Proceedings of the National Liturgical Week, 1944 (review)

254BOOK REVIEWS walking and living in the presence of God is no longer practiced among .religious as well as among seculars in various degrees. The book abounds in good thoughts to increase the number of such religious as well as to increase their fervour. For personal use a careful and meditative reading will bring highly desirable results. It may at least recall the truth that the warmth of the love of God is entirely adequate to offset the coldness of the world, and while making concessions to the weakness of the flesh, we must not neglect to draw on the power of grace and the Spirit. Brother Lawrence's way leads a simpler path to the presence of God than many of those ways advanced by other spiritual writers and is, therefore, more commendable. Kilian J. Hennrich, O.F.M. Cap. Our Lady of Sorrow Friary, New York, N.Y. Proceedings of the National Liturgical Week, 1944. (Chicago: The Liturgical Conference, Inc., 1945. Pp. ix+173. $1.35.) This fifth volume of the annual Liturgical Week reports carries the five papers read at the 1944 Liturgical Conference held at St. Meinrad's Abbey in October as well as the eighteen contributions offered at the December Liturgical Week held in New York City. Unlike the four previous Liturgical Week proceedings, the 1944 volume omits the floor discussion and comments, except in most concise statements of fact. The volume is indexed for practical use and runs a graded, well-planned bibliography for reading and study along lines of Liturgy. The Conference contributions strike a decidedly scientific note and furnish excellent new material on these subjects: "The Liturgy and Orthodox Belief," "The Psalms in Catholic Life," "The Liturgy and the Word of God," "The Language of the Roman Liturgy," "Restoration of the Parish High Mass and Vespers." It would seem invaluable to anyone interested in the highly moot question of a modified vernacular liturgy that they carefully study Dorri Rembert Sorg's convincing case against the vernacular. Monsignor Stedman 's statistical and wholly practical review of the liturgical mind of seven hundred chaplains in the armed forces will confirm those who hold for changes in the liturgical language. Granted the present language barrier to full active participation of the laity in the Sacrifice, one readily agrees to the increasingly current practice of continuous explanation from the pulpit during the offering of Holy Mass. Dom Sorg's article along with Monsignor Stedman's would themselves make the Proceedings worthwhile reading. Throughout the eighteen articles comprising the New York Liturgical Week sessions the accent is on practice. Agreeably absent to the mind of this reviewer is the not uncommon tendency among liturgical enthusiasts towards cultural cant. In this symposium of liturgical findings and suggestions the typical pastor is not made to feel himself a failure. (Perhaps this it not good!) In fact some five or more pastors recount their humble BOOK REVIEWS255 progress towards alerting their flocks to the rich pastures of the liturgy. Honestly and without "fluff or flubdub" they tell of painstaking efforts and moderate but solid advances in their city and rural parishes. This Liturgical Week of 1944, so far as the printed matter is any index, seems to mark the liturgical movement in America as fully adult. No longer the demand for Utopian and third-heavenly lyrics to propagandize the movement. By token of the volume under review, the pastors of the United States have begun to lead their flocks down to Bethlehem, to the "indispensable source of the true Christian spirit." Surely when the pastors move liturgically there can be no question of the momentum of the liturgical movement here in our country. For pulpit and classroom and study the Proceedings cover a broad field of readily usable materials pertinent to almost every phase of liturgical life. Equipped with a good working index this little volume becomes a needed addition to anyone's liturgical books. Robert Wilken, O.F.M. Duns Scotus College, Detroit, Mich. The Priest of the Fathers. By Edward L. Heston, C.S.C. (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co. 1945. Pp. 171. $2.50.) This fine book, to which His Excellency the Apostolic Delegate contributes a Foreword...