.- Jaime Soto, the coadjutor bishop of Sacramento, addressed the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference in Long Beach, California on September 18. While noting that marriage is not the "sole domain of love," he also reiterated the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful. During his talk, several audience members walked out while Bishop Soto received hostile responses from many in the audience afterward.
The bishop’s address began by challenging the belief that Jesus "always gave people what they wanted" and was an "agreeable person." He noted the exchange between Jesus and Simon Peter in Matthew 16, where Jesus says "You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."
"Jesus does not give in to the expectations of Peter or the expectations of others," Bishop Soto explained. "He has firmly planted in his heart the expectations and desires of his Father in heaven. He says ‘no’ to Peter and challenges Peter to take up a greater ‘yes,’ to take up his cross and follow him."
The bishop also referenced St. Paul’s phrase "do not conform yourselves to this age," noting the human capacity to think that Jesus is "too unrealistic, too unreasonable," and to convince ourselves that "we know better than the Lord."
Such habits, the bishop said, are evident today in the area of sexuality, about which many of us have a "distorted sense."
"Sexuality has been reduced to a matter of personal preference and personal pleasure without responsibility and with little respect for others. We can lose sight of the profound dignity of the human person who shares in God’s love and creative work through the chaste expression of one’s sexuality proper to one’s calling in life. "
Bishop Soto criticized the "contraceptive culture" that reduces the procreative act to "simple recreation absolved of any responsibility." He also explained the Church’s support for the California ballot’s Proposition 8, which would overturn the California Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year instituting same-sex marriage.
"The nature of love has been distorted," the bishop continued. "Many popular notions have deviated from its true destiny. Love for many has come to mean having sex. If you cannot have sex than you cannot love. This is the message. Even more destructive is the prevailing notion that sex is not an expression of love. Sex is love."
He said this view "deprives sexuality of its true meaning" and hampers the possibility of "ever knowing real love."
Sexual intercourse, he explained, is "a beautiful expression of God’s love" when it is understood "as a unique expression intended to share in the creative, faithful love of God." Referencing Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est, he said that when sexual intercourse ceases to be an icon of God’s "creative, unifying love" it becomes "impoverished" and "demeans the human person."
Bishop Soto then lauded the virtue of chastity, calling it "the path that brings us to that harmony with God’s wisdom and love" and a thing that "moves us beyond one’s desire to what God wills for each one of us."
This is true, he said, also for men and women who are homosexual.
"Let me be clear here," the bishop stated. "Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful."
While same-sex relations can be "alluring" for homosexuals, it "deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all."
Acknowledging the "beautiful, heroic expression" of married love, he added, "Marriage is also not the sole domain of love as some of the politics would seem to imply." Love includes "the deep and chaste love of committed friends" as well as the love of religious and clergy, the bonds between Christians, and the love between family members.
"Should we dismiss or demean the human and spiritual significance of these lives given in love?" He asked rhetorically.
"We hope and pray that all people, including our brothers and sisters who are homosexuals, will see the reasonableness of our position and the sincerity of our love for them," the bishop continued, closing with an exhortation to the audience "to be drawn into the ways and the manners of Jesus."
Two conference attendees told the California Catholic Daily that they witnessed Bishop Soto "courageously but gently" give a clear presentation of Catholic teaching on sexuality. They report at least five members of the audience walked out during the bishop’s address, while only a very small number applauded the bishop at the conclusion of his speech.
When the conference chairman announced the bishop would answer questions at a reception held in another room, members of the audience reportedly made widespread shows of disapproval and said they wanted to respond immediately.
Bishop Soto then interacted with respondents.
About eight audience members expressed their unhappiness with what the bishop had said. One woman reportedly commented that the audience knew what the Church teaches but wanted to hear about the value of the "lived experience" of lesbian women and gay men.
Two other speakers, one man and one woman, thanked the bishop for his address and voiced agreement with his remarks.
While the audience members responded to the bishop’s remarks, the California Catholic Daily says, one board member of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries approached one of the tables in the room and said "On behalf of the board, I apologize. We had no idea Bishop Soto was going to say what he said."
The California Catholic Daily claims that the Berkeley-based National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries has the reputation of taking "at best, an ambiguous stance" on issues concerning same-sex attraction and homosexual acts.
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
Monday, 29 September 2008
I apologize. We had no idea the bishop actually adhered to Catholic teaching...
Who is like God
But apropos of nothing, a thought occurs -- the bad angel? (take your pick, Lucifer, Satan... in any case,) "non serviam."
The good angels? They WILL serve, they DO serve.
Michael, "who is like God," exactly how is he like God?
By serving.
Because God emptied Himself and took the form of a slave.
Michael, the prince of the angels, all good men and women, the saints, and us, too -- we are "like God" precisely in that we serve, and we are good to the extent that we serve.
Brideshead
I do not consider myself a sympathiser with Roman Catholicism, but this film seems motivated by the cheaper sort of malice against it. Lady Marchmain is represented as a blazing-eyed fanatic, capable of compelling a male guest to attend a Catholic service (at which, laughably, she herself officiates). Julia does something that neither a true aristocrat nor a true Catholic would do, by asking whether this same guest is "one of us". Her crucial later monologue on sin is badly truncated. The rather subtle way in which Waugh makes Charles feel that perhaps there is something banal about his own "agnosticism" - miscast in the film as atheism - is at no point even acknowledged.
I have no intention of the film-makers getting my 9.50, so I shouldn't comment on a film I shall not see until it's free, but word before its release was that absurdly, it left the Catholicism out of the story; but the actual film seem to demonstrate an even less wise move on the part of the film-makers -- the Faith is, impossibly, the villain of the piece. (So what if the story doesn't make any sense then? over and over we see that movies nowadays, given enough sex and 'splosions, don't need to make sense to earn back their costs.)
If they did, then they wouldn't be SINNERS, would they?
The refrain is not too bad.
But putting aside the lame melody of the verses, (or rather, melodies, for this is one where the incompetent composer not only paraphrased and substituted his own insights for the psalmist's and his own words for the Church's, but despite that freedom, that license, he made the rhythms of number of syllables of each verse different, endearing himself to cantors who actually try to read the music everywhere,) look at the words:
Good and just is the Lord (nice way to accent an auxiliary verb, huh?) the sinners know the way.
How does that stack up with:
Good and upright is the Lord, thus he shows sinners the way.
Huh?
Got that? HE, God shows sinners the way, He does it, THEY DON"T KNOW IT.
If they did, well....
Friday, 26 September 2008
Bold Papal Move
Way to Go, Papa!!!!!!!Vatican City (CNA) -- Pope Benedict XVI has made a low profile but significant move in the direction of liturgical reform by completely changing his liturgical consultants.
A hardly noticed brief note from the Vatican Press Office on Sept. 24 announced the appointment of new consultants for the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. It did not mention, however, the importance of the new appointees.
The new consultants include Monsignor Nicola Bux, professor at the Theological Faculty of Puglia (Southern Italy), and author of several books on liturgy, especially on the Eucharist. Bux recently finish a new book, Pope Benedict’s Reform, printed by the Italian publishing house Piemme, scheduled to hit the shelves in December.
The list of new consultants also includes Fr. Mauro Gagliardi, an expert in dogmatic theology and professor at the Legionaries of Christ's Pontifical Athenaeum “Regina Apostolorum;” Opus Dei Spanish priest Juan José Silvestre Valor, professor at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome; Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, C.O., an official of the Congregation for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and author of the book Turning Towards the Lord -- about the importance of facing ad orientem during Mass; and Fr. Paul C.F. Gunter, a Benedictine professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant Anselmo in Rome and member of the editorial board of the forthcoming Usus Antiquior, a quarterly journal dedicated to the liturgy under the auspices of the Society of St. Catherine of Siena. The Society, which has an association with the English Province of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), promotes the intellectual and liturgical renewal of the Church.
Also relevant to the appointments is the fact that all former consultants, appointed when Archbishop Piero Marini led the office of Liturgical Celebrations, have been dismissed since their appointments were not renewed.
Faith in the Power of the Liturgy
He is dealing some of the same mindset that Fr Keyes, IIRC, referenced when he said a celebrant who feels he must start Mass with "hello, everyone, how are you on this lovely day? and welcome!" does nothing but demonstrate his lack of faith in the power of the words,
In the last few days I've spent some time considering the attitudes of various people towards music ministry, including those who are responsible for it. This came about largely because of a comment that I received on my choir blog that was critical of my "Three Year Plan" to gradually introduce liturgical music at the parish where I serve. The gist of the comment was this: "If you really want to bring people to Jesus with your music rather than have them leave the church, you would be nuts to do this!" I posted a rather rash response at first, but have since deleted it as I thought about it and have now come to this conclusion: We need to have a clear focus on just who we serve as liturgical musicians.
To begin with, the comment posed a false dilemma that we too often accept at face value. Our choice is not between presenting popular-style songs and catchy responses or having people leave the church. I'm not sure that this would even be the case if it were correct that people prefer pop-style liturgy music to authentic liturgical music. But what is wrong with the premise is that the purpose of music at Mass is to "bring people to Jesus", at least in the way that most people think.
What underlies this (false) premise is that the Mass, on it's own, is too distant and incomprehensible, and as such is insufficient to provide people spiritual nourishment. It is up to the music to bring the liturgy down to the level of "the people" and give them something familiar that they can go away humming when they leave. The Mass becomes an excuse for people to gather so that they can be "brought to Jesus" by the liturgical musicians who REALLY understand them in a way that the Priest doesn't. As liturgical musicians in this model, we are like evangelist-advocates for the faithful, interpreting scripture and presenting it to them in a way that they can understand so that Mass is attractive to them and has meaning. Whether consciously or sub-consciously, this is the attitude adopted by many, if not most liturgical musicians. I have come to believe that this attitude is not only misguided, it's destructive to the faith and we are finally realizing the damage that it has done.
Consider the resistance to replacing "lyrics" in pop-style liturgical songs with actual liturgical proper texts. The resistance comes only because the composers of these songs feel that it is their role to "interpret" for the faithful and present the concepts to them in a language that they can understand. They see themselves less as composers and more as preachers, speaking to the faithful and teaching them through their words. If they are required to use approved texts, how are they going to "speak to the people"? Surely their lyrics do this better than the actual texts of the Mass!
Or consider that as this attitude gained foothold, Catholic litugical musicians increasingly took on the title "Music Minister", a term borrowed from the Evangelical Protestant community, where musicians actually are a ministerial position in a church, often co-equal with the Pastor, and preach directly to the faithful through "their music". In many cases, the Pastor is a musician who sings to the faithful during services (picture televangelists). Although this model is completely alien to Catholic liturgy, I think many liturgical musicians actually see themselves in this role.
This perception is further strengthened by a presence at the front of the sanctuary facing the people. It's hard to feel that you're NOT supposed to be preaching to the people when you're up in front of them on a stage. When up in a loft in the back of the church with the Organ, the perception was that the Choir was part of the church itself, unseen and only heard echoing through the arches. But up in front of the people, facing them with microphones, there is a totally different perception and the "American Idol" within takes over and we play to the crowd.
So what can be done? First, we need to have that clear understanding of just who we serve as liturgical musicians. This is the point at which I will part ways with the vast majority of my peers... we serve the liturgy, not the people! We are supposed to be doing what the liturgy wants, not what the people want. We are supposed to present that liturgy to the best of our ability, and allow the liturgy to "bring people to Jesus". The problem is that we have lost faith in the ability of the liturgy to do that, and we feel that we need to step in and give the people what they need, lest they walk out. We need to regain that faith in our liturgy and stop trying to patch it up and fix it.
Secondly, we need to have a clear understanding of what the liturgy requires of us as musicians. This is the subject of myriad books, websites, blogs, workshops and colloquia and is too large of a subject to cover here. It isn't a matter of being "conservative" or "orthodox" or "progressive" or "liberal"... it's a matter of trusting in the liturgy as it is given to us and not interpreting it to acheive our own goals or support our own agenda.
Thirdly, we need to trust "the people" and stop pandering to them out of fear that they won't like us. Many musicians are, by nature, insecure and seek approval. When we see ourselves as presenting "our music", negative comments become an attack on us and we react by becoming defensive. We respond by performing what is popular and safe. Even though we may never have presented a chanted Entrance Antiphon or Latin sanctus, we fear doing so because we are afraid that people will criticize us for doing so, as though this is some decision of ours.
This is where it would be helpful to have some authoritative statement from the Holy See, CDW, Bishop or SOME kind of authority up the chain regarding music at Mass. We need to have some kind of defense for the criticism that may come our way, and we are afraid to take this on with little more than "Gregorian Chant should be given pride of place in the liturgy" to back us up. This is why I continue to say that such a statement is necessary if there is to be any progress on this issue. I am willing to do the work, but I'm not going to risk losing my job over it. Such a statement could be pointed to as a "job description" for liturgical musicians and would give us the needed authority to make changes. Those who don't want to make changes can ignore it, and that would be their choice. But don't deprive me of such an important tool just because some are going to ignore it. It would have been a shame if Paul VI had decided to not pen Humanae Vitae just because he feared that some would ignore it.
Understand that we serve the liturgy. Understand what the liturgy requires. Serve it fearlessly and with passion. You don't have to be a "Traditionalist" liturgical musician, just be a liturgical musician and not a "Music Minister".
Discovering a hidden and forgotten beauty
I have been forty years in the desert ...For Forty years the music at Mass has been a genuine means for me to unite closely with the passion and sufferings of our Lord.
Yet in the last eight years we have been slowly introducing chants: The sequences became the mandatory mile markers of the liturgical year, Then the Salve Regina, and Regina Coeli after Mass became routine. When WLP provided the Gloria VIII: well you know what we did! The demand for Taize meditaion services gave us support for Latin and soon the Latin Taize refrains were replaced with antiphons from the Gradual. We are all amazed with the Gradual's intellectual content, its beauty and surprise. It seem as if we have climbed high on a scaffold in our own church and discovered under the layers of white paint, a beautiful mural. [emphasis mine] The complexity of the few Gradual chants that we have learned demanded that we grow in understanding of rythymic groupings and the ictus.This week the choir would not sing t even a simple antiphon unless we reviewed the double and triple rhythmic groupings - marking the ictic notes!
Most of all were having fun doing this.
This coming Sunday, as we are hosting a regional St. Wenceslas Day celebration, we were asked to sing something during Mass in Czech.Though no one in our parish speaks Czech the liturgists had a very positive disposition toward singing in a very foreign language. I could not help expanding the liturgists' positive attitude toward Czech by suggesting that not only will we do Czech, but Latin too. And my suggestion landed well . The Mass will be celebrated by one of our bishops, and ALL but two pieces will be chant ! One non-chant piece is "O God, Beyond All Praising".
We are thankful to this website and I am greatly encouraged (and not intimidated) by the absence of an elitist attitude, especially among so many scholars. Saint John Nepomucene- Pray for us.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Penitential Music
Mary Jane once mentioned how suitable Hosea, IIRC correctly, was in that regard during Lent.
If Messaien is a hair shirt, Christian head-banger music might be the cilice.
In a Simpson's episode, the Devil tried, (unsuccessfully, need we add?) to torture Homer by making him eat processed American cheese food slices until he was sated and sickened. Is that a good metaphor for Center of my Life?
Anyone want to contribute to the list?
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An interesting thread on introducing authenticity to Catholic musical prayer
Paul Ford, beside sage advice, offered up this marvelous quote:
“Gregorian chant is not music . . . it is a way of praying and a way of proclamation.” (related by Dr. Franz Karl Praßl)But relating to neither of them, and indeed, to no one on the thread so far as I know, the whole thing has got me thinking.
I have been belatedly appointed navigator in cars where the driver, through carelessness or excessive adventurousness had gotten us hopelessly lost, more than once.
I have learned that there is a certain type of driver, to whom it is simply useless to suggest retracing our path, or going back the way we came, even if that is clearly the most expedient thing to do to anyone looking at the map.
What the thinking of such personalities is, I am not sure, and I will say that it seems to appear most often in the male of the species.
And it is not a matter of pride exactly, of refusing to admit error, for some people I know beat themselves up over such miscalculations, all the while being unwilling to find a jug-handle, as we say in New Jersey, and go back the way he came.
I think it is a matter of "investment," a goofy, unrealistic hopefulness, that manifests itself as preference for risking throwing good money after bad, over cutting ones losses.
The reason I bring this up is that I think a lot of well meaning people have royally screwed things up in the Church, particularly in the area of liturgy and music and their evangelical power, and they can see that they have, all the evidence points to the fact, either study or a quick glance suffices to demonstrate it, but they put on a brave face and insist, you can't go back! or onward, keeping going in the same direction! More of the same and it'll all work out the way we intended all along!
Bad pop-flavored music and casual warm-fuzzies-worship as a sort of liturgical hair-or-the-dog-that-bit-you.
And it's the word "investment" that gives it away.
I've encountered several aging-boomer-types recently, obviously swimming against the tide, clinging to the barely-afloat Liturgical Tambourine, or "Manual of Lay Preaching" or giant puppets who speak proudly of the years they have "invested" in that tambourine, or whatever.
I can see why it is hard to admit that their time and efforts were, frankly, a waste.
But since God can draw straight with crooked lines, even with them in the driver's seat, I have no doubt we'll eventually get where we're going.
And that's progress.
"Pride gives birth to dissension..."
If nothing else, I absolutely hasta learn the humility necessary to live with the fear that someone who knows better will think obvious blunders were my decision... that's always been a failing of mine, I always have an excuse for everything and being prevented from offering it eats at me.
They are straying across the mountains and the high hills, they have been scattered over all the face of the earth. What does this mean, scattered over all the face of the earth? That they attach themselves to earthly things, the things that glitter on the face of the earth: they love and desire them. They do not want to die and be hidden away in Christ. Over all the face of the earth not only because they love earthly things but because across all the earth there are sheep astray. They are everywhere, but one thing, pride, is the mother of them all, just as Christians who are spread over all the world have one mother, the Church.
So it is not to be wondered at that pride gives birth to dissension while love generates unity.
When I was a kid, well, late teens, there was a man who sometimes served as cantor at our parish for weekday Masses. He was elderly, but had an incredibly powerful voice, with real "ping" and had surely been a choir member, perhaps a soloist before my time.
But what always struck me was how he went his own way on tempo, ignoring the organ, ignoring the congregation.
And whenever he cantored, [yeah, yeah, I know that's not a real word, unless the discussion is equestrian...] or even was in the congregation, for the same thing happened then, it set me to wondering.
It was the first time I had through about sin in a general, serious way, (rather than in terms of an actual or contemplated action or inaction of my own,) and it was about Pride.
Is it more prideful to insist on something when you're wrong, to insist on doing something when you're incompetent?
Or when you're right, and skilled?
Or doesn't it matter? does God not care? does the acid rain of pride fall on the talented and untalented alike?
Music that smells of the hair-shirt...
And of course the level of... no, enthusisam is not the word, zeal his compositions inspire in musicians much wiser, more skilled, holier and better educated than I leaves the unshakable feeling that the fault lies in my ears and my self.
Leaving me to suspect, as GB Shaw, (or Twain?) is said to have written of Wagner, "his music is much better than it sounds."
That is not to say I wouldn't like to be at this symposium on his music, nor do I think the experience would be penitential. (Though music as hair-shirt is an interesting concept -- I have often trembled lest the Muzak in hell would feature Bartok string quartets.)
No, I would comprehend a tiny bit, enjoy a bit more, and then take a page from Himself's playbook and just let that all that Aesthetictasticness, and Sacredy Goodness wash over me.
Bird songs twitter and shriek. Pianos and orchestras dance off-kilter dances. Great sonic cataclysms give way to music in which time seems to stand still in sublime sweetness.
This is the sonic world – often out of this world – of the late French composer Olivier Messiaen. Influences on his music, by his own account, included birds, Russian music, Debussy's mysterious opera Pelléas et Mélisande, plainsong (Gregorian chant), Hindu rhythms, the French Alps, stained-glass windows and rainbows.
"He was a 20th-century composer who was able to combine the most esoteric, academic, intellectual approaches to music with the most mystical and sensuous and appealing elements for the average audience," says pianist Christopher Taylor, who's playing Messiaen's nearly two-hour piano cycle Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus (20 Gazes on the Infant Jesus) tonight at Caruth Auditorium.
Co-sponsored by Voices of Change, Mr. Taylor's recital is a run-up to a two-day symposium, "Olivier Messiaen: The Composer as Theologian," jointly presented by Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology and Meadows School of the Arts.
In addition to lectures and discussions, the symposium will include performances of the organ suite La nativité du Seigneur (The Nativity of the Lord), played by George Baker, and the song cycle Harawi, sung by soprano Virginia Dupuy, with pianist Shields-Collins Bray. Post-symposium concerts will feature his Quartet for the End of Time and Visions de l'amen.
"I was looking for a way for the Meadows School and the Perkins School to collaborate fruitfully," says Christopher Anderson, associate professor of sacred music at SMU and coordinator of the symposium. "Messiaen's music carries such an extra-musical subtext of religion and theology. His project is at least as theological as it is musical."
Messiaen (pronounced "messy-AHN"), who died in 1992, celebrated his Roman Catholicism in his music. As much as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes, this is art about big faith issues: the birth and ascension of Christ, transcendent love and sacrifice, battles between good and evil, visions of the resurrected faithful.
Messiaen's oeuvre includes the opera St. Francis of Assisi, symphonic works titled The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ and Illuminations of the Beyond, and symphonic-band-and- percussion pieces called Colors of the Celestial City and I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead.
Even Messiaen's devotion to bird songs, painstakingly transcribed around the world and threaded through so much of his music, has an element of the transcendent.
"Birds are the opposite of time," the composer wrote. "They are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant songs!"
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
No, REALLY??!?@?$??%?
It's Christian Wrestling.
Honest. (I think... my satire and irony meter is on the fritz)
All together, now -- but people LIKE it!
http://markshea.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#2402797774354191009
*I have a friend who works at a sacrament factory and distributorship, who says I should sign on there. But I think maybe I'm more the outlet store type.
Anyone go to Opening Night at the Met?
in discussing the upcoming Thais, did Thomas Hampson or did he not describe the plot, for all intents and purposes, as a conflict between Good and Evil, with the side of "Good" being represented by .... well, the freedom-loving prostitute, and "Evil" being that mean ol' buzzkill "fundamentalist" (that word was actually used,) priest?
Alas, here's no rewind at the movies....
But that seemed to be basically what he was saying.
Anyone know?
My first write-in, perhaps?
I can hardly stand to listen to political commentary on television or radio, and I cannot listen to it with Himself in the room.
Prudential judgements and all, ya know...
Despite our both equivocating and vacillating like whirligigs, despite our both doing regular 180s, he sees my every statement, my every question, my every silence as some sort of indictment of his thought processes.
I'm so sick of it.
An, it seems to me, well reasoned teasing out of the logic of both major candidates' stances, and the illogic inherent in them, on a couple of issue:
I don't have high expectations for political candidates. Google's corporate motto sums up my standard: "Don't be evil."
I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, neither liberal nor conservative. I'm just as orthodox a Catholic as I know how to be, and I can't seem to square that with the platforms of either major party. Perhaps such a "plague o' both your houses" position is naive or irresponsible, but it isn't born out of mere contrarianism. Everyone wants to belong, and it would be nice to have some political camp to call home.
So I'd like to be able to get behind Barack Obama or John McCain and feel hip and stylish or old and crotchety, respectively. They both seem like nice enough guys who generally want to do good. But I can't get past the fact that they both support causes that are intrinsically evil, like abortion and/or embryonic stem cell research.
It has always been obvious to me -- completely independent of any religious conviction -- that human life begins at the moment of conception, i.e., when a sperm fertilizes an egg. (If it doesn't begin then, when does it?) It has also always been obvious to me that it is always wrong to deliberately take the life of an innocent human being. (If that's not wrong, what is?)
Those two propositions, taken together, lead me to the conclusion that abortion and embryonic stem cell research are never morally acceptable, regardless of the circumstances.
Obama supports both abortion and ESCR; McCain supports the latter. Which leaves me hoping that the two senators either haven't given their positions on these issues much thought, or that they're both incredibly stupid. Because otherwise I can't escape the conclusion that both our candidates for the presidency are moral monsters. Let me explain.
If you accept the premise that murder is wrong, the only morally legitimate way I can see to support abortion or ESCR is to claim to know that human life does not begin at conception. But neither Obama nor McCain claims to know that, or even to believe it.
When Obama was asked at the Compassion Forum on April 18 whether he personally believed that life begins at conception, he said, "I don't presume to know the answer to that question." Now, either Obama was simply being insincere and was trying to appear humble while painting pro-lifers as presumptuous, or else he knowingly supports the destruction of what may or may not, for all he knows, be living human beings. I refer him to Boston College philosophy professor Peter Kreeft, who asks: If you're out in the woods hunting, and you hear a rustling in the bushes, and you're not sure whether it's a deer or your fellow hunter, what do you do? Don't shoot! If you honestly don't know whether a zygote or an embryo or a fetus is a living human being, Senator Obama, don't destroy it. That's at least criminal negligence, if not manslaughter.
McCain's moral inconsistency is perhaps even worse. At the Saddleback Forum on August 16, Rick Warren asked him at what point a baby is entitled to human rights. McCain immediately replied, to much applause, "At the moment of conception." So in supporting ESCR, McCain is endorsing the destruction of what he believes (correctly) to be living human beings with human rights. That's the definition of murder.
I understand that abortion and embryonic stem cell research are deeply personal, emotionally charged issues. But in any moral system worthy of the name, there are some things you just can't do, even in the worst circumstances, or with the best intentions. That our presidential candidates don't seem to understand this, and that they both employ such duplicitous and disingenuous rhetoric to obscure the reality of their positions, makes me fear for the future.
(And need I add, while I follow his reasoning I will not necessarily follow his course. Because as they say, politics is the art of the possible, and Solomon is not running for office...)
(And of course, he's not a US citizen.)
Monday, 22 September 2008
Recollection
I read obsessively, and I listen and question, and I wonder, and let my thoughts meander, (much of this out loud, or in print,) and I sleep on it, and I imagine I spy connections, and I think and absorb and even come to conclusions, or adopt principles informed by the reading and listening and questioning and wondering and thinking and sleeping and connecting and absorbing... but never write the term paper or book report.
So only the overt activity is temporary, not, in reality, the enthusiasm, which become part of who I am.
One of my salient traits might be described as a kind of temporary enthusiasm... I am guilty of, as they say on your second grade report card, a "failure to complete tasks on time," or really, often, to complete them at all.
I read obsessively, and I listen and question, and I wonder, and let my thoughts meander, (much of this out loud, or in print,) and I sleep on it, and I imagine I spy connections, and I think and absorb and even come to conclusions, or adopt principles informed by the reading and listening and questioning and wondering and thinking and sleeping and connecting and absorbing... but never write the term paper or book report.
So only the overt activity is temporary, not, in reality, the enthusiasm, which become part of who I am.
Anyway, I am fixated on "recollection" just now, spurred by a post of Fr Ray Blake's about steps a teacher is taking to "re-enchant" the liturgy in order to form his pupils in a more progressive, I might say, radical manner.
Thank you, Kevin Knight, for the Catholic Encyclopedia online! (Why? because it would be such a labor to haul a volume off the shelf where it sits, two feet from you head, you lazy thing?) (YES!)
Recollection, as understood in respect to the spiritual life, means attention to the presence of God in the soul. It includes the withdrawal of the mind from external and earthly affairs in order to attend to God and Divine things. It is the same as interior solitude in which the soul is alone with God.
This recollection is twofold:
- Active recollection may be acquired by our own efforts aided by the ordinary grace of God. Thus any devout soul can acquire the habit of thinking of God's presence and of fixing attention upon Him and his Divine perfections.
- Passive recollection does not depend upon our own efforts, but is an extraordinary grace infused by God, by which He summons together the faculties of the soul and manifests His presence and His perfections; this kind of recollection is classed by mystical writiers as the first degree of infused contemplation.
- silence and solitude, according to our state of life, keeping in mind, at the same time, that one may be recollected amidst the duties of an active life;
- the avoidance of distracting and dissipating occupations not dictated by reason or required by necessity. Multiplicity of occupations is an obstacle to recollection. Father Faber says that the man who undertakes too much is a foolish man, if not a guilty one.
- The frequent exercise of the presence of God. As recollection is itself an application of the mind to the Divine presence within us, it is evident that the shortest way to its acquisition is frequently to call to mind that our souls are the temples of God.
Another cause of my current interest it that this activity, Recollection, (this most "passive" seeming of states possible, it would get the Effcap Police* in such a tzimmis!) and its importance in the authentic spiritual life seem closely related to Himself's habit of "letting all that Sacramenty Goodness just wash over me" when confronted with certain types of Liturgy, (for which he is constantly apologizing.)
I didn't have a very traditional Catholic formation, I don't know that I encountered the word, recollection, in the sense that Catholic mean it until I was an adult.
My formal, one class a week Religious Ed. was of the paint pictures on stones and learn that "God is Orange" variety except for one (God bless her!)
As a family, we decamped from our home parish from time to time, but that was usually for aesthetic reasons I now see, (and in fact, that may have had the side benefit of landing us in more orthodox communities. And in reality, even between those times, most of our liturgical activity was at a monastery.
In my one year of Catholic college before conservatory, I took a beginning course in philosophy, with a quite marvelous teacher, every inspiring; but in retrospect, i realize that in at least one of my papers I expressed heresy, which the teacher, a habited sister, did not note, or correct, or even challenge me on, but rather said I was a very original thinker and might want to consider a philosophy or theology major.
But after that, from the age of 18 or so onward, the need for Recollection, and the need to work at it has risen steadily in my priorities, without my even being aware of it.
(Maybe because I was going to school in an enormous city where there was an interesting and quiet Catholic church on practically every block, and where else is an impecunious commuting student with odd socialization skills and a reluctance to practice going to hang, other than on Tuesdays when the museums are free?)
In addition to Himself's self-perceived failings as a liturgical being, I think this ties into a better understanding of ones genuine obligations at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, (as opposed to the reminiscent-of-the-Host-of-the-Hippo-Ride-at-DisneyWorld exhortations of song leaders and animateurs,); the goals of those with charge of children's and school liturgies; and the much denigrated little old ladies who told their beads during Mass; and the texts that are barely a step above the Feedbox Lectionary; and the condescension of proponents of the faux primitif, (wheterh for thier social or chronilogical inferiors ); and... oh, numerous authoritative pronouncements of the Church and Her leaders.
It's all related.
I'll get back to this.
Unless, of course, my enthusiasm passes over the get-it-down-on-paper-phase and jumps to the part-of-me stage.
Meanwhile, I'll bore Himself with it on long car rides.
*Where did I pick this expression up online? I read it somewhere and now can't remember or find the source, to give credit where due.
Another thought on bells...
I think I have figured out the logic behind the denigration of the use of bells as a signal to the faithful, (which I love and endorse, and would love to hear even more, although I admit I am very fond of the even more to-the-point Byzantine cry of "Wisdom! Be attentive!)
Opposition to the use of the consecration bells makes perfect sense in a congregation, a community, that consists entirely of priests, liturgists, and priest and liturgist wannabes.... you know who you are.
A community that has, for whatever reason, and vows of celibacy are certainly a good one, ceased to reproduce.
In a parish or community where there are no children, no young people, and no new vocations in 40 years, no novices... well, you're right, you might as well save yourself the trouble of ringing bells.
Last one out, please think green and turn out the light.
Sunday, 21 September 2008
How hard it must be...
My First Son, a Pure Memory in the NYTimes is a quite, quite beautiful story on the stillbirth of a son.
"Grief hauled about, and nowhere to put it down."
Capitalization
Merely musing on why in a world that no longer will waste an upper case letter on a personal pronoun used to refer to God, er... the God,... the Times Online or a typesetter, or webmaster, or stylebook editor in it's employ, would write a blurb about a Cavalli opera thusly:
LA CALISTO
Take one virginal nymph and one randy God and you have the saucy plot of Cavalli’s 17th-century opera.
Royal Opera House (details above), opens Sept 23
Just wonderin'....
Bells, and Misleading with Selective Truth Telling
Sometimes it seems to me to ... skirt the literal truth, usually in a spirit of Charity.
(e.g., You wouldn't tell someone who is racked with guilt that if he doesn't confess, he'll go to hell, [or be deprived of Heaven,] you tell him that God is all merciful, and He will welcome him in confession.)
Good.
But sometime this evading the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth seems agenda driven.
To a question about whether Consecration Bells should be used, the good father cites the correct bit of Notitiae
Where liturgical education has been adequate, there is "no need for this kind signal. If sufficient liturgical instruction is in fact lacking, bells should be rung at least at the two elevations, in order to elicit joy and attention: Not 8 (1972) 343.
Got that? If your parish is dim or ignorant, you should use bells, but not otherwise.
But that is NOT what the actual Notice from the CDW said, he leaves something out.
109 Query: Is a bell to be rung at Mass?
Reply: It all depends on the different circumstances of places and people, as is clear from GIRM no. 109: "A little before the consecration, the server may ring a bell as a signal to the faithful. Depending on local custom, he also rings the bell at the showing of both the host and the chalice." From a long and attentive catechesis and education in liturgy, a particular liturgical assembly may be able to take part in the Mass with such attention and awareness that it has no need of this signal at the central part of the Mass. This may easily be the case, for example, with religious communities or with particular or small groups. The opposite may be presumed in a parish or public church, where there is a different level of liturgical and religious education and where often people who are visitors or are not regular churchgoers take part. In these cases the bell as a signal is entirely appropriate and is sometimes necessary. To conclude: usually a signal with the bell should be given, at least at the two elevations, in order to elicit joy and attention: Not 8 (1972) 343.
As a rule the bells should be given at least at the elevations.
Nothing about only for us poor ignorami.
What is with the Trendists' (who have usurped the title Progressives,) aversion to bells, I wonder?
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Okay, take a deep breath and smile...
Oh, and then by two.
Oh, and finally more than three...
And it was a jumbo jet, but making a puddle jump to another airport, so virtually everyone on it, or rather, wanting to be on it, was making a connecting flight, mostly to distant lands, Africa, Singapore, Chile.
And nobody would tell us ANYTHING.
At one point, a middle-aged British man, with a face so bland and blank he might have been autistic, and a voice so mild and even pleasant he might have been a monastic turned to his traveling companion, and all but cooed, with all the ferocity that his upbringing would apparently allow him,
"I am F#*&ing incandescent...."
It cracked us up at the time, and we use the memory whenever one of us is out of sorts but constrained from suitably expressing the sheer, operatic, apoplectic, white hot, fury of our anger.
We smile sweetly and murmur, I am incandescent
Well, I am incandescent.
(Just venting, scroll past, nothing to see here, move along, nothing to see....)
(And forgive me, I can't vent at home, because Himself will become upset and I don't need to be poisoning HIS relationship with anyone else, and he holds grudges much longer than I, and much more virulently if on my behalf, rather than on his own...)
Okay, I am a lousy organist, and a lousy musician, and have lousy hearing, and a lousy sense of rhythm, and keep a lousy tempo, and have a lousy memory, and am a lousy reader.
Fine. Stipulated.
But I can d*** well accompany.
I can follow.
I can support.
I can compensate.
I can breath with a soloist.
I can enhance.
I can even, on occasion, rescue the wandering, incontinent, self-indulgent, uncontrolled or uncertain singer.
NONE OF WHICH WAS NECESSARY TODAY.
There was no sound delay involved, the wedding soloist, I at the console, and the pipes were all in almost intimate proximity to each other.
The singer positively gushed, his thanks were so effusive.
So imagine my delight on leaving the church to have the celebrant opine, gee, it sounded like the two of you were fighting up there, you weren't together AT ALL.
I am incandescent... you can probably see the glow from wherever you are.
ROMA (Chiesa) - In the three Masses celebrated during his trip to Paris and Lourdes, Benedict XVI followed the post-conciliar rite. But he intentionally enriched it with elements characteristic of the old rite: the cross at the center of the altar, communion given to the faithful on the tongue, while kneeling, the sacredness of the whole.
The reciprocal "enrichment" between the two rites is the main objective that impelled Benedict XVI to promulgate, in 2007, the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum," which liberalized the use of the ancient rite of the Mass, according to the Roman missal of 1962.
The opponents of the motu proprio maintain, instead, that the use of the ancient rite does not enrich, but rather cancels out the achievements of Vatican Council II as a whole. The French bishops have been among those most critical of the pope's initiative, before and after the promulgation of the motu proprio.
On Sunday, September 14, meeting the bishops of France in Lourdes, Pope Joseph Ratzinger did not fail to urge them to be pastors welcoming of all, including the faithful who feel themselves most "at home" with the ancient rite. The pope had anticipated these ideas about the two rites of the Mass in responding to journalists during his flight to France, on Friday, September 12.
But Benedict XVI said much more on the subject during the four days of his trip to Paris and Lourdes.
In his lecture on September 12, at the Collége des Bernardins, he explained the emergence of great Western music, in the monasteries of the Middle Ages, in terms that require reflection on the diminishing quality of today's liturgical music, and on the necessity of revitalizing it in keeping with its original meaning.
In his homily for vespers at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, he called for a "beauty" in the earthly liturgies that will bring them closer to the liturgies of heaven. And he exhorted priests to be faithful to the daily prayer of the liturgy of the hours.
In the homily for the Mass on the Esplanade des Invalides, on September 13, he addressed the doctrine of the Eucharist and of the "real presence" of the body and blood of Christ in very demanding words, requiring that the Mass be celebrated with a sense of sacredness that has been largely missing in recent decades.
And Benedict XVI again returned to this "real presence" in the concluding meditation of the Eucharistic procession in Lourdes, on the evening of September 14. With a passage dedicated to those who "cannot – or cannot yet – receive Jesus in the Sacrament, but can contemplate Him with faith and love and express our desire finally to be united with Him." Among these can be counted the divorced and remarried Catholics, to whom the Church does not give communion. But their "desire," the pope said, "has great value in God’s presence."
To these calls to return to the authentic spirit of the liturgy, Benedict XVI also added, on September 14 in Lourdes, an illustration of the profound meaning of the Angelus Domini, the Marian prayer that he recites in public every Sunday.
The Korean Martyrs
It is interesting to note, in response those suggesting that in light of the dearth of priestly vocations, (that have been answered, at least) in my lifetime, that Truth be abandoned in favor of expediency, that for a century, it was lay Catholics that kept the Church in Korea alive.
Daniel Mitsui of Lion and the Cardinal had a post, (in large part a defense of sacramentals and devotions,) about his ancestors who managed a like feat of spiritual heroism in Japan, when they did not have access to priests, or the Mass, or the Eucharist.
Correction, Mr Mitsui informs me that that none of his ancestors were
among the Japanese Christians who had such trials to undergo.
From Universalis:
For centuries, Korea was closed to all outside influences, and all contact with foreigners was forbidden. No missionaries went there. Nevertheless, a number of laymen sought to find out all that they could about the outside world, through the annual embassy to Peking. Some books about Christianity fell into their hands, and they were converted. Because of the secrecy involved, it is impossible to date the origin of Christianity in Korea with any precision: it may have started in the early 17th century, but the first known baptism is that of Ni-Seoung-Houn, who was baptised under the name of Peter when he visited Peking in 1784.
The first known martyrs are Paul Youn and James Kouen, who in 1791 refused to offer sacrifice on the death of their relatives. Over the next century, over ten thousand Korean Christians were executed, with great cruelty; and many others perished
For most of this period, the church in Korea had no priests and was an entirely lay phenomenon. The first priest, a Frenchman, entered the country in 1836 and was beheaded three years later. Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest, secretly trained in Macao, entered Korea in 1845 and was executed in 1846, together with his father. A lay apostle, St Paul Chong Hasang and many others perished at the same time. A further major persecution occurred in 1866.
In all, 103 of the Korean martyrs are celebrated today: they are mostly lay men and women: some married, some not; some old, some young, some even children. The canonisation ceremony was performed in Seoul by Pope John Paul II in 1984.
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Benedict and Mary...
In a Catholic News Service story reference is made to the Pope's evolving attitude toward the Blessed Mother
It's no secret that, as a theologian and bishop, Pope Benedict was not always comfortable with Marian devotion and claims of apparitions. But over the years he has widened his views, saying in 2002 that, "the older I am, the more important the mother of God is to me."
Can anyone suggest any reading on his "previous views"?
I'm not finding anything in a typically, (for me,) half-brained search...
Temptation
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner
who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage,
he sent them into his vineyard.
Going out about nine o’clock,
the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard,
and I will give you what is just.’
So they went off.
And he went out again around noon,
and around three o’clock, and did likewise.
Going out about five o’clock,
the landowner found others standing around, and said to them,
‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’
They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’
When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman,
‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and ending with the first.’
When those who had started about five o’clock came,
each received the usual daily wage.
So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more,
but each of them also got the usual wage.
And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying,
‘These last ones worked only one hour,
and you have made them equal to us,
who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’
He said to one of them in reply,
‘My friend, I am not cheating you.
Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
Take what is yours and go.
So instead, welcome to the party! Good ideas! Glad you thought of them! (By the way, I certainly don't number myself among "the first", I am too lazy to have ever been part of a group ready to work at dawn...)
Music as a means of promoting identity
Wednesday, 17 September 2008, 15:00 CDT
By RUTHIE BLUM LEIBOWITZ
'While 'Hatikva' may not the greatest piece of music," says Zamir Chorale Foundation founder and director Matthew (Mati) Lazar, "the power one feels singing it is undeniable."
The long-time conductor and ardent Zionist goes on to ask rhetorically: "Who else but our people would have their national anthem in a minor key?"
Here last month to conduct members of his Zamir Chorale and Shirah Choir, as well as a large group of individual singers from across the United States in performances marking "Israel@60" (after selling out Carnegie Hall earlier this year in a similar birthday celebration), Lazar, also 60, explains the impetus for and philosophy behind this part of his life's work - connecting Jews to their heritage through choral music.
"Choral music - like our history - is all about the texts," he says. "And ultimately, our singing is all about education through entertainment."
To illustrate, he points to the Pessah song "Had Gadya" - the ancient Aramaic-Hebrew precursor to children's favorites, "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly."
"Everyone's singing cheerfully about how God's creatures are killing each other off," he says, laughing. "It's a history lesson."
Speaking of which, Lazar's own history is the stuff of a Herman Wouk novel - self-described as the "hoch [ultimate] Jewish experience of the 1950s."
Raised in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood by amateur musician parents - his father (born Lazerovitch) was a pianist and his mother a singer - "The highlight of our week was Shabbat, when we'd go to shul to hear Moshe or Dovid Koussevitzky, arguably the greatest cantors of the time. Then, on Saturday night, after havdala, my older sister and I would sit on opposite leaves of our baby grand piano, while my father would play and my mother would sing through all of Schubert's song cycles and then the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. When we finished that, we would watch Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows."
This kind of eclectic musical seasoning may have something to do with the fact that Lazar - who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife, Vivian, an alto in the Zamir Chorale and director of the foundation's teen program, HaZamir: the International High School Choir - was also a product of the late '60s and early '70s generation. He's even got a rock group in his past to show for it - "the first Hebrew-singing one in America."
Called "Tayku," the band, Lazar reminisces, "was an outgrowth of my musical collaborations with friends, all of whom sang with me in the original Zamir Chorale. A fellow tenor, Mayer Davis, and I created a duo when we worked at Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire, where I was the music counselor, during the summer of 1968. I am a pianist. Our band still needed a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. Joining us during the next year was the composer, guitarist David Burger, with whom I had recorded with a group called 'Matthew's Scooter' for CBS Records. Ira Epstein, another tenor, soon joined us as our drummer. We were all looking for creative, exciting and musically satisfying ways of combining our love for Hebrew-Israeli music with contemporary American sound and tight vocal harmonies. By 1971, we had cut our first single, and added our final band member, Ruby Davis."
Why did they call it "Tayku"?
"We aggressively looked for a name for our group," Lazar explains. "After countless hours of fruitless discussion - and having discarded such names as 'Second Salami Sandwich' and 'Ultimate Milchiks,' Mayer and I shrugged and simultaneously said to each other: 'Tayku!' [This is the classic talmudic response to a situation in which a decision cannot be reached.] Immediately, we smiled and knew that we'd found it."
Lazar comes by his Zionism as honestly as he does his music. Both sets of grandparents lived in Palestine in the 1890s, and read, wrote and spoke Hebrew - as does he. Indeed, at the concert he conducted at the Jerusalem Theater last month, Lazar addressed the audience bilingually with ease.
Given his upbringing, Lazar's combining of his musical pursuits and passion for the State of Israel may not sound so peculiar. Far more striking is his ideological path. An unapologetic "independent" in his American voting habits and political views relating to Israel, Lazar is anything but conventional in his social, professional and geographical circles.
In an hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post during his tour, Lazar discusses the need for Jews to cross this political divide for the purpose of creating a connection to their collective past and future.
How is your goal distinct from that of those who seek to bridge the gaps among the different streams of Judaism through dialogue?
Transdenominational unity is a great thing, but it's an old story by now. Today, it's in the transpolitical sphere where the work needs to be done. And music is a great vehicle for bringing people together and creating harmony, particularly when they're singing or listening to the right text. I've been successful at finding music with text that's appropriate, that's mainstream, and upon which everyone can agree. Music with text is a very powerful catharsis mechanism. When hundreds of people have catharsis by singing, breathing and thinking the same thought at the same time, the unity that it creates is amazing and long- lasting.
(Q.)But does this really have any bearing on political unity? Between rehearsals or during intermissions, don't the singers go back to arguing about the merits of Obama vs McCain, for example, or Israeli policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians?
I think that when the singers sing, or the audience hears, for example, the piece "K'she Tavo," written by Boaz Sharabi for Ron Arad, it has a powerful effect on everybody. It may be just for the time that they're there. But if they have a common moment, and they hear this powerful expression of the actual human sacrifice that's required to have a state, and they make eye contact, or feel moved at the same time, it brings them together. And, if someone is brave enough to go over the divide and initiate a conversation with someone on the opposing side, at least they now have a common emotional point of departure for honest discourse. When we performed "Hatikva," with the choir and audience totaling 3,000 people singing it in Carnegie Hall this past March, it was such a transformative moment that I'm still receiving letters about it. It was impossible not to feel the unity, the old-style kind that "Hatikva" used to arouse - the kind that sends shivers down everybody's spine, and then back up to their brain.
(Q)You talk about old-style unity. You've worked with Jewish and Israeli musicians, composers and conductors on all sides of the political spectrum: David Bar-Illan, Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Bernstein. Isn't Barenboim's dream - and definition - of political harmony very different from yours? He fantasizes joint concerts in Damascus, after all.
First of all, my work doesn't involve bringing Jews and Arabs together. It's hard enough just trying to brings Jews together [he laughs]. Second of all, I'm always wondering how successful these outreach programs really are. Did the 1936 Olympics help or hurt Hitler, for example? Does bringing Jews together with Palestinians who support their leadership's denial of our existence as a Jewish state promote coexistence or maintain the status quo?
(Q.Speaking of coexistence, though the evangelicals are unapologetically supportive of Israel, and were, in fact, among the few tourists who continued to come here, even during the intifadas and wars, your choirs don't sing Christian music. Why is that?)
Before I answer that, let me say that I'm very proud of the fact that I took five missions to Israel during the second intifada. Those trips were devoted to singing for victims of terror, soldiers in rehab centers and people in hospitals. We suspended formal concerts during those years, in order to reach the people who could not come to hear us.
As to why we don't sing Christian music, our idea is to promote Jewish identity, and one doesn't do that by singing what you call Christian and most Western music. Still, there is much about the origins of Western music that most people don't know. There's an adage that says that Jewish history is written on pages that were ripped out of history books. So, for example, most people don't know that we can trace Gregorian chant back to the music of the Temple in Jerusalem. The explanation of the origin of Gregorian chant as being a dove singing into the ear of Pope Gregory leaves a lot to be desired.[Surely he knows that that is a metaphor, and apparently and understandably he DOESN'T know why some are at pains to obfuscate any such lineage for the music that should have "pride of place" in Catholic liturgical worship.]
Indeed, there are a number of examples of music that some would think of as Christian, because they sound Gregorian, but which, in fact, are Jewish. One piece, a panegyric to Moses, "Mi Al Har Horev," was found in the Cairo Geniza, for example. Though it sounds like Gregorian chant, in fact it's Jewish. The only reason we know it exists is because the person who wrote it down was trained as a monk, and therefore learned how to write music notation, and subsequently converted to Judaism.
Can you give examples of composers or music that have Jewish roots or influence that most of us are unaware of?
Because Jews are very good at adopting other people's styles and concepts, Western music influenced Jewish composers when they were allowed to participate in Western society. So you have a composer like Salamone Rossi, the first important Jewish composer, writing music that today's Jews would think sounds un-Jewish. This is a double tragedy, so to speak, because not only do they no longer know their own music history, but that fact stops them from appreciating the greatness and Jewishness of this music.
I'm often asked who the greatest cantor of all time is. I love to answer: "J.S. Bach."
Obviously, Bach wasn't Jewish, but his title in church was "Kantor," which comes from the Latin "to sing."
It is thus that the first self-titled Jewish cantor, Solomon Sulzer, chose Bach's title as his own. He was trying to show everybody in Vienna in the first half of the 19th century that Jews could be great musicians, too. He even commissioned Schubert to write a setting of Psalm 92, the psalm for Shabbat, "Tov Lehodot."
Most people can't imagine Schubert setting a Hebrew text.
On another level, the sonata-allegro form, the A-B-A, is basically a pattern of tshuva, of returning to the right path: You have a musical idea; it develops, and then recapitulates with a necessary correction. This pattern of rejuvenation is a human idea, but the notion of tshuva is very Jewish.
What about harmony? Is that a Jewish notion?
Harmony is not uniquely a Jewish notion, though Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav put it into perspective best when he said that when two people speak at the same time, it's cacophony, but when two people sing at the same time, it's harmony.
What, then, is particularly Jewish about any of this - as opposed to being universal?
It's an interesting question. A non-Jewish friend who presents at our North American Jewish Choral Festival, the largest gathering of Jewish musicians and singers in North America, which I established 19 years ago, said the following: "As a Unitarian, I always thought that all paths would lead to the same God, and therefore all music would lead to the same path. But Jewish music is different. Jewish music has memory."
Then there is the Jewish understanding of the sometime conflict between the aesthetic and the moral - that is to say, between the beautiful and the good.
What about Jewish memories associated with certain music, like that of Wagner, for example? Can great music stand on its own, or is a composer's anti-Semitism relevant? Is the controversy in Israel surrounding this question justified?
Well, Wagner - the icon of the Nazis - certainly shouldn't be performed in Israel if it hasn't been identified as part of the program. It should be advertised and whoever comes comes. Of course, this doesn't mean that the state should necessarily support that performance. Nor is it necessary at the current time, while so many people in Israel are still alive who have numbers tattooed on their arms, to play music whose composer provided the ideology which inspired their torturers. There may come a time in the future when it is all right to play Wagner. This has nothing to do with his value as a composer, but with sensitivity. It is also an issue of the relative values of aesthetics and morality - and which trumps what....
(Q.Do you actually teach the teens about the texts while they rehearse?)
Absolutely, and not only the teens. That's the whole point of the choral experience in general. It's very important to educate our singers, especially the teens, who are exposed to all kinds of false information...
(Q.What happens when a teen who wants to join a choir for the Jewish social and educational experience doesn't have a good enough singing voice?)
Those who lack talent or musical skills self-select, and eventually drop out, when they feel they're over their heads. In most cases, we don't have auditions for the teens - though the Israeli chapter of HaZamir is auditioned - because even during a single rehearsal, a life can be changed.[That is wonderfully true, bravo!]
...My sister...'s a wonderful musician and a great harpsichordist. When I was young, I thought that the difference between boys and girls was that girls understood the horizontal line in music and boys the vertical - because that was the difference between us. As it turns out, there may be some truth to that.[Interesting idea]
...I came to understand that what I had to offer was promoting Jewish identity through music - and to bring Jews to Israel, and to bring Israeli music to America. If I could, I would physically live in both places. Emotionally and intellectually, I already do.
Originally published by RUTHIE BLUM LEIBOWITZ. (c) 2008 The Jerusalem Post.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Some new links will be appearing in the sidebar...
I think the glossary of liturgical terms that will appear here will be mighty useful, especially to the vincibly ignorant, such as myself ;o).
And a "Treasury of Latin Prayer", which includes English translations to many of the great Latin hymns.
Monday, 15 September 2008
At the cross...
| STABAT Mater dolorosa iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius. | AT, the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. |
| Cuius animam gementem, contristatam et dolentem pertransivit gladius. | Through her heart, His sorrow sharing, all His bitter anguish bearing, now at length the sword has passed. |
| O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta, mater Unigeniti! | O how sad and sore distressed was that Mother, highly blest, of the sole-begotten One. |
| Quae maerebat et dolebat, pia Mater, dum videbat nati poenas inclyti. | Christ above in torment hangs, she beneath beholds the pangs of her dying glorious Son. |
| Quis est homo qui non fleret, matrem Christi si videret in tanto supplicio? | Is there one who would not weep, whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ's dear Mother to behold? |
| Quis non posset contristari Christi Matrem contemplari dolentem cum Filio? | Can the human heart refrain from partaking in her pain, in that Mother's pain untold? |
| Pro peccatis suae gentis vidit Iesum in tormentis, et flagellis subditum. | Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, she beheld her tender Child All with scourges rent: |
| Vidit suum dulcem Natum moriendo desolatum, dum emisit spiritum. | For the sins of His own nation, saw Him hang in desolation, Till His spirit forth He sent. |
| Eia, Mater, fons amoris me sentire vim doloris fac, ut tecum lugeam. | O thou Mother! fount of love! Touch my spirit from above, make my heart with thine accord: |
| Fac, ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam. | Make me feel as thou hast felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ my Lord. |
| Sancta Mater, istud agas, crucifixi fige plagas cordi meo valide. | Holy Mother! pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified: |
| Tui Nati vulnerati, tam dignati pro me pati, poenas mecum divide. | Let me share with thee His pain, who for all my sins was slain, who for me in torments died. |
| Fac me tecum pie flere, crucifixo condolere, donec ego vixero. | Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning Him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live: |
| Iuxta Crucem tecum stare, et me tibi sociare in planctu desidero. | By the Cross with thee to stay, there with thee to weep and pray, is all I ask of thee to give. |
| Virgo virginum praeclara, mihi iam non sis amara, fac me tecum plangere. | Virgin of all virgins blest!, Listen to my fond request: let me share thy grief divine; |
| Fac, ut portem Christi mortem, passionis fac consortem, et plagas recolere. | Let me, to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of thine. |
| Fac me plagis vulnerari, fac me Cruce inebriari, et cruore Filii. | Wounded with His every wound, steep my soul till it hath swooned, in His very Blood away; |
| Flammis ne urar succensus, per te, Virgo, sim defensus in die iudicii. | Be to me, O Virgin, nigh, lest in flames I burn and die, in His awful Judgment Day. |
| Christe, cum sit hinc exire, da per Matrem me venire ad palmam victoriae. | Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence, by Thy Mother my defense, by Thy Cross my victory; |
| Quando corpus morietur, fac, ut animae donetur paradisi gloria. Amen. | While my body here decays, may my soul Thy goodness praise, safe in paradise with Thee. Amen. |
Sunday, 14 September 2008
A Reason For Your Hope?
We have a transitional deacon serving at our parish now, and if they were all like him, it would not matter that current seminarians are not as numerous as one might wish.
He's quite, quite brilliant, (although that is the least of his attributes,) I only mention that because the first time I heard him preach Nietzsche and post-modernism and the rejection of Platonism all came up and you could see the eyes of the devout old ladies and the young people and even, I think, one of the priests, just utterly glaze over; and he very quickly found a level that is neither talking down to those who want more meat, nor indigestible to those who are only up to lighter fare (which probably applies to even the most erudite among us, at times....)
And he is charming and kind and extremely good-looking, (in a very innocent, unthreatening way,) which shouldn't matter all that much but just does when a big part of your job is inspiring grade- and middle-schoolers.
But yada, yada, yada, I digress-- what I meant to talk about, the "current reason for hope," is a wonderful series he's been writing in the parish bulletin, called "Perspectives on the Afterlife," (how seldom are we reminded, in other than rote prayers, of the need, the duty to pray for the dead? but that was last week. Again, I digress...)
This week was "Heaven and the Liturgy," and contained these gems:
One of the interesting aspects of the Christian idea
of heaven is the role it plays in informing and sustaining
worship. The public worship of the church represents a
drawing close to the threshold of heaven itself. Worshippers
are encouraged to see themselves as peering through
the portals of heaven, catching a glimpse of the worship of
heavenly places.
The liturgy celebrates the notion of being caught
up in the worship of heaven, and the awesome sense of
mystery that is evoked by the sense of peering beyond the
bounds of human vision.
Worshippers have the opportunity of being mystically
transported to the threshold of heaven. Being in a holy
place and about to participate in holy things, they on the
one hand become aware of their finitude and sinfulness,
and on the other gain a refreshing glimpse of the glory of
God.
The idea of liminality – that is, being on the threshold
of the sacred, peering into the forbidden heavenly
realm – is represented architecturally and artistically in
many Greek orthodox churches, especially in the way in
which the sanctuary and the altar are set apart from the
people on account of a deep sense of the awesomeness of
the mystery of God.
As you observe the spatial separation between where
you are sitting in our church and the sanctuary itself, have
you noticed there is a deep sense of the awesomeness of
the mystery of God that is revealed in the Eucharist and in
the Word that takes place there? [yes, yes, I know it's
rhetorical, but answer it, do...] Spend time reflecting
upon how the space and architecture of our church invites
us to peer into the heavenly realm in a way that further