Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Wednesday 16 April 2008

The most common phrase....?

I read somewhere, something to the effect that the most commonly typed words in the Catholic blogosphere are something like, "thanks to Amy Welborn."
Well, all can say is.... thank you, Amy Welborn!
She has a post linking to an article in the Washington Post on the Papal Mass and music and, frankly, the "liturgy wars." (My words, not hers or the author)
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/music-in-the-wapo/
Links to some good statements by Jeffrey Tucker, to the Parish Book of Chant, go read the whole thing....
But I want to call attention to THIS nugget: key to opening ourselves to a different way of thinking on this is to start grappling with the fact that most of us think that the Mass is essentially a prayer meeting. Prayer meetings and gatherings are good, but that’s not what the Mass is. It’s something different, and exploring those differences and the assumptions we bring to Mass about what it is we’re doing there…we’re only at the very beginning of that conversation.
YES!
Yes, yes, yes, YES!
This complete misapprehension of what the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is and is not by a enormous segment of the Catholic world, (including, shamefully, far too many charged with conducting the Liturgy, either as priest of musician,) is one of the things from which the Mass, the Liturgy.... well, must be saved.
And the music we use, for good or ill, both expresses and reinforces either our misunderstanding or our comprehension of What The Mass Is.
And that's why what we do matters.

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