Good morning! We've got a bit of a doozy for #MissalMondays
The Saint Jerome Missal, published in 4 volumes in 1964.
It features the most .... unusual .... art we've ever seen in a hand missal (and that's saying something!)
Published by The Catholic Press of Chicago, it was clearly intended to be a new, major "flagship" missal property which was chock full of selling-point features.
They pulled together a large (and slightly unusual) cast of experts to contribute, including Father Andrew Greeley
(interesting note: it holds an imprimatur of January 1963 and a copyright date of 1964, and does not survive in many copies.
It's clear this was immediately overtaken and made irrelevant by the many sudden a d rapid changes to the mass which happened in 1964)
Now to the good stuff... The art!
It was lavishly illustrated by award-winning Dutch artist Jan Sleper in a startlingly modern homage to traditional woodcut & line art.
The missal typesetting was bland and workman-like, but they tried to make up for it with other gimmicky features.
The Ordinary of the Mass used blank boxes and a system of icons & numbered mass parts, to help you find the propers of the day
It also featured a 16-page "art gallery" insert of classic artistic works, which feels bizarre given the juxtaposition with the rest of the art throughout
And lastly, it retained the popular series of color photos of the different actions at Mass for which Catholic Press missals were known.
These were taken in 1954 at Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago, and the priest is Rev. Thomas Conley
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I wanted to do a quick little thread on 'cry rooms' in churches, prompted by and in honor of @jdflynn being on the war path about the topic last night.
Have you ever wondered when (and why) Catholic churches start building cry rooms?
Read on! 🧵
@jdflynn This is something I wrote about at more length in an article last year
On the history of microphones, televised masses & cry rooms between 1922-1958.
It was kind of by accident. I didn't set out to write it.
I just started researching the history of a unique Wisconsin parish, and things kind of snowballed from there.
This is a story about the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
And while the world is awash with books about Marian devotion and Catholic history, this particular tale has never before appeared in print.
This saga spans multiple decades and multiple continents.
It involves the Fatima children, Pope Pius XII, cigarettes, miracle healing, poison gas, tax lawsuits, the world’s largest catholic charity, and trips to Disneyland.
Today we have the first official, national prayer-book for the United States:
📖 1889 - A Manual of Prayers for the use of the Catholic Laity
It's awesome, check it out! Quick🧵
At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, the American bishops famously ordered the creation of a standard, national catechism (later known as the Baltimore Catechism).
They also directed that a standard, national prayer-book should be created for the laity!
The Manual of Prayers was an extraordinary achievement.
It was a normal hand-sized prayer book, but contained literally everything the laity could need for their private and public devotional & liturgical life.
Did you know the first church on Antarctica was built in 1956? Did you know a Roman Catholic cardinal once celebrated Mass there?
Here's a little thread about the Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows, and some other interesting Antarctic Catholic history!
🧵👇
In 1955, the United States began building McMurdo Station on Ross Island in Antarctica.
The original plans for the station did not include a chapel - religious services would be held in the mess hall.
The US Seabees, building the station, decided to make a chapel on their own:
“As the construction of the buildings at McMurdo progressed a mysterious pile of lumber, planks, nails, Quonset hut sections, & assorted materials began to accumulate on a knoll overlooking the camp.”
"Until the mid-1900s, scripture was foreign territory to the laity & they had almost no engagement with the readings at Mass because they were only in Latin" etc.
In Medieval England there were a variety of popular texts, designed to be read from the pulpit, which included English translations of the Sunday Gospel before the homily.
Examples include Aelfric's Catholic Homilies and the “Dominical gospels and of other certain great feasts”
Most medieval towns with a cathedral had a population of less than 5,000 people.
Salisbury had a population of just 3,226 in 1377 AD. The majority of it's famous cathedral was built in just 38 years between 1220-1258, and was finished entirely by 1320.