In Providence
last year I was humbled, even embarrassed, and certainly felt unworthy
of the naming of the FDLC annual award—but, more deeply, I was
pleased, flattered, and honored. A year later I am again pleased,
flattered, and honored to present for the award Godfrey Diekmann, my
friend and, for more than four decades, my colleague.
Tonight we honor
Godfrey for his extraordinary service and achievement in matters
liturgical and pastoral. We also celebrate the sixty-fifth anniversary
of his presbyteral ordination, the seventieth anniversary of his
monastic profession. I have always maintained that he was professed
immediately after Christian initiation and that he was indeed a
child-monk. To this moment he has remained young at heart.
Last June,
at one of those huge papal audiences in Rome, Pope John Paul came over
and asked Godfrey: “Aren’t you that Benedictine monk I met the other
day?” Of course, Godfrey had attracted the pope’s attention by
wildly waving his multicolored cane, a kind of Joseph’s cane of many
colors. And from the June ICEL meeting in Rome, some of us treasure a
photograph in which Godfrey seems to be lecturing the Bishop of Rome.
Godfrey is the
monk of the 1991 biography, The Monk’s Tale, written by
Kathleen Hughes. The volume is scholarly, but also warm and loving. I
mention the book partly in the hope that most of you have read it and so
I need not go into specifics about all the Diekmann accomplishments.
Even more, it gives me the chance to report that in the five years since
The Monk’s Tale was published, Godfrey has continued to be
young at heart, to repeat my cliché, in things liturgical and
ecclesial, social and ecumenical. At the meetings of the ICEL Advisory
Committee, where Godfrey and I served even before ICEL was formally set
up in 1963, his remains a fresh and strong voice. An example: he recalls
a patristic passage that he came upon just last week and that he now
applies to younger generations and today’s circumstances. This he does
with all the vigor and enthusiasm he has always had—unlike some few
liturgical pioneers who have become liturgical curmudgeons.
Godfrey Diekmann
was the first, I think, to point out that the new constitution on the
liturgy was inadequate in its almost passing reference to “all the
works of charity, piety, and the apostolate.” He offered this
stricture because his whole liturgical enterprise had been bound up with
liturgy-and-life intertwining, with the Hillenbrands and Reinholds and
Hovdas, with those committed to interracial justice and family life
undertakings, not to mention the biblical and ecumenical movements on
the eve of the council or that Liturgical Week theme of the mid-fifties,
Liturgy and Social Order. Thus for a quarter century he was a
major and faithful architect of The Liturgical Conference’s programs.
Godfrey is best
known as the editor who brought new life and breadth—including the
catechetical and pastoral and social—to Orate, Fratres, now Worship,
where he succeeded the great pioneer, Virgil Michel. But he was and is a
patristic scholar and a theologian of distinction. Until this very fall,
he was a university and college teacher through more than six successful
decades. One of his triumphs was when he was honored by a disinvitation
to lecture and teach at The Catholic University of America. Later his
generosity of spirit let him rejoin our summer and adjunct faculty at
the University, and we did try to make slight amends with an honorary
degree.
His lectures,
many of them published over the years, have always been presented in
compelling and moving language and tone, with all that enthusiasm and
eagerness. His massive achievements as editor—he even managed to
polish the rough outpourings of H. A. Reinhold’s genius—were
sometimes surpassed by the talks which best revealed his whole Christian
life of faith and hope and love.
I have to tell
you that Godfrey is, among many other things, a mushroom fancier and a
mushroom specialist. To return to somewhat profounder matters, I am sure
you know that Godfrey served effectively on the preparatory commission
that drafted Sacrosanctum Concilium and, at the instance and
intervention of the heroic Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, on the conciliar
liturgical commission as it finished its work in the second year of the
council. What you may not know is that, at a meeting in Washington, the
subcommittee of Diekmann, Quasten, and Hofinger had earlier drafted the
first text of the articles of Sacrosanctum Concilium on cultural
adaptation, now inculturation. As a member of ICEL’s Advisory
Committee with a lifetime term, today he is even more committed to
liturgical inculturation and growth.
This tribute,
which could go on much further, is an expression of esteem and affection
and gratitude. I am now happy to present Dom Godfrey Diekmann of the
Order of Saint Benedict to the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions for its annual award.
Now, a
postscript and a personal bonus from me to Godfrey. It is a 1963
photograph, retrieved after careful archival research by my good
sister-in-law. The photograph was taken outside Saint Peter’s after a
general congregation of Vatican II. There are three happy people in the
picture—happy over the liturgical constitution, happy over all the
mighty deeds of the Holy Spirit of God at work in the Church, at work in
the Church then assembled in council.
