And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that I watched significant portions of the requiem high mass for the funeral of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
At least that’s the way I would describe the event, although the term is no longer used. But having read some pre-funeral descriptions of Scalia’s Roman Catholic faith, I got the impression that he and I, of roughly the same age, were what I call “old fashioned” Catholics. I have always had a dichotomy of feelings about what Vatican II did to my church’s historic character. I read that Scalia often attended a church in the Washington area where mass was still celebrated in Latin.
So it did not surprise me to hear some Latin hymns, and I particularly savored the rendition of Panis Angelicus with its beautiful soprano descant. I knew it from school days, and when St. Pat’s had its last music teaching nun, our choir did it. That was about a decade after the early 1960s Vatican II.
My nostalgia for “the way things were” reappeared as the result of the funeral.
I found myself remembering my days as an altar boy, junior high through high school. The pomp and circumstance of the high mass impressed me in those days, from my view inside the altar rail, while the priest was on the high altar with his back primarily to the pews, but very much present to the altar boys. And there were no altar girls. And some of us got into the spirit, handling the cruets and the towel with all the finesse of a modern day point guard. One summer, I was prefect of servers while the nuns were in Dubuque, and when the scheduled server could not make it, I had to cover, often alone. And I felt the priest and I were a team.
I really enjoyed “tinkling” the little bell three times at two points in the consecration, and in Lent, we were given wooden clappers to foster the spirit, and we could make those clappers heard into the back pews.
We were not always so reverent. There was a procession around the church aisles in connection with some annual observance, which I cannot now recall. But the response in Latin was, as near as I can remember, liberatus audi nos. We thought we could rhyme that, and quietly, out of earshot, sang “Peter has a snotty nose.”
But that same procession gave some of us veteran servers the opportunity to wear the red cassock instead of the usual black, a badge of honor. The only other time I was privileged to wear red was when, as senior altar boy, I was picked to play the role of sub-deacon for a visiting bishop’s mass, a role usually filled by a young priest or seminary student, I believe. I was in awe, although I can’t recall that I was required to actually do anything except stand around.
As an adult, I admired Justice Scalia for holding on to the provisions of the original Constitution of the United States of America.
And as someone of his age, I appreciate the reminder of the “good old days” of the ancient church of which we were both members.