Ronald Hutton may not be doing either. Ronald Hutton is the scholar who wrote a splendid debunking book in 1996 called The Stations of the Sun. What he exploded was the old nonsense dreamed up by anti-Christian students of 'Comparative Religion' in the first half of the twentieth century, led by Sir James Frazer. Those people enjoyed 'showing' that most Christian festivals were ancient pagan festivals very thinly disguised, and that Christianity so failed to leave its mark deep in the psyche of the common folk of the British Isles that many pagan rites survived the official triumph of the Pale Galilaean. An example:
At Padstow in Cornwall, two hobby-horses dance their way through the town each May Day. In the 1930s some daft people called the Folk-Lore Society persuaded themselves that this was a relic of a pagan sacred marriage between Earth and Sky. (Hutton gives a witty and hilarious account of the antics there of one of these nutters, called Violet Alford, who was very angry that the locals failed to realise the massive cultural significance of male transvestites.) The town council cheerfully assured prospective tourists that it was a Celtic custom 4,000 years old ... well, they would, wouldn't they? But modern scholarship, Hutton demonstrates, shows that there is no evidence for the custom going back beyond the late eighteenth century and very good reasons for being confident that it did not.
At the beginning of August, in many parts of Ireland, the country people climbed mountains and indulged in bonfires and jollity in honour of the God Lugh ... or did they? Hutton ... spoil sport ... gives good reasons for doubting whether these customs really have anything at all to do with the 'Celtic' god Lugh. They celebrated the opening of the cereal or potato harvest. And, as such, they were broadly parallel with the Anglo-Saxon celebration of 'hlaef-mass', loafmass, Lammas. It was the custom to reap the first of the ripe cereals and bake them into bread which was blessed in church upon that day; quaint things were sometimes then done to it to make the barns into safe repositories for the grain about to arrive in them.
Hutton leaves it an open question whether there is any link beteween the Lammas ceremonies and those of Lughnasa. But he does see both as "a reminder of the excitement which once attended the ripening of the corn across the ancient British Isles" (what my Irish readers call "the Atlantic Archipelago").
The popular play 'Dancing at Lughnasa' constituted a particularly nasty, more modern, example of the manipulation of any silly old heathen superstitions that can be dragged along to rubbish or ridicule the Catholic Faith ... a potent cultural icon, in effect, of post-Catholic Ireland and its sad vacuity.
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Post Catholic Ireland indeed!
Last Sunday I tried to attend the 11:45 Sunday Mass at St. Barnabas church in the Bronx. I was hurrying up to the church, taking a seat in the very back at 11:48 am. The pastor was speaking about something, and I whispered to my friend Patrick "when is he going to start Mass". The whispered reply was that father was in the process of giving the sermon! Not a pitch for the Cardinal's appeal, then. It was the big Kerry game, he told me, and you could be sure that we would be out altogether in about 15 minutes.
Leaving mass, about 15 minutes later, I told my friend Thomas about the big rush, and he said "Arty it's the Kerry game today" What did I expect! This is important! Later, I learned that Kerry were beaten by the Dubs, but I am sure there was some other priest, in some other part of New York City, who had been rushing through Holy Mass in order to go cheer on the boys in blue in some Woodside pub. The difference, I suppose, is that at least the New York Irish still go to Mass! My day continued in finding somewhere to get mass, and I did not get a sympathetic ear from anyone. The Irish all thought that I was losing sight of what was important, and the Americans thought that I was being legalistic. The fruits of Vatican II, or an illustration of Lex Orandi?
Does anyone know if the Holy Father still squeezes fresh grapes into the chalice on our first harvest feast of Transfiguration? And are raisins still being blessed in Rome? I think we should be told.
". a potent cultural icon, in effect, of post-Catholic Ireland and its sad vacuity".
As Fr. Zed is known to remark: "rem acu tetigisti"
Re: Mass, sometimes priests change Mass times forward (or back), and tell the congregation the Sunday before, but forget to tell the website.
I know, I was also raised to get to Mass by the last word of the Gospel at the very latest... But technically there is an argument that the homily is sufficient, or even the Offertory.
It is great that you followed your well-formed conscience.
On your recommendation I have purchased and begun to read Ronald Hutton's book. I'm rather depressed to find this howler on p 9: "This [the Use of Sarum] directed that the day [Christmas] should have three masses, the first of which, Matins, commenced before dawn." I suppose, however, that even professors of History can't be expected to possess specialist knowledge of liturgical niceties.
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