Many of us who bear a measure of responsibility in our dioceses for guiding parishes in evaluating and directing liturgy have shared an experience. We walk into a church building constructed in the mid-1960’s and we are covered by amazement. “What on earth were they thinking?” In the case of the parish where I serve, the church, built in 1963—set on 11 acres, a former town beach, by a shimmering pond surrounded by verdant woods, with a clear view of the evening sun, rolling lawns and flower beds, and with 100 Canadian geese but, sadly, no marching ducks—is an imposing fantasy on Noah’s ark. Built, not of gopherwood, but of yellow brick, it is 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad and 30 cubits high, with the prow ready to be launched onto Willets Pond— a body of water completely hidden from the worshippers, who are arrayed in 33 rows of pews, the closest row impossibly distant from the altar, the most distant one in a different township. So you see this calamity and wonder what were they thinking of? Didn’t anyone know the direction of the reform? Did no one tap the riches of the liturgical movement, or participate in any of the many lively efforts in catechesis and renewal and celebration in the 40’s and 50’s.

 Within six months of its dedication, the altar began inching its way forward and there were indications in the air that the building simply did not work. Happily though, from time to time in New England, we step across the threshold of a worship space from the same time period and see at once that the place of the assembly is a place of grace and holiness, a place of light and color in which we expect to encounter the Holy One. And when we stumble across these places it is easy to recognize the artist’s hand, it is easy to see that, at least, someone got it, someone early on had an appreciation for a form of worship that takes account of the other worshippers, indeed depends on them. More often than not, in New England, it is the hand of Adé Bethune we recognize.  

Adé Bethune comes from solid liturgical stock. Her grandmother in Belgium, it is said, appalled at a newly arrived curate’s perfunctory engagement with the celebration of liturgy, took him in hand and with the help of her layfolk’s missal taught him a quality of celebration the seminary had not. This more than a century ago. Her family was aflame with love for the liturgy, and when she first came to this country in the 1920’s she was at first amazed at the lack of participation of the people in prayer and then took up the work which she carries on faithfully today. Artist and storyteller, practical theologian and dreamer, companion of the great heroes and heroines of the liturgical movement, she founded the St. Leo Shop in Newport, RI, a national resource for good liturgical art, contributed to the Catholic Arts Quarterly and to the building and renovation of 100’s of churches.

 

She has for decades contributed her art to the Catholic Worker and her dear friend Dorothy Day once said, “Whenever I visited Adé I came away with a renewed zest for life. She has such a sense of the sacramentality of life, the goodness of things, a sense that is translated in all her works,” whether it was illustrating a missal, making stained glass windows or sewing, cooking, or gardening. To do things perfectly was always her aim. Another first principle she always taught was to aim high. ‘If you are going to put a cross bar on an H,’ she said, ‘you have to aim higher than your sense of sight tells you.’”

 

Her presence here at the National Meeting clears our vision and raises our sight. When Nathan spoke yesterday of Madame LaVigne, someone whose sensibility, as Nathan [Mitchell] said, is so fresh and lively that we can barely keep pace, many of us though at once of another artist, the possessor of a heart, mind, and vision as fresh as a teen’s. I am happy to present to you Adé Bethune, artist, pastoral liturgist, writer, prophet and pioneer, possessor of an ageless heart.