Digby Anderson
A leading contender for the worst thing to happen this century must be the wanton destruction of western church liturgies, notably the Tridentine Mass and the Book of Common Prayer. Cogent arguments against the vandals have been made both on theological and aesthetic grounds. But until now it has been easy for the modernisers to dismiss the latter as purely aesthetic and therefore irrelevant. Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Back- ground (Una Voce Press, US$19.95) puts an end to all that. It provides cogent theo- logical arguments to show why divine wor- ship should be beautiful, traditional and dramatic.
Next, James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (Liberty Fund Press, US$7.50), for the section on fraternity. Much of today's progressive politics — citizenship rights' talk, inclusiveness, inter- nationalism — is part of the fraternity pro- ject. Stephen confesses that 'I hardly knew anything in literature so nauseous as Rousseau's expressions of love for mankind . . . Keep your love to yourself and do not daub me or mine with it.'
Orczy has always been the best introduc- tion to the originators of fraternity. Read- ing an omnibus edition (The Gallant Pimpernel, Hodder & Stoughton, 1939), I spotted a curious parallel. The evil Chau - velin was from the Committee of Public Safety. In the name of public safety were all sorts of intrusions and tyrannies com- mitted. Today the magic words are 'public health'.
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