Do you know what Oak Apple Day is?

Neither did I, until this afternoon, but I was fascinated to find out.

Oak Apple Day (29 May) commemorates the restoration of King Charles II in 1660. Of course, it isn't celebrated so much anymore, but it actually used to be a public holiday in England until 1859. A few ceremonies are still held here and there.

The symbolism of the oak apple (which isn't an apple at all, but a "type of plant gall", whatever that is, from the oak tree) refers to the tree the future King hid in while fleeing from the Roundheads after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. (Another thing I learned today was just how romantic and dashing his escape from England really was-- six weeks of narrow escapes, disguise and safe houses. Why has nobody made a movie of it yet?)

If you didn't wear oak leaves or oak apples on that day, you were liable to be pelted with eggs-- and good enough for you, say I.

Why am I even mentioning this? Not only because I am an ardent monarchist, but also because, to me, the fading and disappearance of these traditions is almost unbearably sad. It seems to me a crying shame that Guy Fawkes night (though it might be considered a form of Catholic-bashing, if you want to be politically correct about it) appears to be dying out in England. I remember, when I was a boy, British comics used to print (on double-page spreads) Guy Fawkes masks to cut out and paste onto stiff cardboard, especially for the fifth of November. A mask of the unhappy plotter has become iconic in our own time, of course (amongst the Occupy Wall Street brigade), but it's not quite the same thing.

We in Ireland have our own political commemoration we would do well to revive-- Ivy Day (October 6) a day for honouring Charles Stewart Parnell. I know the name came from the sprigs of ivy that mourners at his mammoth funeral took upon leaving the cemetery, and placed it in their buttonholes. I know that James Joyce wrote a short story called Ivy Day in the Committee Room (I even have a vague memory of reading it). But I don't know much more about it. Still, I would be all in favour of a revival.

What on earth is all this doing in this blog? Well, I have no intention of confining my musings here to the purely religious. I do think Catholics should be, well, catholic.

If I seemed to harsh in my recent review of Beyond Consolation by John Waters, let me say I agree with the spirit of this passage:

Why does religion, which should really embrace the entirety of human possibility, seem content to wallow about in a mess of petty issues relating to perceived ethical dimensions of reality? Why, for example, do we not expect to find in our religious publications articles about (to outline a short list for the sake of example) poetry, motor cars, Mozart, football, beauty, ice-skating, mathematics, Plato, black holes, the molecular structure of water?...Is it not odd that, if religion is supposed to encompass everything, it is so easy to predict what will preoccupy religious-minded people?

I think he is a bit harsh on some religious publications here (the Sacred Heart Messenger, for instance, and to some degree the Irish Catholic) but there is a fundamental fairness to the observation. I am going to try to take it to heart!

I Admit It-- I am an Aesthetic Protestant...

As we celebrate Palm Sunday and move into Holy Week, the liturgy becomes more elaborate. This, of course, is a wonderful thing. It would feel very anticlimactic for the high point of the Church's year to be celebrated with the usual liturgy.

Nothing seems more appropriate, or more satisfying, than the crimson vestments of the priest in today's Mass, or the dramatic re-enactment of Christ's trial and condemnation, or the blessing and distribution of palms to commemorate that long-ago and eternally-present entry into Jerusalem. (We now have an altar boy and an altar girl, for the first time since I returned to Mass-going.)

But before I set off to my parish church, I had a look at EWTN, the Catholic TV station, and watched some of the Palm Sunday Mass that was taking place in St. Peter's Square.

After the sung Confession of Faith came prayers of the faithful. They were read out in one language, then another, then another...by the time I left the house, a young-ish man was reading out the prayer in German.

This reminds me of Housman's little piece of doggerel:

It is a fearful thing to be
The Pope.
That cross will not be laid on me,
I hope.
A righteous God would not permit
It.
The Pope himself must often say,
After the labours of the day,
'It is a fearful thing to be
Me.'

Imagine having the cameras and the eyes of the audience focused on you during all those endless High Masses!

Maybe I am a philistine, but sung Masses, soaring cathedrals, and the booming of organ music leaves me cold. It's all too much-- my sense of wonder is buried under all the baroque brilliance.

Don't get me wrong-- I think ceremony is wonderful, essential. Ornament is wonderful. A sense of occasion is wonderful. And the transformation of ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Saviour should most emphatically not be approached in a casual or offhand spirit.

But is more always better? The words of the liturgy fill me with more awe when they are spoken rather than sung. Hymns always seem more haunting to me when they rely on the human voice alone, rather than the accompaniment of an organ. And a simple chapel with a few statues and hangings always seems more reverential to me than lofty spires, monuments dripping with marble, flying buttresses and enormous rose windows.

There is an enormous difference between the understated and the prosaic.

I will probably offend Traditionalists even more by admitting that I prefer the great English Protestant hymns-- He Who Would Valiant Be, Abide with Me, Jerusalem-- to the Latin hymns I've heard.

Of course, this is all a matter of aesthetics, and it is always dangerous to pay too much attention to aesthetics in sacred matters. But I do think it is woth pointing out that you can be an orthodox, traditionally-minded Catholic and still think less is sometimes more.