Founders in England and Wales.

The extraordinary but frequently overlooked Catholic figure of Fr. Daniel Rock (1799-1872) first popularized the study of liturgy in England by Catholics with his book, Hierurgia 1833 and his four volume Church of Our Fathers, published in 1849-1853.

The foundational and pioneering work of the many in the last one hundred and fifty years who founded a classical liturgical movement in Britain is a fascinating study.

The fundamental principles of the liturgical movement prior to Vatican II show that the founders and leaders of the movement (Baumstark, Botte, Casel, Congar, Danielou, K. Gamber, I. Herwegen, J. Jungmann, and Louis Bouyer) did not set out to dismantle the Latin liturgical tradition.

Roman Catholic Founders

Dom Laurence Shepherd (1825-1885) Ampleforth and Stanbrook
Dom Cuthbert Hedley (1838-1915) bishop of Newport (1895-1915)
Edmund Bishop (1846-1917) another link
Dom Hugh Connolly (1873-1948) at Downside Abbey

Pope Saint Pius X and Inter Sollicitudines (1903)
Fr Herbert Thurston SJ. Lent and Holy Week, Longmans 1904

Founders in the Churches of England and Wales, Methodists

Gabriel Hebert SSM
Dom Gregory Dix’s (1901-1952) Nashdom Abbey

 

THE RESEARCH CURRENT

Begun perhaps in England by Edmund bishop, continuing at St Michael’s

Abbey, Farnborough and continuing at the Institutum Liturgicum at
Sant’Anselmo, Rome,

 

Farnborough Abbey

Dom Lambert Beauduin OSB, (1873-1960) came to England in 1915
to preach a retreat at Farnborough Abbey Beauduin’s retreat notes
of 1915 show his appreciation of Edmund Bishop

The French monks at Farnborough made a lasting contribution to Liturgical studies. We can mention:
Abbot Fernand Cabrol (1855-1937) and many others

 

The Second World War

During the war Fr Pierre-Marie Gy, OP lived in England. With other
French liturgists, Jounel, Boulet, Dom Capelle and A-G. Martimort,
all came into contact with and appreciated Bishop’s work.
We can see evidence of this in the bibliography of the first edition
of Aimé-Georges Martimort’s Église en Prière, 1961 (p. 880).
Aimé-Georges Martimort, The Church at Prayer: An Introduction to the
Liturgy, new ed., 4 vols., trans. M. J. O’Connell (Collegeville, MN
1986-88), older German trans., 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1963).

Theodor Klauser SJ, A Short History of the Western Liturgy, trans. John Halliburton (London, 1969).

Servant of God Pius XII and Mediator Dei (1947)

All these great continental figures had links with Bishop and in turn they influenced the formation of the text of Vatican II’s document Sacrosanctum Concilium on the liturgy.

Lancelot C. Sheppard Esq ( -1970?)
Pope Paul VI and Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963).
Fr Edward Yarnold SJ (1926-2002) Campion Hall, Oxford
Fr Kevin Donovan SJ (1931-2008) Heythrop College, London.

Donald Withey, ed. Christian Initiation, Gorgias, Piscataway, NJ 2010

Abbot Cuthbert Johnson, OSB (1946 -)
Cuthbert Peter Johnson O.S.B.,  Bibliography 1975-present:
http://abbotcuthbertjohnson.blogspot.com/

 

THE PASTORAL CURRENT

Rev E.C. Messenger, The Sunday Collects Simply Explained,
London, Sands 1946.

Dom Bernard McElligott (1890-1971) founded the Society of St
Gregory on 12th March at St Benedict’s Priory, Ealing.

Fr Clifford Howell SJ  (1902-1981)

Mgr James Crichton’s (1907-2001) pastoral writing spread the message of the movement. The Crichton page also includes comments by Aidan Nichols.

Father (later Canon) Harold Winstone established the St Thomas More Centre for Pastoral Liturgy in Manor House in 1969.

 

The women who in more recent days worked more quietly  behind the scenes, almost invisibly, include Dame Maria Boulding of Stanbrook Abbey, who translated many of the prayers for the Liturgy of the Hours and the Missal, and Sr Maximilliane OSC (Poor Clares, Lynton) and Sr Mary Pia Taylor OCD who organised and ran the “Liturgy by Correspondence” course for enclosed religious for many years.

Dame Maria Boulding (1929-2009) obituary in The Tablet, November 28, 2009.

Dame Ann Field, Stanbrook Abbey, Wass.

Fr Michael Mulvihill CSSp studied at Sant’Anselmo and taught liturgy at the Missionary Institute London and the Benedictine Study and Arts Centre, Ealing, for many years. He wrote the material for the course “Liturgy by Correspondence” for enclosed religious. He is also known for having renamed the ‘enlightenment’ as the ‘endarkenment’.

USA

The movement in the Catholic Church in England and Wales has indeed paralleled what liturgists on continental Europe and what Michael Marx OSB and Virgil Michel OSB (photo left) inspired in the USA at Collegeville, and in the years between 1920 and 1950.

 

© James Leachman, O.S.B.,  26 October 2011