Saturday 4 January 2014

You Would Have Been Shocked

One of my late Father's running jokes was to collect titles for the many volumes of the  autobiography which he never intended to write.

Every now and then, he would come across a phrase that struck him, and adopt it as the title of the next volume.

One such phrase was 'You would have been shocked.'

Reading his notebook last night, I found the source for this, which also explained its resonance for him.

This is from a Pastoral Letter by Cardinal Heenan, dated 12x69.

Why does the Mass keep changing?  Here is the answer. It would have been foolhardy to introduce the changes all at once. It was obviously wiser to change gradually and gently. If all the changes had been introduced together, you would have been shocked.'

(The underlining is my Father's).

2 comments:

Victor S E Moubarak said...

Very wise.

But are all these changes confusing the congregation; especially when they are not fully explained? One would even ask, "Are they really necessary?"

God bless.

Jack Tollers said...

They introduced changes... progressively.