6β£ During "Operation Hideout", the USS Haddock was submerged for 60 days and the crew exposed to high levels of CO2 as a physiological test. A priest boarded via underwater tube every Sunday to say Mass, 1953.
Keeping with the nautical theme from last Friday, today I am excited to share one of my all-time favorite (and scarce) prayer-books with you:
π 1925 - A Prayer Book for Catholic Seafarers
Check it out! π§΅
It is one of the most original, interesting, and moving prayer books I have ever encountered.
Compiled by the legendary and prolific Rev. CC Martindale, SJ, almost the entire book is newly-written original prayers and commentary specifically for sailors and seamen.
It also contains what is likely the first and only Marian hymn to include the word "torpedo"!
Unlike most missals, which focused on offering commentary, notes, and context for the various sundays and feasts of the ecclesiastical year...
The Missal-Vesperal offered the unique feature of "Symbolico-liturgical illustrations" by carmelite Fr. Fath. Berthold
These were black and white symbolic drawings relating to the liturgy
While the actual texts of Sunday or Feast would receive a brief two-sentence explanation, the drawings were each explained with several paragraphs of text
Today, we're interrupting our regularly-scheduled content... here's a short thread on the hand missal Pope Benedict XVI requested for Christmas in 1934 at age 7.
π§΅
Several years ago, a childhood Christmas letter from Ratzinger and his sister were found:
"Dear Baby Jesus, quickly come down to earth. You will bring joy to children. Also bring me joy. I would like a Volks-Schott [...] I will always be good. Greetings from Joseph Ratzinger"
The hand missal requested by young Joseph Ratzinger was the "Volks-Schott" mass book.
This was a simpler abridgmenet of an extraordinarily popular and groundbreaking German hand missal originally published by Anselm Schott, OSB
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)
There are many interesting comments and replies in this thread, go check it out!
For anyone interested in the history, I did a series of short, illustrated articles on the history of microphones & loudspeakers in Catholic worship between 1922-1958
Part 1 reveals that mics & speakers were widely installed in Catholic churches throughout the world in the 1920s, and used for a variety of surprising things like radio broadcasts, simultaneous masses, and audio for overflow crowds.