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On Friday, October 6,  2000 the McManus award was presented to Liturgy Training Publications
at the Orange National Meeting.
 

The following is the response by Gabe Huck, accepting the award for LTP.

I think what put LTP over the top in getting this award was something I did myself though it was not mentioned in the introduction: in the service of the liturgy I have twice in the last six months set my own hair on fire. First, at the Easter vigil in our parish, I thought I would sit for the first reading before blowing out my candle. Second time was at a once-in-a-lifetime vigil of the Assumption, outdoors. I can tell you: fiery hair isn’t a big deal. The people next to you just use their hands or anything in them—obviously not including other lighted candles—to beat on your head and before you are even aware of what it is that is lighting up the night (your own hair), it’s out. This is quicker and far more lively than someone leaving the assembly to go to the restroom. And afterwards, what lingers gives whole new meaning to “smells and bells.”

I am so happy that this award comes in Region 11. Not only does LTP have so many good friends here, not only do they give a fine convention, but increasingly the rest of us look west for leadership, to this Region, to the southwest and to the northwest for leadership in liturgical and ecclesial renewal.

What I love about this award is its name: The Frederick McManus Award. In March of 1965, at a party in an apartment somewhere between Baltimore and Washington, I was introduced to Msgr. McManus—introduced to one of my three or four heroes. In fact, the people who had invited me to come East for a job interview with Helicon Press sat me down with Fred in a quiet corner. Next day they told me: We figured if Fred McManus and you could talk for fifteen minutes, you were good enough for the job. And I still talk to Fred a few times a year for my own good—a  kind and wise and learned gentleman now largely ignored by many who could well heed him. I got that job, by the way.

But twenty-three years ago last spring I was, again, out of work. There were two jobs I applied for and really wanted to get. One was liturgy director in Denver, to follow the excellent Sr. Anne Stedman who was leaving that position. And the other job I sought was the executive director of the FDLC, which was then in Chicago. I wrote my best letters to both, sent resumes. But as best I remember, I never got an interview either place. Instead, urged by friend Ron Lewinski, I inquired of Dan Coughlin about coming to work for Liturgy Training Program (as it was known then). The question Dan had to decide: LTP had flourished in the late 60s and early 70s as Ted Stone, Jerry Broccolo, Bob Oldershaw, Ed Siedlecki. Dan, Ron and others provided training materials for dioceses around the country, working from the new rite for this sacrament to the new rite for the next sacrament. But by the mid-70s in had run out of sacraments and things were much quieter. Was there life for LTP or not? Dan decided there could be and talked Cardinal Cody into hiring me. I was one half of LTP’s staff in the fall of 1977. Mae Dore, who was present at the creation in 1964 and who was in fact the good spirit behind the whole enterprise, was the other half. (I wanted to say “Mae Dore, may she rest in peace,” but that would be pointless: Mae won’t rest in peace until the church and its liturgy are in far better hands than they are now.)

That was more than a generation ago. We have employees at LTP who were not born in 1977. LTP is now about sixty people, and a few of them are with us here. We had a lottery of sorts for those who would not ordinarily attend FDLC so that a few could share the spotlight. The winners of that lottery are people you folks should know because they’re the people who day-by-day try to serve you well, Louise Griffin from the Customer Service Department, and Donna Hathaway from, the Shipping Department. They and their associates carry on that hospitality which Mae Dare made integral to the very being of LTP. Our General Manager is here, no stranger to FDLC people, John Wright. John has been 15 years at LTP new, he makes everything function day to day and year to year. John always brings a needed angle, a good question, an idea no one else thought of. And we have three of our acquisition editors: Vicky Tufano, David Philippart and Maria Leonard. What LTP does, most of you know and these are some of the crucial people. Insofar as LTP achieves something unique, it is due to an approach to publishing that is editorial and design intense. We’re not just a go between from author to reader. Our editors work together on LTP’s directions; they work intensively with our authors. Our production staff in design and typesetting spends time and care, on every element of a book or magazine design, on each cover, on each choice of typeface. The same care goes into the videos and other products. My favorite sentence in our mission statement says: “In its products and in its operation, LTP strives to express the justice and the beauty that are fundamental to the church and its liturgy.”

Within the structures of the archdiocese of Chicago, LTP is a part of the Office for Divine Worship. That means that for the last six years the director of ODW, Sheila McLaughlin, whom you all know well at FDIC, has had to keep a careful eye on all of us, especially me. Getting along with, my boss, or anyone in authority, has never been my strong point, but at my age and with things as they are, I always figured I wouldn’t have many more chances after Sheila, so I’ve really tried.

So, in good times I would stop here and say: There’s a little gift from LTP at each place, please accept it and know of our gratitude and delight in this award.

But these are not good times So I am going to say a little more—I called Adé Bethune to ask how long these remarks could be. She told me: Don’t you worry, but just watch out for that priest from Boston who might try to get you off the podium!

Times are tough. That’s been reflected here these past days. We have a responsibility to seek fidelity to the vision of Vatican II and its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and in doing that we have to speak the truth as best we can. About ourselves, about our institutions. Not to do that is to betray that bold Council. So there has been talk here of problems and of the failures in Rome, in Washington, in the Bishops’ Conference, in dioceses and in seminaries, in FDLC and in publishers too. And we have encountered the painful and tangled relationships that have come about, as well as tangled motives for liturgy has become the ground where people chase after or display power and control.

I agree with what Archbishop Lipscomb said: It is good to take stock. Amidst a multitude of mistakes, look at the achievements following the Council, things done sometimes in haste, but with great conviction and good scholarship. You could tick off on your tablecloths tonight litanies of achievements, solid work, solid pastoral work in Rome and in the English-speaking world through ICEL and in this country through the BCL, the centers, various organizations: the lectionary and its introduction, the RCIA, EACW; all that was involved in making a sacramentary the Sunday ritual of parishes, Music in Catholic Worship, OCF and Pastoral Care of the Sick, NPM, North American Forum, this very FDLC organization. And on and on: not just documents and organizations either, but living implementation.

How could there not have been screw ups? How could we not be far from finished just 37 years after the Constitution? And if the reform of Vatican II has not taken firmer hold in our parishes, well, the document itself already recognized that scholarship, zeal and organization would not be enough. It said bishops and pastors would have to be imbued with the spirit of the liturgy. And we still don’t knew well how to do that. But when it happens, we see so clearly: good parish liturgy is not in crisis. Those people are not awaiting a new GIRM or a replacement for EACW; they are not confused about who is ordained and who is not. Good parish liturgy may not be everywhere, but it is in many places and that’s good news and we need to know well that that this liturgy is the work of the assembly, people knowing their rites by heart. Such liturgy is what makes us, what makes Catholics.

But today there is another theory: We’re made by catechisms. We’re made by keeping the lines between us clear. We’re made not by the Catholic genius for sacramentality and metaphor (with all its dangers), but by the Catholic weakness for power and for the literal. And we are in the midst of a whirlwind of the line-drawers and the literalists, the successors to those fearful curial folic who never wanted a council called in the first place. A whirlwind, and I like many am angry.

I am angry about that never-discussed rewriting of the concelebration guidelines a year ago—a rewriting that flies in the face of SC #14.

I am angry about Rome’s suffocation of ICEL and our bishops’ so far willing compliance. (In years to came we are going to miss the gifts of ICEL more than any of us now can tell.)

I am angry about the endless drafts of a document about the arts that does not for a single sentence rise to the eloquence and the power of EACW.

I am angry at the way that GIRM has been recast in Rome without consultation beyond those . unhappy few who grind their paltry axes on tabernacle centrality and such, ignoring the solid experiences of a generation.

I am angry that this third edition has been mishandled in translation and in publication.

I am angry still about the NRSV lectionary rejection about the whole mess that was made of the NAB lectionary, and I am angry about the Rome-ordered removal of the imprimatur for the ICEL translation of the psalms.

And I am angry about the work that isn’t being done—isn’t being done by Rome, by the BCL secretariat, by the FDLC, by me and by us because we have to spend our time talking and working against a vision that is no vision, a fearful, non-scriptural, and non-conciliar understanding of liturgy. We want to be about what is really our work, the creation of a justice that we’ll only know and love and seek at great cost from our regular participation in a liturgy reformed, and the creation of a solidarity that we’ll only glimpse with eyes opened by a liturgy that Sunday by Sunday in every parish is the exhausting work of those Catholic people.

Tough times. We must hold to the good that has been done, enrich it in Catholic ways. We must live ourselves in parishes where people do and live their liturgy so that we have hope and energy. We must build again those bonds to catechesis and justice in our dioceses and parishes. We must protect the Council’s good work from the assaults of the fearful, and we must open the eyes of our bishops. I hate to use this phrase so close to the boyhood home of Richard Nixon but there is still a silent majority of bishops who know that the post-Vatican II work was good work. What they seem not to know is bow to. organize and bow to lead. Archbishop Lipscomb made much of the relationship of you to your bishops. Go home and do it, before their November meeting, and then on and on. Help them see; in parishes where people do and live from their liturgy, there is a vibrant, reverent church. Build your relationship to the bishop. Do the homework. Get informed. Give the bishop clear, concise information and opinions. Help each other do that. Use the technology. I know you all have many responsibilities, but this moment must not pass us by.

So yes, we have to give ourselves to fending off the fearful who sit in powerful places, but let’s give ourselves also and more to imagining haw even in these times the renewal of the liturgy can take place in our lives and our parishes. We may be as close to leaders as this generation is going to have. T hope you build this organization. I have heard and seen things in these days that move and inspire me - coming from this floor. This organization need not be edged out. Build it. Do what has to be done even in ecclesiastical politics to become an authoritative voice in good times and bad for the liturgical renewal of the church.

At Morning Prayer today we prayed Psalm 51 as we do every Friday. The refrain was from the verse "cor mundum crea in me, Deus": Create a pure heart in me. That’s been with me all day. Perhaps in some of what I’ve said I make it plain: my heart is not so pure, not so forgiving. I’m working on it.

 Thank you for honoring LTP tonight.