We were proud that the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny could be counted as one of the sponsors.

1. March 1 itself is the feast of St. David. An old English weather rhyme commemorates the saints of first three days of March:  First comes David, then comes Chad, Then comes Winnol, roaring like mad.
2. More information can be found at Catholic Sacred Music Project.

Today at noon, hundreds of Catholics came together to pray the Rosary in reparation for the sacrilegious funeral that took place last week in the cathedral. Fifth Avenue was bustling with tourists, shoppers and residents, some of whom joined the rally or stopped to take pictures. From our perspective, the event proceeded peacefully, with no sign of counter protesters.

There are also Rosary rallies scheduled for noon tomorrow and Monday.

Sacred Heart Cultural Center in Augusta, Georgia, was the Jesuit church of the Sacred Heart, built between 1898 and !900. It formerly was a center of Catholic faith, life and education in what was once a not-very-Catholic part of the United States. The church was closed and abandoned in 1971. For years the buildings lay vacant and were repeatedly vandalized. In 1987 the buildings were purchased and reopened as the Sacred Heart Cultural Center. Over the years, great efforts have been made to restore the bulding and windows. It now functions as a cultural center and as an “event venue,” especially for weddings.

(Above and Below) Sacred Heart. The very elaborate exterior brickwork reminds me of a somewhat earlier (1880’s) church in New York City, Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Hell’s Kitchen.

The church – now the “Great Hall” – is grandly dimensioned. It has been nicely restored and painted , except for the communion rail, visible in old photographs – but that may have already disappeared before 1971.

The pulpit with its sounding board or tester. The original pulpit in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, had a similar feature.

The Center is particularly proud of the stained glass windows, most of which were creations of the firm of Mayer, Munich. The windows were installed at the time of the building of the church or shortly thereafter. Mayer provided windows to inumerable Catholic churches in the United States especially from the 1890’s to World War I. Indeed, Mosy Holy Trinity, the (still functioning) Catholic parish in downtown Augusta, also has a set of Mayer windows which it is currently restoring. The design of the windows of Sacred Heart closely resembles that of certain windows that can be found in, for example, Holy Innocents parish (installed twenty-five years or more after completion of the church), or Holy Name of Jesus parish (both New York City). The artists of the Mayer windows, however, while often relying on a common repertoire of designs or patterns, seem to have taken care to vary the details for each commission.

When the Jesuits left Sacred Heart in 1971 all this was left behind – good riddance, they undoubtedly thought. Nowadays, as church after church is closed in New York City and elsewhere, the windows, altars, stations of the cross, etc. are usually salvaged for disposition to other churches seeking to upgrade their modernistic buildings. The parish of St. Theresa, not too far from Augusta, is a very good example of this recycling.

In the former baptistery a small museum of Catholicism has been set up. It explains to visitors what once was done within these walls. Similar Catholic museums exist in Victoria, British Columbia and in Zurich. The materials published by the Sacred Heart Center that I have seen do treat the practices of those who used to worship here with respect.

(Above) This is a sanctuary lamp. (Below) The final sign for Sacred Heart Church. Note it is “post-conciliar” ( A Vigil Mass on Saturday is scheduled).

We applaud the Sacred Heart Center for the care and respect they have shown to this church, abandoned by its original spiritual leaders and congregation. It’s impressive to encounter this degree of appreciation for these old Catholic churches, which are still scorned by the clergy, at least in the Northeast. Yet we weep to see the art of the Catholic faith turned from its purpose and treated as a relic of some distant past. In this respect, the secular management of this Center is completely aligned with, for example, the New York Archdiocese, which has often described its architectural heritage as “museums.” Finally, we firmly hope that a recovering Traditionalism, made stronger through persecution, will continue as part of its mission the revitalizaion of the splended Catholic churches of the past. For after all, as Proust wrote of the French cathedrals, these grand old buildings were created for one purpose: the celebration of the Traditional Mass.