In the following précis of Literary Converts, we limit ourselves to those who lived long enough to witness the Council, and allow them to speak in their own words.
On behalf of these converts to the Catholic faith from Protestantism, Evelyn Waugh asked Cardinal Heenan: Why were we led out of the church of our childhood to find the Church of our own adoption assuming the very forms we disliked?
Christopher Dawson: [There is] ... a philistine and patronizing attitude to Baroque Catholicism expressed by certain 'modern 'Catholics.
Hugh Ross Williamson: The changes [are] echoing everything that was done at the Reformation... the Martyrs have died for nothing.
David Jones:One year they abolish the biretta, the next year they abolish the Mass.... I can't understand it all; they'll be pulling down Chartres Cathedral next.
Cecil Gill: The vulgarization of the Mass.... One sighs for a Low Mass instead of this brash version of the sacred liturgy.
George Mackey Brown: The vernacular has robbed the Mass of its majesty and mystery... so much of its glory has been sort of shed.... There was something very mysterious about the same language being used all over the world.
Robert Speaight: The vernacular liturgy, popular and pedestrian, intelligible and distressing, has robbed us of much that was numinous in public worship; there is less emphasis on prayer and penitence, and the personal relationship between God and man... is neglected in favor of a diffused social concern.
Sir Alec Guinness: Much water has flown under the Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendor and mystery from Rome since the pontificate of Pius XII... [T]he banalities and translations which have ousted the sonorous Latin and Greek are of a supermarket quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies; kneeling is out, queuing is in, and the general tone is like BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots....
Cardinal Heenan: If the Church is to remain truly the Catholic Church it is essential to keep a universal language.
Christopher Dawson: The existence of a common liturgical language of some kind is a sign of the Church's mission to reverse the curse of Babel and to create a body of unity between the peoples.
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