...via the Chanell Tunnel (Eurostar) in great style. One images it will feel very dramatic going under the sea, but of course it isn't at all - it's barely noticeable - the train whizzes fast through countryside and tunnels and then one is aware of being in a longish tunnel, then countryside again...
Brussels - kind friends had arranged for me to meet a colleague who introduce me to the city's charming old centre, and a lunch of moules-and-frites. Much talk of the state of things in Belgium generally, in the Church especially...a visit to the beautiful Cathedral, which is dedicated to St Michael and St Gudule (local saint - must find out more about her). As with most churches in Belgium, there is nowhere to kneel down. Pews and kneelers have been replaced with neat bleak rows of chairs so the place feels like a theatre or meeting-hall. Ghastly. So people sit smugly throughout Mass, as if it is a performance and they are mere spectators rather than participants... Even when you simply drop into the cathedral to light a candle and pray - and lots of people do the former and, one assumes and hopes, the latter - you can't kneel, except rather awkwardly on the floor, which I did.
Overnight stay at the welcoming home of M. - more talk and a delicious supper. The next day, a visit to Ghent. Again, a glorious cathedral, again a sense of its being a place where people watch but do not pray. At the - friendly and helpful - visitors' desk, I asked about the Blessed Sacrament. He didn't seem to understand at first - then light dawned "Oh yes, it's in the crypt". Which also houses a display - a rather interesting one - of some of the cathedral's fine vestments and other treasures. Which in turn means that the crypt feels more like a musueum, where people talk and walk about, rather than a church. I felt Our Lord was a bit sidelined and got few if any visitors, felt a bit mean when I had to leave...
In the evening, something very different - a cheering Mass, organised by Opus Dei for the feast of St Josemaria, at the glorious St Jacobus church in Antwerp. The painter Rubens worshipped here, and his works are all around the church. I don't know when I have been at Mass anywhere more splendid. But it wasn't this which made the evening memorable. The congregation gathered for this Mass included many young people, and it was heartening to sing out a glorious Credo and Pater Noster in such surroundings. I got the impression that people were hugely glad to be there - that such a Mass was unusual in its style and its joy. Afterwards many warm introductions at a reception in a nearby college.
It was an interesting example of what is alive, and what isn't, in the Church in today's Europe.
9 comments:
It is my understanding that old churches did not have benches but chairs. There were ladies, chaisières, who made a living renting chairs for the services.
When I was in Liege, in 1980, the chairs in the cathedral were already in place. They were straw chairs with a kneeler on the back. To kneel, you just turned the chair around, it was quite light, in front of you and knelt on the kneeler. This was my first - and only experience - as I am Canadian and our churches have benches with kneelers.
Elise B.
I know about those sorts of chair/kneelers. Standard until fairly recently in Europpe. But that's NOT what they now have in Belgium. They have fixed rows of chairs like a cinema. You cannot - I mean, phsyically cannot - kneel. You have to leave your seat, make others stand as you squeeze past to the asile, and kneel there.
People don't kneel, don't even lean forward to pray. They si, chat a bit until the priest comes , and then watch what's going on.
It's bleak, and unless it changes, makes for a bleak, bleak future for the Church in Flanders.
Medieval churches, like modern Orthodox ones, were mainly standing, with just a few benches round the walls for the infirm.
However it is a big mistake to take out kneelers. I remember going to a Joseph Priestley memorial in a Unitarian church where he was minister. There were no kneelers. However some local dignitaries were invited. AS they entered the church, the minister said "could you please stand". They took their places and he said "please be seated".
So we couldn't show honour to God, but we could to a bunch of politicans and administrators.
..and then there is the case of Brentwood Cathedral, built (or substantially expanded and remodelled) in 1991...and which, as contemporary ecclesiastical architecture goes, is elegant, at least.
The chairs do have kneelers.
But (a) the rows of chairs are (seemingly deliberatedly) placed too close together, essentially meaning that (at a busy mass) it would more or less impossible for all but the smallest person to use them
and (b) - which really makes me want to tear my hair out: THEY DO NOT KNEEL DOWN AT MASS. At any point.
(I have been led to believe that this pitiable state of affairs is also known, or even commanded in some dioceses in the USA. As it isn't more general practice in Brentwood Diocese, I'm really not sure why it prevails, or is allowed to prevail, at the Cathedral)
I thought it was a requirement that when the tabernacle wasn't behind the altar it had to still be visibleto anyone in the church and in a noble place .
I was recently in Leuven for a couple of days and stumbled into the chapel of the American College just as Mass was beginning. Some chairs had kneelers under them, others not - but everyone knelt down. The Mass was celebrated with simplicity and dignity - the singing was unaccompanied [the first day] and beautiful and I felt privileged to have been there. I do not think it was representative of Belgian churches as a whole, but I could recommend it as a haven for anyone in the area. [I think it is only open in term times though.]
The decline of the Belgian Church is a tragedy and probably irreversible. The reason is due to the close proximity of the Netherlands. The radical and heterodox interpretation of the Second Vatican Council there spread like a contagion in surrounding countries, but especially in Belgium, and the result was spiritual death. In Brussels the only church with real spiritual life is Our Lady's which is used by the Poles and is vibrant.
And yet..., the (Flemish) Catholic weekly magazine Kerk en Leven ("Church and Life"/"Church and Society"), has a circulation of over 500,000; more than any other (daily) newspaper/magazine in Flanders.
There is much that is positively evil in the liberal, secular takeover of the Low Countries and Scandinavia - much of it an elite conspiracy not reflecting the true feelings of people of decency who are just too nice to complain - but which has an insidious perverting effect. Despite its reputation Denmark has remained just about alive. Not a Catholic country, but the bells for Mass ring out across central Copenhagen and lead you to some churches where things are done nicely. And the Established Lutheran Church is consistently announcing attendances are increasing (from an admittedly low base - but is this unique?) By the way, this seems to have coincided with several years free of the state-socialist coalition.
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