The “liturgical movement” of the twentieth century appears as a deviation rather than a development of that promoted in the previous century by the abbot of Solesmes, Dom Prosper Guéranger.25 The latter had understood the renewal of monastic life to be a return to the traditional Roman liturgy, after the devastation wrought by Protestantism and, within the Catholic Church, by Gallicanism and Jansenism. The “liturgical movement”,26 which started in Belgium27 and whose principal centre of reference was the German abbey of Maria Laach,28 was understood rather as an “irruption of laity in the active participation of the life of the Church”.29
The reformers tended to eliminate the basic difference between the sacramental priesthood of the presbyters and the common priesthood of the laity, suggesting an egalitarian and democratic view of the Church. They introduced the idea of a “concelebration” of the priest with the people,30 they upheld there should be active “participation” in the Mass by conversing with the priest, to the exclusion of every other form of legitimate attendance at the Sacrifice, such as meditation, the Rosary or other private prayers. They advocated the reduction of the altar to a table; they considered communion “extra Missam”, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, perpetual adoration, as extra-liturgical forms of piety. They showed little consideration for devotions to the Sacred Heart, to Our Lady, to the saints and, more generally speaking, for Ignatian spirituality and for the moral of St Alphonsus de Liguori. To put it briefly, this was a “reinterpretation” of the doctrine and structure of the Church in order to adapt it to the modern spirit.
Father José Ariovaldo da Silva, who wrote a documented history of the liturgical movement in Brazil, fixed the date of its official birth as 1933.31 In that year a Benedictine monk, Dom Martin Michler, who had come from Germany32 with the task of holding a course in Liturgy at the Instituto Católico de Estudos Superiores, stirred up the enthusiasm of some of his Brazilian students with his lessons.33 A Centro de Liturgia (Liturgy Centre) was formed within the Ação Universitária Católica (AUC). The works of this Centre were inaugurated with a retreat that the Benedictine priest held for sixteen young people, on a farm in the State of Rio. It was here on 11 July 1933 that the first dialogued and versus populum Mass was celebrated in Brazil.34 After that, Dom Michler began to dialogue the Mass weekly for the university students in the monastery of São Bento in Rio. “The Liturgical Movement in Brazil had begun.”35
Notes:
25. On Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805-75) restorer of monastic life in France Dom Paul Delatte O.S.B., Dom Guéranger, Abbé de Solesmes, 2nd edn., 2 vols., Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1909. And recently Cuthbert Johnson O.S.B., Prosper Guéranger (1805-75): a liturgical theologian, Rome, Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1984. Cf. also F. Furquim de Almeida, D. “Guéranger, um douto na Lei Divina”, Catolicismo, no. 66, June 1956 and the entries B. Heurtebize, in DTC, vol. VI (1920), coll. 1894-8 and Jacques Hourlier, in DSp, vol. VI (1967), coll. 1097-106.
26. On the “liturgical movement”, Olivier Rousseau, Histoire du mouvement liturgique, Paris, Ed. du Cerf, 1944; Didier Bonneterre, Le Mouvement liturgique, Escurolles, Editions Fideliter, 1980; B. Neunheuser, Movimento liturgico, in Nuovo Dizionario di liturgia, edited by D. Sartore – A.M. Triacca, Rome, Edizioni Paoline, 1984; Various authors, Liturgia: temi e autori. Saggi di studio sul movimento liturgico, edited by Franco Brovelli, Rome, Edizioni Liturgiche, 1990. Volumes such as Das christliche Kultmysterium (1932) by Dom Odo Casel; Vom Geist der Liturgie (1918), Liturgische Bildung (1923), Die Sinne und die religiöse Erkenntis (1950) by Romano Guardini; Liturgie und Personlichkeit (1933) by Dietrich von Hildebrand constituted the cornerstones of the movement.
27. At the congress of Catholic associations inaugurated in Malines in 1909 by Cardinale Mercier, Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960), a Benedictine from Mont César, had been the first to uphold a new horizonalist and “community” view of the liturgy (B. Fischer, “Das ‘Mechelner Ereignis’ vom 23. 9. 1909”, Liturgisches Jahrbuch, 9 (1959), pp. 203-19). He was also one of the first pioneers of the “ecumenical movement”.
28. In the abbey of Maria Laach, the abbot J. Herwegen and his monks K. Mohlberg and O. Casel were gathered with the young Italian-German priest R. Guardini and Professors J. Dölger and Baumstark. They encouraged, in 1918, the beginning of the three series: ‘Ecclesia Orans’, ‘Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen’, ‘Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen’.
29. Erwin Iserloh, Il Movimento liturgico in HKG, (Milan, 1980), It. tr. vol. X/1, 237.
30. This principle, condemned in the Council of Trent (session 23, chap. 4, in Denz.-H, no. 1767) was again proscribed by Pius XII (Encyclical Mediator Dei, in AAS, vol. 39, p. 556).
31. José Ariovaldo da Silva F.M., O Movimento litúrgico no Brasil, Editora Vozes, Petrópolis 1983. Cf. also Bishop Clemente Isnard O.S.B., Reminiscências para a História do Movimento Litúrgico no Brasil, appendix in B. Botte O.S.B., O Movimento Litúrgico. Testemunho e recordações, (São Paulo, Edições Paulinas, 1978), pp. 208-09.
32. Dom Martin Michler (1901-69), was a Benedictine in Neusheim, in Maria Laach and in Anselmo in Rome, being influenced, after Romano Guardini, by Dom Beauduin and Odo Casel. Cf. C. Isnard O.S.B., “O papel de Dom Martinho Michler no Movimento Católico Brasileiro”, A Ordem, no. 36, December 1946, pp. 535-45.
33. Alceu Amoroso Lima, who confirmed that he owed much to the influence of Michler (A. Amoroso Lima, Memórias improvisadas, (Petropólis, Ed. Vozes, 1973), p. 205), saw him as “a great light for all” (ID., “Hitler e Guardini”, A Ordem, no. 36, December 1946, p. 550). Another Brazilian Catholic intellectual, Gustavo Corção, was also influenced by him. In his autobiographical work A Discoberta do Outro (1944), according to Father da Silva “he shows that he is clearly influenced by the ideas of Dom Martinho A. Michler”. J. Ariovaldo da Silva O.F.M., O Movimento litúrgico no Brasil, p. 48; Cf. also A. C. Villaça, O pensamento católico no Brasil, pp. 144-5.
34. J. A. da Silva O.F.M., O Movimento litúrgico no Brasil, pp. 41-2; C. Isnard O.S.B., O papel, pp. 535-9, who recalls: “in the main room he prepared an altar for the celebration of the Mass. But, to our great surprise, in stead of placing the table against the wall, he placed in the middle of the room and arranged the chairs in a semicircle around it explaining he would celebrate Mass facing us. It was the first Mass celebrated facing the people in Brazil!” (Reminiscências, p. 218). “Dom Martinho did this with the greatest naturality in spite of the fact that he was actually bringing about a revolution in our midst. He broke a taboo and obliged us to follow him in the subsequent steps he wanted us to take” (ibid).
35. J. A. da Silva, O.F.M., O Movimento litúrgico no Brasil, p. 43.