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.
