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Friday 15 May 2009

Lowered Expectations

About Ascension Thursdaysunday, "when the fortyfortythree days had passed," as we are wont to sing, (doesn't really scan a whole heckuvalot worse than many a ditty in the hymnal, does it?) a priestly blogger has this to say:
The Holy See allowed conferences of bishops to transfer the celebration of Ascension Thursday to the following Sunday....
The bishops hope to expose more people to the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord. Because it is too hard to go to Mass also on Thursday, they moved the feast to Sunday....
My present view of human nature suggests to me that when Holy Mother Church’s pastors lower expectations regarding the liturgy, people get the hint: it just isn’t that important. Maybe none of it is important.

2 comments:

Jane said...

Our missalette certainly didn't get the hint that Ascension might not be that important. There are almost as many Ascension hymns as Easter hymns--obnoxious, because we have to program two hymns a Sunday for six Sundays of Easter, but only two hymns total for Ascension.

So by now we've run out of Easter hymns. I'm tempted to do one of the Ascension hymns tomorrow--maybe no one will notice.

Scelata said...

What missallette?
We have the LitPress Celebrating the Eucharist, but we also have The Dread Gather. (Ewwww...)
Our parish, or perhaps I should say our pastor, is very reluctant to learn new hymns, so the idea of teaching a new tune that can only be used once a year doesn't sit well with me, (and he won't hear of making a move towards propers.)
So I appreciate LitPress's initiative of new texts to ol' favorite tunes, (even if I don't always appreciate the texts themselves.)
Ascension reminds em, when I think I can get away with it I want the congregation to learn LLANFAIR.

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)