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One from 1918 shows Cardinal Bourne blessing an outdoor crucifix in Poplar in the East End. (Did it survive the Blitz?) The film could have been taken anywhere in the Catholic world in 1918. Here it is.
The other shows the Consecration of Liverpool Cathedral in 1967. Cardinal Heenan is the Papal Legate, the people sing Christus Vincit!, but the Auxiliary Bishop (where was the Metropolitan?) consecrates the altar in English, and although nobody realises it, everything is about to change for ever - in fact everything has changed, but nobody there has realised. Here it is.
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3 comments:
Were student cross pilgrims sixties on irreverently singing "if you want a cathedral we've got One- pause two! to spare .../..in my liverpool home" on to summat ? (On youtube, as sung by various))
Mindyou I liked Liverpool's cathedrals......
What marvellous clips. Not much survived the blitz in Poplar, where I used to live. The parish church had to be rebuilt, and the result was a strange but (I think) splendid kind of Byzantine Art Deco by Adrian Gilbert Scott. Should we laugh or cry that the Pathe website labels it as the blessing of a 'Wayside Cavalry'? Is that worse than the National Geographic article which famously (& I suspect apocryphally) referred repeatedly to 'Mount Calgary' in an article about holy week in Jerusalem?
"where was the Metropolitan?".
No great mystery as to his absence. The Metropolitan was Archbishop George Andrew Beck (successor to Heenan), who was seriously ill and so his auxiliary, Bishop Augustine Harris had to perform the ceremony in his stead.
No matter who was the main celebrant, the dire Liturgy would still have been used.
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