Wonderful images of the glories of faith – in our traditional Catholic yesteryear. I truly believe that the young men had that closeness to God, as you portray so well. It’s all of those beautiful contrasts – innocence and manliness, wonder and obedience, reverence and joy, strength and tenderness …
There’s a very nice mystical atmosphere created – which was actually quite normal in the Catholic world of the past. Now that kind of wonder and mystery is hijacked by the goofy spiritual teachers we have running around in parishes.
Back then it was just solid, Catholic spirituality. Not a lot of sentimentalism and esoteric weirdness. The Angelus bell, candles on the high altar, a long stretch of kneeling for adoration – and many simple, profound joys that required no money, no electronic gadgets and no witty conversation at all.
I can reflect on how my own mind has been damaged by the bizarro Catholic recent past (I have few direct memories of the pre-VII era). Like a few in your collection which didn’t connect with my taste. For example, I can’t read the word “clown” in a Catholic poem without cringing-memories of the 1970s. Actually, the same for dance, minstrels and troubadours – all good things, but images which are badly damaged in my consciousness due to liberal crack-pots seeking to turn the sacred liturgy into an amateurish soho drama club (those people have never gotten over the “greatness” of *Hair *from 1968).
But forget that. There are some supberb moments that you captured.
The entire theme is so necessary and we miss it sometimes in apologetics work – namely, the love of God. That is, we ourselves love God and find Him in the travels of life – not as an abstraction or the product of a philosophical formula but as One who cares for us, communicates with us and creates these experiences which you remembered well.
