Rich Historical and Religious Reflections in New Memoir of Modern English Catholicism

A new book, Two Families: A Memoir of English Life During and After the Council, contains many narratives and reminiscences that will be of great interest to readers of NLM for their liturgical and musical insights.

In running through his eventful life, Joseph Bevan describes the practice of English Catholicism before, during, and after the Council: he shows the strengths and weaknesses of the preconciliar routine, the confusion unleashed in the 1960s, the collapse of the liturgy and especially of sacred music “in real time,” as it was unfolding.

Eyewitness accounts are important for the history of the traditionalist movement, as they flesh out our more abstract claims with concrete examples, and help fend off accusations that we are inventing or exaggerating the problems.

Those who are interested in Benedictine monasticism will learn a lot of intriguing (and sometimes disturbing) things about Downside Abbey in this book, including the time when some students got themselves involved with demons, and one of them died on account of it.

Downside Abbey, where many events in Two Families took place.

Two Families takes the form of contrasting the family into which Bevan was born with the family that he himself established later on. His family of origin was largely swept along with the tide of the times. Joseph Bevan and his wife decided to pursue the opposite course as they rediscovered tradition in the Society of St. Pius X and turned their lives upside-down to ensure a proper upbringing for their own large family of ten children.

At a time when it was not fashionable to homeschool, they homeschooled, and later on moved to a town from which their older children could more easily get to traditional schools in France; at a time when priests were being persecuted for fidelity to tradition, they welcomed into their home an old and faithful priest. God has blessed them with two priest-sons and a daughter who is a nun (and, in fact, just made her solemn vows).

The memoir is filled with honest self-assessment of failings and opportunities, falls taken and graces received; it contains some excellent, hard-won advice for parents. Kennedy Hall contributes a fine Foreword. The book has received glowing endorsements from The Right Reverend Dom Cuthbert Brogan, OSB, Abbot of St. Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough; Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB, Prior of Monastère Saint-Benoît, Fréjus-Toulon; Edward Pentin, Senior Contributor, National Catholic Register; James Bogle, barrister, retired army officer, former President of the Una Voce Federation; and Anthony P. Stine of the Return to Tradition Podcast.

Now for some excerpts of particular liturgical and musical interest.

A view of Somerset, the county where the Bevans lived for much of their lives

Wise words, to which we can all relate:

Although this book contains some stern criticisms of monks and priests who have crossed my path, I still regard them as belonging to my Church, and the wholesale collapse of the clergy is something I mourn. I have no idea how God is going to put things right, but I am sure that, sooner or later, he will, and it might take 100 years. In the meantime, I just carry on in my own quiet way, trying to save my soul and the souls of my nearest and dearest. (xix)

Speaking at one point of Westminster Choir School where he attended for a short time, Bevan describes the daily routine of the choristers. This is a great passage for giving the lie to the idea that the artistic standards were not high prior to the Council. In fact, they were much, much higher than they would ever be afterwards. Even now, we have not quite caught up to “the way things were,” and I doubt we ever shall until there is a complete restoration of tradition.

The choir school supplied the sopranos and altos for the cathedral choir. Even in the 1960s it was being proclaimed as one of the best choirs in Europe, and its schedule was punishing. There was a Sung Mass every morning, and new music had to be prepared to a professional standard. We would rise early and have a school Low Mass in the crypt of the cathedral. After breakfast there would be lessons followed by sung Mass but, as a probationer, I was too young to sing in the choir, so we juniors sat in the front two rows in the nave….
          The cathedral choir sound was utterly unique and a total contrast to the politeness of its Anglican cathedral rivals. We had daily High Mass in the cathedral. Even with my disturbed brain, I could see how beautiful and solemn was the drama being played out before my eyes— all accompanied by music which was often sublime. My musical tastes were maturing rapidly, and I was transported by Victoria and Palestrina….
          It was a rare privilege as a youngster to witness daily the dignity and the beauty of the liturgy at the cathedral, which managed to cling to the traditional rite of Mass well into the 1970s, until the death of Cardinal Heenan. Once the glories of Catholic worship have been seen at first hand, one cannot fail to be unimpressed by the sterile and turgid offerings of the reformed liturgies in the Catholic Church following on from the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II. I happen to know that anyone who sang in that choir was probably marked for life, as I was, and many ex-choristers still keep in touch with each other and often meet up to sing. The old cathedral is affectionately referred to as “the drome,” but nowadays the previously grand liturgy has degenerated into a patchy concert of words and music. My three elder brothers, who attended the school at Westminster, spent their lives campaigning for proper music to be incorporated into the New Mass and have found the going extremely bumpy in the face of reluctant clergy up and down the country….
          The lasting benefits of the choir school on my life were a love of the liturgy and a love of prayer. I learned to pray, and this stayed with me even during my non-churchgoing period. I never completely lost touch with Our Lady and the Saints, and this saved me from disaster, I think. (24–27)

There was a lot of confusion, silliness, and Pelagianism in the shift from the old rite to the new rite: 

We [the Bevans] were the official choir at St Michael’s Church in Shepton Mallet, and every Sunday in the holidays we sang the Mass. My father was the conductor and organist, and he laid out treats for the congregation in the form of plainchant and polyphony. With the closing of the old Catholic church in Shepton we moved to a spick-and-span affair of concrete and glass, which had been built by the diocese to accommodate the new springtime in the Church anticipated by the recent Second Vatican Council. With the new building came the New Mass. I was first made aware that something wasn’t right when, during the Canon, I received a dig in the back from Neville Dyke, who was sitting just behind me. I turned round in surprise and said, “Hello, Neville!” I received the reply, “Peace be with you!” I answered, “Talk to you later.” I can still see the Catholic families of Shepton Mallet sitting in their habitual pews: the Tullys, the Dykes, the Quins, the Dampiers, the Todds, and many others with lots of young children. With the advent of the New Mass in December 1969, the services became chaotic. The parish priest, Father Carol, wrestled with the new liturgy; he would suddenly break into Latin and correct himself.
          The music we sang as a family in church was becoming irrelevant to the goings-on at the altar, and the congregation became restless for more change. Mrs Todd, the wife of the owner of Darton, Longman & Todd, which was a leading Catholic publisher, became an agitator for change in the music. One Sunday, as we struck up with some William Byrd, she simply marched out of Mass in full view of the whole congregation.
          Pa, like the Elizabethan composers before him, adapted to the demand for change and started writing “congregational Masses” to be sung by everybody at Mass. I have to say that these compositions were so trite and turgid that we got thoroughly bored with them. In actual fact, Mass on Sunday became a frightful bore with its “sweet nothings” prayers, “hello children everywhere” readings, and faulty microphones. It took a great personal effort to rise on Sunday morning and go to church. As it dawned on our new parish priest, Father Meehan, that the reformed liturgy was turning out to be a bit of a flop, he decided upon a more “energetic” approach to the liturgy. As a result, we were made to endure all kinds of humiliating displays, such as parading the children in the sanctuary and the priest quizzing them over the microphone.
          We all hated it, but Pa said, “If you live at home you go to church!” I think Pa liked the changes. In fact, he did say in an unguarded moment— following a session with the gin and martini bottles— that it was like coming home to his Church of England past. Ma endured the revolution patiently and, much later, embraced Catholic Tradition again.
          In those days we were witnessing the changes in the Mass, which were bad enough. Little did we know that there was a wholesale offensive against the Catholic faith going on at the highest levels, and the New Mass was just a symptom of this attack. My mother has testified to the gradual meltdown in Catholic moral theology amongst her own teenage daughters, who were only following the example of their friends. (33–35) 

This next passage reminds me strikingly of my own experience in a private Benedictine high school, when by my senior year I was acting the role of conservative in the midst of almost exclusively liberal teachers and largely indifferent, if not contemptuous, fellow students:

There were various Benedictine monks at the school who occupied the senior positions such as headmaster and housemasters. My instincts informed me that most of these gentlemen lived a fairly soft life and seemed to wear expressions of self-doubt, evidenced by furrowed brows and the inability to look one in the face. This was the period after the Second Vatican Council and, as I mentioned before, the whole Church seemed to be indulging in an orgy of self-doubt. Religious Instruction (RI) classes were pure comedy, where the boys would come up with bizarre theories and discuss them in a free-for-all. The monk running the class almost seemed to be more avant-garde than his charges.
          Needless to say, I had conservative leanings and was by nature abrasive. Accordingly, I became an obvious target for the whole class, which regularly produced the situation of “Bevan contra mundum.” That was the trouble with knowing things but not knowing why. Everything was subject to scornful ridicule without limit. Apart from RI classes at Westminster Cathedral Choir School, where we studied the Penny Catechism, I had received no further formal training in religion. Hence, I knew nothing whatever about the faith apart from the odd phrase which had stuck. My classmates at Downside, however, knew absolutely nothing about their religion and used the RI classes as an opportunity to let off steam about how boring the school Mass was (indeed it was). Time-worn words were bandied about such as “irrelevant” and “participation.”
          I found myself—although I had no idea at the time— defending the Novus Ordo Mass, which all 500 boys had to endure in the abbey church every Sunday. I became identified with it alongside my father, who was organising the music, and this inflamed further antipathy towards my family. I do not believe that anyone in the school or the monastery next door liked the New Mass. There were many plots afoot to undermine it, and grievances were aired during RI classes all over the school.
          There was a very sharp and outspoken member of the class by the name of Grace, ironically, and his opinions were deferred to by everyone except me, of course. During one session in the RI class of Dom Ambrose Lambert, Grace pointed out that we should dispense with incense at Mass because, “after all, it was only introduced in the Middle Ages to keep off the smell of the plebs!” Everyone nodded, and I could see the furrowed brow of the monk also nodding in thoughtful sympathy. I instinctively made a fuss simply because this did not sound right at all, but as my knowledge of these things was non-existent, I was quickly shouted down.
          I have alluded to the school Mass in the abbey church. The abbey had been closed for two years to allow the bulldozers in to reorder the interior, in accordance with the liturgical movement’s slogan “out with the old, in with the new!” In the meantime, the school theatre was used for the Sunday Masses. I was not present at these events, as they were just before my time. However, I am assured by people who were present— my father among them— that the Masses degenerated into a riot, as the boys would constantly bang the sprung theatre seats up and down in the auditorium.
          My arrival at Downside coincided with the grand reopening of the abbey church for school Masses. Although the sanctuary had been rearranged with an altar placed in the middle (as opposed to at the far end), the congregation area was untouched, which led to wholesale discontent and open rebellion by the boys. The point of the New Mass, as it is called, is to encourage outward participation by the 500-odd boys, which they would do by joining in the prayers and singing the hymns. In spite of the hugely expensive loudspeaker system recently installed, the boys were really isolated from what was going on in the distance at the altar and responded to the energetic blandishments booming over the loudspeakers with a stony silence. I was present when, during an evening benediction, the lights failed. As we were plunged into darkness, a huge cheer went up from the whole school.
          The whole experiment with the New Mass was— and still is— an unmitigated disaster because the whole point of Mass is to achieve union with Christ, which is essentially an interior union necessitating silent prayer and adoration. (55–57)

Long-time musicians will recognize, with a groan, the truth in Bevan's discussion of the problems with transferring the treasury of great sacred music that grew up organically in the old rite to a new rite that was not designed with it in mind, and in fact works at cross-purposes to it:

I joined the Schola Cantorum, which provided the music for the New Mass in the abbey church, and Pa was the conductor. Because Pa thought we should sing music from the treasures of the Renaissance as though there had been no liturgical revolution at all, noses were put out of joint amongst the innovators in the monastery. The boys also complained (and who can blame them?), so an attempt was made to curtail Pa’s counter-revolutionary activities by the organising of a folk Mass in the abbey. That, too, was a flop and the last we heard of the guitars.
          I have to say that my father was mistaken in his belief that the boys would in any way profit from listening to William Byrd and plainchant in the context of the New Mass. Effectively, his critics were correct. He was turning the Mass into a concert, and a rather dull one at that. Renaissance church music was written for the Tridentine Rite of Mass, the “Old Mass.” It was strictly liturgical and as much a part of the Mass as the priest was. In the New Mass, the proceedings at the altar are interrupted and the irritable priest sits down with a thump while “Bevan and his choir strikes up!”
          Writing about these matters now, nearly sixty years on, all arguments in favour of the Old Mass are as relevant now as they were in the 1970s, but nothing gets done. This is why I now believe, in retrospect, that the attack on the traditional Mass was on ideological grounds and had nothing to do with getting the best out of the liturgy. The Old Mass had to be completely destroyed to clear the decks for what was to follow, and that was not the Catholic faith. In fact, it hardly mattered what replaced it. The liturgical anarchy that has been prevalent in the Catholic Church for sixty years is preferable, in the eyes of the reformers, to the pre-Vatican II Mass. At worst, the new liturgy is irreverent, blasphemous, and chaotic. At best, it is turgid, vacuous, and boring. It is almost as though the Catholic Church was deliberately trying to put people off religion, which it succeeded in doing, deliberately or not. (63–64)

Although Hamish Fraser played no role in my coming to tradition, Michael Davies certainly did, as he has done for countless people. The seeds planted by good reading bear fruit in due season:

By the time I had left school, my religious feelings were at a very low ebb. I was what could be described as a semi-lapsed Catholic, and this was the same for my brothers and sisters, so far as I could see. My mother, I think, had a prayer life and shared it with my father. We offspring were not interested. It was one afternoon in the spring of 1976 that we received a visit from Martin Blake, a retired French master who taught at Worth monastic school in Sussex. He was a frequent visitor, as he was Jeremy’s godfather. Whereas normal godparents would donate money and presents, as mine did, Martin would give Jeremy holy books. On this visit, he dumped a pile of tatty magazines entitled Approaches, which were edited by a certain Hamish Fraser. As nobody else was interested, I scooped up the pile and took them to my bedroom.
          Much later, for want of anything else to read, I sat up in bed and flipped through the pile of literature, which was badly reproduced on a home printer. I began to read about a certain archbishop in Switzerland who was being persecuted by the Catholic authorities for running a seminary that was out of step with the modern direction of the Catholic Church. My reaction was one of outrage for everything which annoyed me about the Church, such as the palsy-walsy clergy, the boring Mass, the warfare between the Downside monks and my father, the attacks on the faith in RI classes at school and the complete lack of religious education. It was all explained by Hamish Fraser. What I had dismissed until now as simply an emotional attachment to a vague conservatism was clarified by the rebellion of Archbishop Lefebvre. In all my time at Downside, the Second Vatican Council was hardly mentioned by the monks, who tried to give the impression that the Church was always like this.
          It would be stretching things to say that I now became more virtuous or religious, as I was happy in my state of semi-lapsation. However, the thoughts of returning to the true faith of the Church were never far away, and I had privately resolved to do something about it— but what? I knew that I would have to change my life and pull up my socks, so any thought of a real conversion was put on the back-burner, as they say… In the end, I forgot all about Archbishop Lefebvre as soon as I entered into my legal studies, because my whole position was built on sand. I still knew nothing about my religion and was easily disposed of by my intellectual superiors. I was glad, though, that Hamish Fraser, and later Michael Davies, were both planted in my sub-conscious and never left me. (73–74)

I could keep quoting all day long, but that would spoil the pleasure of discovering the work for yourself! So I’ll stop here, but do consider reading this meaty but still compact (under 200 pages) memoir of a Catholic caught between a false modernization that failed to fulfill its promises and a return to tradition that actually delivers the goods—the interesting story of a man, typical of his era in many ways, who was led by grace from lazy lapsation to burning zeal for the Faith.

The author (far left) with his family

Two Families is available directly from the publisher in paperback, hardcover, or ebook, as well as from Amazon.