You WHO' MEETS A FR. BASSET COOL RECEPTION FR. BERNARD

BASSET, S.J., is in the United States for several months. He expects to have many adventures and interesting experiences which he hopes to share with his Catholic Herald readers. This is the first in a monthly series.
0 great cunning was needed to get me to promise a monthly letter to old friends. If travel deepens one's love and respect for other countries, it also heightens the sense of nostalgia. The sight of a tin of Allen and Hanbury's black-currant lozenges in a New York drug store brought a sizable lump to my throat.
In much the same mood, I fell on the neck of a wealthy Texan in mid-Atlantic because he had bought a cottage in the Cotswolds, for the joy of growing English roses and of mowing "a little old English lawn".
His further motive was a strange one. He had found that he could be cremated in England with episcopal blessing where the disposal of his cadaver in his home State would raise a moot theological point.
The liturgy at sea
ON BOARD the S.S. United States, one saw the new liturgy from a nautical angle, with passengers joining the ship in Hamburg, Southampton and Le Havre. There were four priests on board, French, Irish, Indian and English with one of whom only am I here concerned.
I naturally celebrated Mass in the Ambrosden Avenue Rite but the missal came from Manhattan and the congregation of 200 from every part of the world.
My resounding Confiteor in Oxford English drew no response. Either the passengers were not sorry or they did not understand. I ploughed through the Gloria dutifully substituting You for Thou. After a series of "You-Who" clauses I turned to salute the congregation, to receive a sturdy answer "And with Thy spirit". We said the Collect in Latin, the Sanctus in English, while Our Lord in the Gospel no longer exhorted us to gird our loins but invited us to fasten our belts.
Reactions to change
IT CAME as a surprise to meet so many American Catholics who strongly resisted any liturgical change. Last night in Chicago at the national convention of booksellers and Church suppliers, men and women from every part of the country spoke their mind.
Their views were similar to those of an angry and bearded young man who raised the subject when we were strap-hanging on a New York bus. He had read my name on my glove.
Introducing himself as a Neurotic, he went on to condemn the change from Latin, deriving some consolation from the lead given by English Catholics in this attitude. As best I could, with commuters pushing past us, I tried to put him right on this point.
Priests in Chicago and New York assure me that this violent opposition comes only from a small section and that the response to greater participation has been very encouraging.
Chicago retreat
FORTY CHICAGO businessmen have arrived here, this Friday evening. for their annual retreat. They had evening Mass at 9.30 p.m., the priest facing them. They sang a splendid processional hymn; one of the retreatants read the Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion, another the Epistle, a third the Bidding Prayers.
They sang at the offertory and before receiving communion; a master of ceremonies at the lectern inviting them to stand, sit, kneel or sing.
The retreat is an interesting one for 25 of the retreatants are related to each other. Each year the family makes a retreat, bringing along Catholic employees from the family firm.
Belloc and the Beatles
SINCE MY ARRIVAL in the States, I have had to spend many hours with publishers and -booksellers and with the Editors of three well-known magazines. They confirmed what I had myself already noticed, a remarkable change inside the Ameri can Church. • Where, on previous visits to the States, I had found an almost exaggerated respect for &floc, Chesterton, Lunn, Knox and other English Catholic writers, today a younger generation spoke of these great men with irritation, even discontent.
They judge the world of Belloc and Gill as self-opinionated and class-conscious and regret a monopoly which restricted Catholic thought, The long British ascendancy in this field is now ending and a very brilliant group of young American Catholic writers will play an import
ant part in the fashioning of the English-speaking Church.
But if Belloc has been deposed, the Beatles are in the ascendant. I was astonished that our famous English mop heads should command so much admiration here. Solemn miiddle-aged Americans spoke with enthusiasm of the Beatle films. A publisher ranked the Beatles with the Marx Brothers and assured me that they had "wiped out the memory of the Boston tea-party overnight".
I heard how a nun in California had borrowed two Beatle songs for an outdoor procession in honour of Our Lady and a grave priest, a member of a liturgical commission, thought that the Beatles should be invited to compose a "folk" Mass.
Future plans
I REMAIN in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland until after Easter and then set out on a monster tour. My itinerary includes Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, San Antonio, Texas, with a final month in New York.
On my programme I note 24 retreats, innumerable lectures, a column in a Catholic journal and, perhaps, a book. It will be entitled Priest in Paradise; With God in Illinois.
As the coloured porter remarked yesterday at Kennedy Airport when he heard that I came from London, England: "Sir, when I meet an Englishman, I sure look for depth!"