Coveting What I Do Not Have

Latin liturgy,Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony,meat-less Fridays,fasting before Mass,the Rosary,the Baltimore Catechism,retreats,the novena (in 1938, seventy thousand people attended thirty-eight novena services at Our Lady of Sorrows in Chicago every week), kneelers, large families dressed in their “Sunday best,”mantillas and chapel caps,religious in habits,statues,large Gothic or baroque churches with dark,quiet places and side altars, elaborate priestly vestments,the smell of incense,the sound of bells at the Consecration,the feeling of awe at the miracle of Transubstantiation—these were all common features of the American Catholic world in the time of the Church’s fastest growth and greatest self-confidence.