Myles Bourke
Msgr. Myles M. Bourke, pastor of Corpus Christi Church in Manhattan for twenty-six years and an eminent proponent of excellent sacred music and solemn liturgical practice, died on Saturday at 7:15 a.m. at Our Lady of Consolation in the Bronx.
Msgr. Bourke, a prominent scripture scholar, was made pastor of Corpus Christi in 1966, during the years of considerable liturgical ambiguity following the Second Vatican Council. When it was announced the Solesmes would issue revised chant books to accord with the new calendar and rite that were then being devised, most all Catholic churches threw out their old Libers. This revised Roman Gradual did not appear, however, until 1975, by which time any living tradition of chant in these churches had been dead for nearly a decade. Not so at Corpus Christi. Msgr. Bourke steadfastly refused to abandon the chant, and continued to use the old chant books until the new ones were available--and the new books turned out to be not so radical a departure as had been widely expected. (It should be noted that he was critical of aspects of the new calendar, most especially the idea of "Ordinary Time" that conflates the theologically very different Sundays after Epiphany and Sundays after Pentecost.) His rigorous and prayerful example was an inspiration to a number of younger priests.
The funeral will be held on Tuesday, 16 November, at 10 a.m. at Corpus Christi.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Msgr. Bourke, a prominent scripture scholar, was made pastor of Corpus Christi in 1966, during the years of considerable liturgical ambiguity following the Second Vatican Council. When it was announced the Solesmes would issue revised chant books to accord with the new calendar and rite that were then being devised, most all Catholic churches threw out their old Libers. This revised Roman Gradual did not appear, however, until 1975, by which time any living tradition of chant in these churches had been dead for nearly a decade. Not so at Corpus Christi. Msgr. Bourke steadfastly refused to abandon the chant, and continued to use the old chant books until the new ones were available--and the new books turned out to be not so radical a departure as had been widely expected. (It should be noted that he was critical of aspects of the new calendar, most especially the idea of "Ordinary Time" that conflates the theologically very different Sundays after Epiphany and Sundays after Pentecost.) His rigorous and prayerful example was an inspiration to a number of younger priests.
The funeral will be held on Tuesday, 16 November, at 10 a.m. at Corpus Christi.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
2 Comments:
Thank you so much for this. It is a moving tribute to a great priest but also a reminder of what is surely the least known aspect of the immediate postconciliar liturgical culture: the prescribed liturgy inadvertantly became a text-only undertaking, removed from its previously embedded musical framework, with the implied message that liturgy teams were free to fill in the blanks. Worse, the happened during a period of great cultural upheaval when it was commonly assumed that the old was being washed away and replaced with the new. This six-year gap might go a long way toward explaining that great mystery of what happened to Catholic music. I do recall my own shock of sudden enlightenment the first time I thumbed through the Graduale. In any case, this is all history, and Msgr. Bourke's way surely provides an example for the future.
The obituary in Catholic New York, the archdiocesan newspaper:
http://cny.org/obnames120204.htm#3
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