Not being of the sort to worry that what I order to eat in a restaurant will make me "unattractive," I never went through the angst alluded to in this piece.
(And yet..... and yet, and yet, and yet -- I spent an enormous proportion of my nubile years unattached, and furious and curious that it should be so -- "Hey, God, you gave me this desire, why the HECK aren't You putting the satisfaction thereof in my line of sight? What does it MEAN??!?&?#??!" Little did I guess what a treasure He had in store for me... But that is neither here nor elsewhere… It simply is not. It does not exist.)
My only concern in ordering, beside my own preference of the moment, has been cost, and not from the "Don't want him to think I'm extravagant/expensive/high maintenance" standpoint, but only from my own tightwadliness.
Anyway, this piece in the NYTimes was intriguing on several counts.... firstly, glad to see that women are eschewing the pretend-to-prefer-rabbit-food thing, if they don’t' (if they do, shame on them for NOT ordering the tiny salad,) (since waste is worse than deception? exPLAIN yourself, girl!)
Second, how in creation has In'n'Out acquired its reputation in La-La Land when there is..... (reverent silence, please....) FAT BURGERS to be enjoyed? (That place still figures in my most carnal images of Paradise...)
And last but by no means least.... what in BLAZES is this "$60 burger" that anyone can manage to write about without the most extreme opprobrium??!?#?$?!!??%?^?!??*?!???
To reference Han Solo, I have quite an imagination, and I, a cheeseburger aficionado who take second place to NO ONE, can not imagine a thing, worth such a princely sum.
Where are these served and of what do they consist?
I don't think it is just my extreme cheapness speaking, when I wonder what could possibly cause one to drop such an amount of money on a burger.
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
More on the GIA choral reading session
Because, to quote David Brinkely, everyone is entitled to my opinion....
Some scribbled notes -- (I am getting worse and worse at deciphering my own handwriting.
Two Simple Songs are the best Cheeze I've ever tasted from the Haugen Dairy Farm. (But still, cheeze.)
A very decent Janco piece, but the women's parts sat too low-- I realized while trying to project in even an ensemble way, that religious choral music is going the way of B'way vocal writing, it is predicated on mic'ing, which is doing odd, I might say, "dangerous" things to the ranges; often require sustained singing in a tessitura that is injurious to female voices. Modern B'way, of course, compounds this by requiring constant switching between two extremes, particularly of ensemble singers. And a vicious circle will develop, damaged voices will no longer be heard unless they are mic'ed.
A strong arrangement of Oh Freedom, I can't imagine it in liturgical use. (I know people who would call that opinion racist, rather like my aversion to that wa-wa thing a Hammond does.)
An excellent simple without being too simplistic pieces from the Not for Children series.
Hold Us Jesus, can't remember composer, very well written, I would LOVE to use that in place of that... thing I am required to use for healing services. The congregation part has some needless and stupid (IMO,) syncopations in the congregation part. (That wouldn't matter, since the congregation never sings on their part in the so-simple-there's-no-there-there one we use.)
A marvelous Sosa piece, would be nice for a prayer service, but never in a Mass, so no use to me.
A new, and gorgeous arrangement of Precious Lord, but unneeded. (I embarrassed myself offering to essay the solo, octave jump to a pp high A, sitting down, reading. Duh....)
Good arrangement of the tune LONDONDERRY AIRE, (DERRY AIRE, as we micks would have it,) by John Bell, musically one of his better efforts, but the silly words don't make "Danny Boy" an any more suitable substitute for the In Paradisum or whatever.... "Silent friend?" Please...
Child of God by the late great Stuempfle and Meyerling (? can't remember) gorgeous but we DON'T PUT WORDS IN GOD'S MOUTH.. A shame because it would be very useful to me, SAB.
Better than original Haas thing, and True setting of 25th Psalm, well arranged, but is decoupage a suitable craft project for the barnyard? (You know what I mean....)
A really cheezy Advent thing, a possibly useful concertante on Adeste Fidelis that I wish we had sung through but didn't, a sprightly arrangement of I Saw Three Ships that I'll consider using with the Scelati, a nice new edition of For Unto Us... (beyond my choirs capabilities, I think, and certainly mine at the Casavant.)
Oh, a splendid, really SPLENDID Christmas piece by Gerald Custer, Winter's Cold, G-7024, that I may very well buy. Yes, yes, yes. I shall certainly see what else is out there by Gerald Custer, can you see that sometimes I took the time and care to print my notes a little more precisely?
It was reminiscent of Sondheim.
And someone else, something older, I think that I can't put my finger on -- Jones and Schmidt, circa Fantastiks, maybe?
Might prove a challenge for the choir, but we could get it, I think.
That and O Vos Omnes by Blake Henson (G-6483) are the two that definitely made my wish list. The latter would be superb on Good Friday, and Passion Sunday, and possibly at other points during Lent (singing at Stations?) and I would have bought it on the spot if we hadn't' just learned that De Profundis.
I need to be judicious in adding music, however fine, to their folders, because we still have some that bridle at "sad," "slow," "Latin".... you know the drill.
Behold the Savior was good but too showy to be useful for Holy Week Liturgies (though again, Stations of the Cross?) And the harmonies miss the cut of sounding timeless, I fear it might sound dated too soon.
DANG! I hadn't realized we sang through so much!
A Malcolm Archer piece, nice, useful text, well written, and very solid, but didn't really engage me... I'll have to give it another look.
A Pentecost thing that was only one click off being Cheeze, and way too low for the sopranos to be healthy.
And finally, a terrific, exceedingly useful anthem called "Risen Lord," Stumpfle and Bob Moore, best thing of Moore's I've ever heard. Really sturdy and Stumpfle's usual excellence, EXCEPT -- one really unfortunate verse about "places where children waste and blight," or something like that. Ah, well....
The CD surprised me, we listened a bit, and I heard several excellent possibilities, especially one Taize piece, I'll have to take more time going through that.
Hmmmm... I'm not seeing my notes on the Fedak Christmas piece.
Well, lovely, if it seemed too much like "Rutter Light."
And with What Sweeter Music having finally taken firm hold, I don't know that I'd use it with this choir at the present.
Like the other Christmas piece, useless liturgically, but with the pre-midnight Mass hour long concert, there is room for this kind of thing.
That would definitely make my wish list too, if I weren't being careful about money.
Rutter Light, reminds me, LitPress sent me a CD that Himself handed off as he sorted the mail calling it, "Psalm Light."
Inadvertent mot juste!
Some scribbled notes -- (I am getting worse and worse at deciphering my own handwriting.
Two Simple Songs are the best Cheeze I've ever tasted from the Haugen Dairy Farm. (But still, cheeze.)
A very decent Janco piece, but the women's parts sat too low-- I realized while trying to project in even an ensemble way, that religious choral music is going the way of B'way vocal writing, it is predicated on mic'ing, which is doing odd, I might say, "dangerous" things to the ranges; often require sustained singing in a tessitura that is injurious to female voices. Modern B'way, of course, compounds this by requiring constant switching between two extremes, particularly of ensemble singers. And a vicious circle will develop, damaged voices will no longer be heard unless they are mic'ed.
A strong arrangement of Oh Freedom, I can't imagine it in liturgical use. (I know people who would call that opinion racist, rather like my aversion to that wa-wa thing a Hammond does.)
An excellent simple without being too simplistic pieces from the Not for Children series.
Hold Us Jesus, can't remember composer, very well written, I would LOVE to use that in place of that... thing I am required to use for healing services. The congregation part has some needless and stupid (IMO,) syncopations in the congregation part. (That wouldn't matter, since the congregation never sings on their part in the so-simple-there's-no-there-there one we use.)
A marvelous Sosa piece, would be nice for a prayer service, but never in a Mass, so no use to me.
A new, and gorgeous arrangement of Precious Lord, but unneeded. (I embarrassed myself offering to essay the solo, octave jump to a pp high A, sitting down, reading. Duh....)
Good arrangement of the tune LONDONDERRY AIRE, (DERRY AIRE, as we micks would have it,) by John Bell, musically one of his better efforts, but the silly words don't make "Danny Boy" an any more suitable substitute for the In Paradisum or whatever.... "Silent friend?" Please...
Child of God by the late great Stuempfle and Meyerling (? can't remember) gorgeous but we DON'T PUT WORDS IN GOD'S MOUTH.. A shame because it would be very useful to me, SAB.
Better than original Haas thing, and True setting of 25th Psalm, well arranged, but is decoupage a suitable craft project for the barnyard? (You know what I mean....)
A really cheezy Advent thing, a possibly useful concertante on Adeste Fidelis that I wish we had sung through but didn't, a sprightly arrangement of I Saw Three Ships that I'll consider using with the Scelati, a nice new edition of For Unto Us... (beyond my choirs capabilities, I think, and certainly mine at the Casavant.)
Oh, a splendid, really SPLENDID Christmas piece by Gerald Custer, Winter's Cold, G-7024, that I may very well buy. Yes, yes, yes. I shall certainly see what else is out there by Gerald Custer, can you see that sometimes I took the time and care to print my notes a little more precisely?
It was reminiscent of Sondheim.
And someone else, something older, I think that I can't put my finger on -- Jones and Schmidt, circa Fantastiks, maybe?
Might prove a challenge for the choir, but we could get it, I think.
That and O Vos Omnes by Blake Henson (G-6483) are the two that definitely made my wish list. The latter would be superb on Good Friday, and Passion Sunday, and possibly at other points during Lent (singing at Stations?) and I would have bought it on the spot if we hadn't' just learned that De Profundis.
I need to be judicious in adding music, however fine, to their folders, because we still have some that bridle at "sad," "slow," "Latin".... you know the drill.
Behold the Savior was good but too showy to be useful for Holy Week Liturgies (though again, Stations of the Cross?) And the harmonies miss the cut of sounding timeless, I fear it might sound dated too soon.
DANG! I hadn't realized we sang through so much!
A Malcolm Archer piece, nice, useful text, well written, and very solid, but didn't really engage me... I'll have to give it another look.
A Pentecost thing that was only one click off being Cheeze, and way too low for the sopranos to be healthy.
And finally, a terrific, exceedingly useful anthem called "Risen Lord," Stumpfle and Bob Moore, best thing of Moore's I've ever heard. Really sturdy and Stumpfle's usual excellence, EXCEPT -- one really unfortunate verse about "places where children waste and blight," or something like that. Ah, well....
The CD surprised me, we listened a bit, and I heard several excellent possibilities, especially one Taize piece, I'll have to take more time going through that.
Hmmmm... I'm not seeing my notes on the Fedak Christmas piece.
Well, lovely, if it seemed too much like "Rutter Light."
And with What Sweeter Music having finally taken firm hold, I don't know that I'd use it with this choir at the present.
Like the other Christmas piece, useless liturgically, but with the pre-midnight Mass hour long concert, there is room for this kind of thing.
That would definitely make my wish list too, if I weren't being careful about money.
Rutter Light, reminds me, LitPress sent me a CD that Himself handed off as he sorted the mail calling it, "Psalm Light."
Inadvertent mot juste!
Monday, 6 August 2007
Com'ONNNNNNNNNNNNN, Catholic Indianians!
What the havarti is the matter with you!!!?!?!??
http://www.lumengentleman.com/findcontacts.asp?ctry=USA
I check back on a regular basis.
Over a hundred people have been added to the database for those interested in contributing to some way to the Extraordinary Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the last couple days, as per the Holy Father gracious allowance as detailed in Summorum Pontificum, and NONE from Indiana. Not a one.
Only two, so far as I can see from, from the diocese of Gary. Was the bishop right? Is no one interested?
I know for a fact of about a dozen people in one tiny town, who asked for years and years and were turned down.
Did they just give up?
Have too many of you just given up?
http://www.lumengentleman.com/findcontacts.asp?ctry=USA
I check back on a regular basis.
Over a hundred people have been added to the database for those interested in contributing to some way to the Extraordinary Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the last couple days, as per the Holy Father gracious allowance as detailed in Summorum Pontificum, and NONE from Indiana. Not a one.
Only two, so far as I can see from, from the diocese of Gary. Was the bishop right? Is no one interested?
I know for a fact of about a dozen people in one tiny town, who asked for years and years and were turned down.
Did they just give up?
Have too many of you just given up?
GIA Choral Reading Session
Interesting experience, glad I went, might go again.
Not as much cheeze as I feared, but FAAAAAAAAAR less liturgical music than I might have expected, or at least hoped.
Liked Robert Batastini (sp?) Pretty church but what is with all the carpetting??!?@?#??!?? Do they really not care about the music?
At least 3 pieces I will consider purchasing (one, an elegant and evocative setting of O Vos Omnes I would certainly purchase had we not just added that excellent De Profundis to our repertoire last year.... and I may, still, at that.)
Himself was a pip.
But it's as if no one had ever read any of the authoritative documents about liturgical music -- and of course, nothing of the more recent thought of, oh, yer John Pauls, yer Bennys, etc.... no propers, very little that took its cues on style and sensibility from the liturgical music par excellence. (You remember, doncha? Cantilena Romana? Gregorian chant? And Ambrosian, Mozarabic and Slavonic, for that matter.... )
Nice stuff created in a tradition/music vacuum.
Not as much cheeze as I feared, but FAAAAAAAAAR less liturgical music than I might have expected, or at least hoped.
Liked Robert Batastini (sp?) Pretty church but what is with all the carpetting??!?@?#??!?? Do they really not care about the music?
At least 3 pieces I will consider purchasing (one, an elegant and evocative setting of O Vos Omnes I would certainly purchase had we not just added that excellent De Profundis to our repertoire last year.... and I may, still, at that.)
Himself was a pip.
But it's as if no one had ever read any of the authoritative documents about liturgical music -- and of course, nothing of the more recent thought of, oh, yer John Pauls, yer Bennys, etc.... no propers, very little that took its cues on style and sensibility from the liturgical music par excellence. (You remember, doncha? Cantilena Romana? Gregorian chant? And Ambrosian, Mozarabic and Slavonic, for that matter.... )
Nice stuff created in a tradition/music vacuum.
B16 on the Council's Aftermath
Thank you, Sandro Magister. (That man is a great asset of the Catholic Church, he performs an inestimable service.) (As does his translator, if there is one.)
From the Popes meeting with local priests on his summer vacation (TAKE A NAP! USE that exercise bicycle, don't get writer's cramp, we need you, God expects you to take a break and get some REST!) (Forgive my tone, Papa...)
But really, does he ever say anything NOT worth listening to? Does a "guten morgen" to Ingrid or Georg (either Georg, either Gorgeous George as someone I know calls him, or OrganRatz) from BookRatz somehow drip with import and subtext?
Papa reminds me of a good director.
Anyone who's ever acted knows that there are idiots who wish to appear Wise and Deep in notes, and spout poetry (Gary Goodson, I think, had a story about someone criticizing the pace of a delivery, who waxed on for 10 minutes before Gary finally interrupted him : So -- d'ya want me to say the line slower or faster?,) and there are others who truly are Wise and Deep, who can issue a four word direction, or ask a simple, if socratic question that suddenly, startlingly, illuminates all for the listening cast.
Benedict is such a teacher, such a director.
.....................
"We had such great hopes, but things proved to be more difficult..." by Benedict XVI
I, too, lived through Vatican Council II, coming to Saint Peter’s Basilica with great enthusiasm and seeing how new doors were opening. It really seemed to be the new Pentecost, in which the Church would once again be able to convince humanity. After the Church’s withdrawal from the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it seemed that the Church and the world were coming together again, and that there was a rebirth of a Christian world and of a Church of the world and truly open to the world.
We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a “magna carta” of the Church’s path, very essential and fundamental.
But why did this happen? I would like to begin with an historical observation. The periods following a council are almost always very difficult. After the great Council of Nicaea – which is, for us, truly the foundation of our faith, in fact we confess the faith as formulated at Nicaea – there was not the birth of a situation of reconciliation and unity, as hoped by Constantine, the promoter of the great Council, but a genuinely chaotic situation of a battle of all against all.
In his book on the Holy Spirit, saint Basil compares the Church’s situation after the Council of Nicaea to a nighttime naval battle, in which no one recognizes another, but everyone is pitted against everyone else. It really was a situation of total chaos: this is how saint Basil paints in vivid colors the drama of the period following the Council of Nicaea.
50 years later, for the first Council of Constantinople, the emperor invited saint Gregory Nazianzen to participate in the council, and saint Gregory responded: No, I will not come, because I understand these things, I know that all of the Councils give rise to nothing but confusion and fighting, so I will not come. And he didn’t go.
So it is not now, in retrospect, such a great surprise how difficult it was at first for all of us to digest the Council, this great message. To imbue this into the life of the Church, to receive it, such that it becomes the Church’s life, to assimilate it into the various realities of the Church is a form of suffering, and it is only in suffering that growth is realized. To grow is always to suffer as well, because it means leaving one condition and passing to another.
And we must note that there were two great historic upheavals in the concrete context of the postconciliar period.
The first is the convulsion of 1968, the beginning – or explosion, I dare say – of the great cultural crisis of the West. The postwar generation had ended, a generation that, after seeing all the destruction and horror of war, of combat, and witnessing the drama of the great ideologies that had actually led people toward the precipice of war, had discovered the Christian roots of Europe and had begun to rebuild Europe with these great inspirations. But with the end of this generation there were also seen all of the failures, the gaps in this reconstruction, the great misery in the world, and so began the explosion of the crisis of Western culture, what I would call a cultural revolution that wants to change everything radically. It says: In two thousand years of Christianity, we have not created a better world; we must begin again from nothing, in an absolutely new way. Marxism seems to be the scientific formula for creating, at last, the new world.
In this – let us say – serious, great clash between the new, healthy modernity desired by the Council and the crisis of modernity, everything becomes difficult, like after the first Council of Nicaea.
One side was of the opinion that this cultural revolution was what the Council had wanted. It identified this new Marxist cultural revolution with the will of the Council. It said: This is the Council; in the letter the texts are still a bit antiquated, but behind the written words is this “spirit,” this is the will of the Council, this is what we must do. And on the other side, naturally, was the reaction: you are destroying the Church. The – let us say – absolute reaction against the Council, anticonciliarity, and – let us say – the timid, humble search to realize the true spirit of the Council. And as a proverb says: “If a tree falls it makes a lot of noise, but if a forest grows no one hears a thing,” during these great noises of mistaken progressivism and absolute anticonciliarism, there grew very quietly, with much suffering and with many losses in its construction, a new cultural passageway, the way of the Church.
And then came the second upheaval in 1989, the fall of the communist regimes. But the response was not a return to the faith, as one perhaps might have expected; it was not the rediscovery that the Church, with the authentic Council, had provided the response. The response was, instead, total skepticism, so-called post-modernity. Nothing is true; everyone must decide on his own how to live. There was the affirmation of materialism, of a blind pseudo-rationalistic skepticism that ends in drugs, that ends in all these problems that we know, and the pathways to faith are again closed, because the faith is so simple, so evident: no, nothing is true; truth is intolerant, we cannot take that road.
So: in these contexts of two cultural ruptures, the first being the cultural revolution of 1968 and the second the fall into nihilism after 1989, the Church sets out with humility upon its path, between the passions of the world and the glory of the Lord.
Along this road, we must grow with patience and we must now, in a new way, learn what it means to renounce triumphalism.
The Council had said that triumphalism must be renounced – thinking of the Baroque, of all these great cultures of the Church. It was said: Let’s begin in a new, modern way. But another triumphalism had grown, that of thinking: We will do things now, we have found the way, and on it we find the new world.
But the humility of the Cross, of the Crucified One, excludes precisely this triumphalism as well. We must renounce the triumphalism according to which the great Church of the future is truly being born now. The Church of Christ is always humble, and for this very reason it is great and joyful.
It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods – Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods – in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church’s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world.
And thus it seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a “spirit” reconstructed behind the texts, but the great conciliar texts themselves, reread today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities. I arrived in Brazil knowing how the sects are expanding, and how the Catholic Church seems a bit sclerotic; but once I arrived, I saw that almost every day in Brazil a new religious community is born, a new movement is born, and it is not only the sects that are growing. The Church is growing with new realities full of vitality, which do not show up in the statistics – this is a false hope; statistics are not our divinity – but they grow within souls and create the joy of faith, they create the presence of the Gospel, and thus also create true development in the world and society.
Thus it seems to me that we must learn the great humility of the Crucified One, of a Church that is always humble and always opposed by the great economic powers, military powers, etc. But we must also learn, together with this humility, the true triumphalism of the Catholicism that grows in all ages. There also grows today the presence of the Crucified One raised from the dead, who has and preserves his wounds. He is wounded, but it is in just in this way that he renews the world, giving his breath which also renews the Church in spite of all of our poverty. In this combination of the humility of the Cross and the joy of the risen Lord, who in the Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward joyously and full of hope.
From the Popes meeting with local priests on his summer vacation (TAKE A NAP! USE that exercise bicycle, don't get writer's cramp, we need you, God expects you to take a break and get some REST!) (Forgive my tone, Papa...)
But really, does he ever say anything NOT worth listening to? Does a "guten morgen" to Ingrid or Georg (either Georg, either Gorgeous George as someone I know calls him, or OrganRatz) from BookRatz somehow drip with import and subtext?
Papa reminds me of a good director.
Anyone who's ever acted knows that there are idiots who wish to appear Wise and Deep in notes, and spout poetry (Gary Goodson, I think, had a story about someone criticizing the pace of a delivery, who waxed on for 10 minutes before Gary finally interrupted him : So -- d'ya want me to say the line slower or faster?,) and there are others who truly are Wise and Deep, who can issue a four word direction, or ask a simple, if socratic question that suddenly, startlingly, illuminates all for the listening cast.
Benedict is such a teacher, such a director.
.....................
"We had such great hopes, but things proved to be more difficult..." by Benedict XVI
I, too, lived through Vatican Council II, coming to Saint Peter’s Basilica with great enthusiasm and seeing how new doors were opening. It really seemed to be the new Pentecost, in which the Church would once again be able to convince humanity. After the Church’s withdrawal from the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it seemed that the Church and the world were coming together again, and that there was a rebirth of a Christian world and of a Church of the world and truly open to the world.
We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a “magna carta” of the Church’s path, very essential and fundamental.
But why did this happen? I would like to begin with an historical observation. The periods following a council are almost always very difficult. After the great Council of Nicaea – which is, for us, truly the foundation of our faith, in fact we confess the faith as formulated at Nicaea – there was not the birth of a situation of reconciliation and unity, as hoped by Constantine, the promoter of the great Council, but a genuinely chaotic situation of a battle of all against all.
In his book on the Holy Spirit, saint Basil compares the Church’s situation after the Council of Nicaea to a nighttime naval battle, in which no one recognizes another, but everyone is pitted against everyone else. It really was a situation of total chaos: this is how saint Basil paints in vivid colors the drama of the period following the Council of Nicaea.
50 years later, for the first Council of Constantinople, the emperor invited saint Gregory Nazianzen to participate in the council, and saint Gregory responded: No, I will not come, because I understand these things, I know that all of the Councils give rise to nothing but confusion and fighting, so I will not come. And he didn’t go.
So it is not now, in retrospect, such a great surprise how difficult it was at first for all of us to digest the Council, this great message. To imbue this into the life of the Church, to receive it, such that it becomes the Church’s life, to assimilate it into the various realities of the Church is a form of suffering, and it is only in suffering that growth is realized. To grow is always to suffer as well, because it means leaving one condition and passing to another.
And we must note that there were two great historic upheavals in the concrete context of the postconciliar period.
The first is the convulsion of 1968, the beginning – or explosion, I dare say – of the great cultural crisis of the West. The postwar generation had ended, a generation that, after seeing all the destruction and horror of war, of combat, and witnessing the drama of the great ideologies that had actually led people toward the precipice of war, had discovered the Christian roots of Europe and had begun to rebuild Europe with these great inspirations. But with the end of this generation there were also seen all of the failures, the gaps in this reconstruction, the great misery in the world, and so began the explosion of the crisis of Western culture, what I would call a cultural revolution that wants to change everything radically. It says: In two thousand years of Christianity, we have not created a better world; we must begin again from nothing, in an absolutely new way. Marxism seems to be the scientific formula for creating, at last, the new world.
In this – let us say – serious, great clash between the new, healthy modernity desired by the Council and the crisis of modernity, everything becomes difficult, like after the first Council of Nicaea.
One side was of the opinion that this cultural revolution was what the Council had wanted. It identified this new Marxist cultural revolution with the will of the Council. It said: This is the Council; in the letter the texts are still a bit antiquated, but behind the written words is this “spirit,” this is the will of the Council, this is what we must do. And on the other side, naturally, was the reaction: you are destroying the Church. The – let us say – absolute reaction against the Council, anticonciliarity, and – let us say – the timid, humble search to realize the true spirit of the Council. And as a proverb says: “If a tree falls it makes a lot of noise, but if a forest grows no one hears a thing,” during these great noises of mistaken progressivism and absolute anticonciliarism, there grew very quietly, with much suffering and with many losses in its construction, a new cultural passageway, the way of the Church.
And then came the second upheaval in 1989, the fall of the communist regimes. But the response was not a return to the faith, as one perhaps might have expected; it was not the rediscovery that the Church, with the authentic Council, had provided the response. The response was, instead, total skepticism, so-called post-modernity. Nothing is true; everyone must decide on his own how to live. There was the affirmation of materialism, of a blind pseudo-rationalistic skepticism that ends in drugs, that ends in all these problems that we know, and the pathways to faith are again closed, because the faith is so simple, so evident: no, nothing is true; truth is intolerant, we cannot take that road.
So: in these contexts of two cultural ruptures, the first being the cultural revolution of 1968 and the second the fall into nihilism after 1989, the Church sets out with humility upon its path, between the passions of the world and the glory of the Lord.
Along this road, we must grow with patience and we must now, in a new way, learn what it means to renounce triumphalism.
The Council had said that triumphalism must be renounced – thinking of the Baroque, of all these great cultures of the Church. It was said: Let’s begin in a new, modern way. But another triumphalism had grown, that of thinking: We will do things now, we have found the way, and on it we find the new world.
But the humility of the Cross, of the Crucified One, excludes precisely this triumphalism as well. We must renounce the triumphalism according to which the great Church of the future is truly being born now. The Church of Christ is always humble, and for this very reason it is great and joyful.
It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods – Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods – in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church’s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world.
And thus it seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a “spirit” reconstructed behind the texts, but the great conciliar texts themselves, reread today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities. I arrived in Brazil knowing how the sects are expanding, and how the Catholic Church seems a bit sclerotic; but once I arrived, I saw that almost every day in Brazil a new religious community is born, a new movement is born, and it is not only the sects that are growing. The Church is growing with new realities full of vitality, which do not show up in the statistics – this is a false hope; statistics are not our divinity – but they grow within souls and create the joy of faith, they create the presence of the Gospel, and thus also create true development in the world and society.
Thus it seems to me that we must learn the great humility of the Crucified One, of a Church that is always humble and always opposed by the great economic powers, military powers, etc. But we must also learn, together with this humility, the true triumphalism of the Catholicism that grows in all ages. There also grows today the presence of the Crucified One raised from the dead, who has and preserves his wounds. He is wounded, but it is in just in this way that he renews the world, giving his breath which also renews the Church in spite of all of our poverty. In this combination of the humility of the Cross and the joy of the risen Lord, who in the Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward joyously and full of hope.
Prayers needed
I won't give aid and comfort to the Enemy (note the upposer case, people are not my enemies,) by linking to the screed he has written, but a member of the "Church of God" named R Fraser is a nut-job conspiracy theorist of the Oliver Stone/Art Bell level and in need of your prayers.
Sunday, 5 August 2007
May perpetual light shine upon him...
Cdl. Lustiger has died.
A good, long life.
And a fascinating one.
A good, long life.
And a fascinating one.
St Noel Chabanel Lectionary Psalms
Wow.
A complete lectionary cycle (well, not yet completed, but purt dang near complete, and eventually it will be, ) all three years of responsorial psalms.
Very worthy, dignified music.
Skillful accompaniment.
Faithful texts.
BEAUTIFULLY laid out (highly readable, minimum page turns, clear font.; you know my complaints about the Dread Gather...)
And they are a free will GIFT to the Church!
Having done this for many Sundays over the past three years, I am all too well aware of how much work this is, (and mine are not, of course, of this quality... I am lucky if I can remember what parallel fifths ARE, much less remember to avoid them... of course, I am lazy and now that I am not trading off with a sub or associate, I often don't write out an accompaniment, or at least not a legible, printed one, so there is no evidence of my melodic and harmonic sins. )
Of the several that I've printed out and played through, I fully intend to use those for which there is not already a setting in my parish's collective consciousness. (It would cause more long-term harm than good to eliminate all the Celebration series, unworthy though they are... all I can do for now is to correct the texts, make the verses more singable, etc. Baby steps.)
I need to explore the site a little more thoroughly (Sundays are NOT the best time for me to do anything requiring brain power or even consciousness... I've pretty much used up my store of both by the time the last Mass is over.)
St Noel Chabanel is one of the North American martyrs, I gather.. (Reminds me, Black Robe was a wonderful film, but too harrowing to suggest to Himself for the parish film series.)
Any way, God bless Jeff Ostrowski! (and hat tip and thanks to the New Liturgical Movement for pointing this project out -- I had read and used things from Ostrowski's site when I first came online, IIRC, but had lost the links or something. I'm a mess.)
http://chabanelpsalms.org/
A complete lectionary cycle (well, not yet completed, but purt dang near complete, and eventually it will be, ) all three years of responsorial psalms.
Very worthy, dignified music.
Skillful accompaniment.
Faithful texts.
BEAUTIFULLY laid out (highly readable, minimum page turns, clear font.; you know my complaints about the Dread Gather...)
And they are a free will GIFT to the Church!
Having done this for many Sundays over the past three years, I am all too well aware of how much work this is, (and mine are not, of course, of this quality... I am lucky if I can remember what parallel fifths ARE, much less remember to avoid them... of course, I am lazy and now that I am not trading off with a sub or associate, I often don't write out an accompaniment, or at least not a legible, printed one, so there is no evidence of my melodic and harmonic sins. )
Of the several that I've printed out and played through, I fully intend to use those for which there is not already a setting in my parish's collective consciousness. (It would cause more long-term harm than good to eliminate all the Celebration series, unworthy though they are... all I can do for now is to correct the texts, make the verses more singable, etc. Baby steps.)
I need to explore the site a little more thoroughly (Sundays are NOT the best time for me to do anything requiring brain power or even consciousness... I've pretty much used up my store of both by the time the last Mass is over.)
St Noel Chabanel is one of the North American martyrs, I gather.. (Reminds me, Black Robe was a wonderful film, but too harrowing to suggest to Himself for the parish film series.)
Any way, God bless Jeff Ostrowski! (and hat tip and thanks to the New Liturgical Movement for pointing this project out -- I had read and used things from Ostrowski's site when I first came online, IIRC, but had lost the links or something. I'm a mess.)
http://chabanelpsalms.org/
Has this guy lost his last marble?
What is GIA thinking, publishing the ramblings of this man?
One articulate musician from south of the Mason-Dixon line admitted she doesn’t have a clue about introits, high Mass, low Mass, Dies irae—all the stuff I ranted about.All the terminology completely escaped her with its nomenclature and schema of the rite. She is one of many, I am sure.
"Articulate perhaps", but not even educated in music by secular conservatory standards, and absurdly uninformed for someone working in Church music, if that is what she does.
I am also sure she would be equally baffled when she witnesses one of the nouveau Tridentine celebrants who exhibits great concern over the length of the maniple (a sort of forearm hanging of fabric matching the chasuble).
Strawman, I suspect he is lying to imply anyone is "exhibiting great concern over the length of maniples."
Another woman convert who is one of the brightest and most gifted students I’ve ever had in class has similar misgivings. What does she know from birettas and rochets?
And what does she need to know? Who is suggesting she needs to know anything about them?
Will the Good Friday prayer about the conversion of the perfidious Jews—which deeply troubles again our Jewish brothers and sisters—be maintained?
I do not believe Moleck is so uninformed as to be repeating this calumny out of ignorance. He knows perfectly well it is not part of the '62 missal.
There is also news of “training programs” for priests who want to learn the rubrics, how to wear that dangling maniple, and where the eyes focus when the priest turns from the altar for the Dominus vobiscum.There is a DVD prepared for commercial release that shows how to do it for those who’ve never done it.
Is he suggesting this is somehow worse than the present situation where I have met priests who haven't a clue about the rubrics of the Missa Normativa?
All in all, it appears that the document is not as innocuous as many would like to think.
The only ones who legitimately have anything to fear are Satan and his useful idiots.
Look what happened shortly after Vatican II reforms set in. Churches closed down the organ, dismissed the choirs, and all leadership was done by guitarists and the amplified singers.A new tyranny replaced the old tyranny.
Is there any reason to believe people with an interest in doing what is right will behave as badly as people who had no interest in even FINDING OUT what was right?
The solution? Father Pecklers offers one in the last sentence in John Allen’s NCR article:“Father Pecklers said he shares the pope’s desire to ‘recover the dimension of the transcendent, the symbolic, within Catholic worship,’ but said that in his view the best way to go about it is to continue efforts to improve liturgies using the post–Vatican II rites.’”
We can only hope.... is that what you're really afraid of? That the “competition” will force priests liturgists and musicians to approach the Ordinary Rite with a modicum of reverence and solemnity?
No more NPM conga line Masses, LA RelEd Conf. Karaoke babes? No more mimes, Barneys and Open-Mic-At-The-Improv celebrants?
Tant pis…
One articulate musician from south of the Mason-Dixon line admitted she doesn’t have a clue about introits, high Mass, low Mass, Dies irae—all the stuff I ranted about.All the terminology completely escaped her with its nomenclature and schema of the rite. She is one of many, I am sure.
"Articulate perhaps", but not even educated in music by secular conservatory standards, and absurdly uninformed for someone working in Church music, if that is what she does.
I am also sure she would be equally baffled when she witnesses one of the nouveau Tridentine celebrants who exhibits great concern over the length of the maniple (a sort of forearm hanging of fabric matching the chasuble).
Strawman, I suspect he is lying to imply anyone is "exhibiting great concern over the length of maniples."
Another woman convert who is one of the brightest and most gifted students I’ve ever had in class has similar misgivings. What does she know from birettas and rochets?
And what does she need to know? Who is suggesting she needs to know anything about them?
Will the Good Friday prayer about the conversion of the perfidious Jews—which deeply troubles again our Jewish brothers and sisters—be maintained?
I do not believe Moleck is so uninformed as to be repeating this calumny out of ignorance. He knows perfectly well it is not part of the '62 missal.
There is also news of “training programs” for priests who want to learn the rubrics, how to wear that dangling maniple, and where the eyes focus when the priest turns from the altar for the Dominus vobiscum.There is a DVD prepared for commercial release that shows how to do it for those who’ve never done it.
Is he suggesting this is somehow worse than the present situation where I have met priests who haven't a clue about the rubrics of the Missa Normativa?
All in all, it appears that the document is not as innocuous as many would like to think.
The only ones who legitimately have anything to fear are Satan and his useful idiots.
Look what happened shortly after Vatican II reforms set in. Churches closed down the organ, dismissed the choirs, and all leadership was done by guitarists and the amplified singers.A new tyranny replaced the old tyranny.
Is there any reason to believe people with an interest in doing what is right will behave as badly as people who had no interest in even FINDING OUT what was right?
The solution? Father Pecklers offers one in the last sentence in John Allen’s NCR article:“Father Pecklers said he shares the pope’s desire to ‘recover the dimension of the transcendent, the symbolic, within Catholic worship,’ but said that in his view the best way to go about it is to continue efforts to improve liturgies using the post–Vatican II rites.’”
We can only hope.... is that what you're really afraid of? That the “competition” will force priests liturgists and musicians to approach the Ordinary Rite with a modicum of reverence and solemnity?
No more NPM conga line Masses, LA RelEd Conf. Karaoke babes? No more mimes, Barneys and Open-Mic-At-The-Improv celebrants?
Tant pis…
Friday, 3 August 2007
O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet
Summer time is odd for me, I only receive the Chalice of the Precious Blood of Christ at a weekday Mass, ( such as just now. )
No choir on Sundays, so no "runner" as my parish calls the EM of HC who comes up to the loft, so I receive (to the horror of prog would-be liturgists!) outside of Mass.
Yes, just like Catholic organists of yore, after Mass, I discreetly and privately join the priest or an extraordinary minister before the Tabernacle and am given the Body and Blood of Christ, but under a single species.
I'm not certain if this isn't a better pattern for me in many ways, and I shouldn't continue once choir starts up again, (though I imagine that thought would horrify most of my fellow Companions and a few members of the society as well....)
I wonder what is usual now with musicians who still are allowed to use lofts
No choir on Sundays, so no "runner" as my parish calls the EM of HC who comes up to the loft, so I receive (to the horror of prog would-be liturgists!) outside of Mass.
Yes, just like Catholic organists of yore, after Mass, I discreetly and privately join the priest or an extraordinary minister before the Tabernacle and am given the Body and Blood of Christ, but under a single species.
I'm not certain if this isn't a better pattern for me in many ways, and I shouldn't continue once choir starts up again, (though I imagine that thought would horrify most of my fellow Companions and a few members of the society as well....)
I wonder what is usual now with musicians who still are allowed to use lofts
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Summer Chorus
First rehearsal, didn't get as much done as I had hoped, and don't know if I was any good, but I ran over and nobody made noises about leaving, so I guess they didn't mind me.
I'd be happier if someone else were doing this, although I pursued my other job, I never wanted to be a conductor, I'm much more cut out to be discipula than magistra.... but where to find the magistra? or magister, I ain't fussy.
I am Kate the Kursed, aren't I? I'd stop being so bossy if only...?
Or Turandot? :oP
Just looking for someone to rough me up and tell me what to do...
I'd be happier if someone else were doing this, although I pursued my other job, I never wanted to be a conductor, I'm much more cut out to be discipula than magistra.... but where to find the magistra? or magister, I ain't fussy.
I am Kate the Kursed, aren't I? I'd stop being so bossy if only...?
Or Turandot? :oP
Just looking for someone to rough me up and tell me what to do...
God's Hearing...
A thought provoking piece by Michael Lawrence over on The New Liturgical Movement.
"When Father started the Eucharistic prayer, his voice got very soft, even though, if I recall correctly, he was chanting.
It truly was a remarkable moment.
I spoke to the priest about this at lunch afterwards, about how much this approach emphasizes the theocentric character of the liturgy.
He leaned over and said to me very intently, 'The Almighty, the maker of all ears, has excellent hearing.'
That pretty much sums it up."
I have never understood why some people think volume=fervor.
And any good actor knows, of course, that one can often draw the focus of listeners most effectively by becoming quieter.
And surely, a low volume is more appropriate for many moments of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Of course, another problem is that there are priests and liturgists who misunderstand to whom the EP is addressed:And lifting his eyes to YOU, he said, "Take....."
They will insist that somehow this is addressed to the people, sort of playing the roles of the disciples at the table in the Last Supper.
One might as well be recounting a story of a conversation one has already had and, while doing so, turn from the person to whom one was talking to face the partner in the exchange in the story.
One is happy to hold a newborn.
One is happy to see your team's championship victory.
Does the volume of ones reactions to these events reflect their relative importance? or the level of ones joy?
Say something!
I were but little happy if I could say how much.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.
Quiet intensity is at least as appropriate a way to praise the Almighty as rafter-ringing... JMO.
"When Father started the Eucharistic prayer, his voice got very soft, even though, if I recall correctly, he was chanting.
It truly was a remarkable moment.
I spoke to the priest about this at lunch afterwards, about how much this approach emphasizes the theocentric character of the liturgy.
He leaned over and said to me very intently, 'The Almighty, the maker of all ears, has excellent hearing.'
That pretty much sums it up."
I have never understood why some people think volume=fervor.
And any good actor knows, of course, that one can often draw the focus of listeners most effectively by becoming quieter.
And surely, a low volume is more appropriate for many moments of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Of course, another problem is that there are priests and liturgists who misunderstand to whom the EP is addressed:And lifting his eyes to YOU, he said, "Take....."
They will insist that somehow this is addressed to the people, sort of playing the roles of the disciples at the table in the Last Supper.
One might as well be recounting a story of a conversation one has already had and, while doing so, turn from the person to whom one was talking to face the partner in the exchange in the story.
One is happy to hold a newborn.
One is happy to see your team's championship victory.
Does the volume of ones reactions to these events reflect their relative importance? or the level of ones joy?
Say something!
I were but little happy if I could say how much.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.
Quiet intensity is at least as appropriate a way to praise the Almighty as rafter-ringing... JMO.
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
We smell condescension?
I just read an interview with a man who is arguably "the most widely sung liturgical composer today." (What is arguable is whether most of his oeuvre is "liturgical" music.
This quote is parody in and of itself:
I was struck during that service by ... how poorly written the psalm setting was. It was awful. I thought to myself—I could write this badly!
Ladies and gentlemen, make up your own punchline.
So in honour of this remarkably ingenuous bit of truth-telling, another song parody: unsure of the source... but I know how the author feels. (I used to cut and paste and save without noting the URL, and now would be hard pressed to verify much of what I thought was valuable or interesting. It's not from the Moratorium site. Ah well...)
To the tune, (not noted, but one needs no confirmation,) of "Gather Us In."
1.Here in this place, music is droning
Here, prayerful silence vanished away.
Hear in this space, the very walls groaning,
Echoing back that insipid cliche.
Plodding along, its tune uninspired
Its rhythms monot'nous, dogmas obtuse,
It's harm'nies simplistic, (its singular virtue?
No chance for that cantor to really cut loose.)
2.We are the young, we smell condescension,
We are the old, our needs are ignored,
Peering, we note, with sad comprehension
Ev'ry PIP seems either angered or bored.
Please, not that song! we've heard it too often.
Please, not that song! It's nothing but drek.
St Peter's barque, on swells of Art once borne,
Om'nously, now's headed straight for a wreck.
3.Lyrics profound once prevailed at the altar
Poets and mystics, each did his part,
Words of such grace, from Office or Psalter
Pinnacle of the hymnographer's art.
Once there was verse by Bede, odes of Ambrose,
Phrases from Faber, Aquinas and Neale,
Know'ng as "orandi," so followed, "credendi,"
What matter's what we believe, not what we "feel."
4.Enrobing these prayers? their musical mantle?
First there was chant, transcendant and true;
Then came the Byrds, Palestrinas, and Bruckners,
Tallises, Mozarts... a Haydn or two.
And good, homely tunes, true voice of the people;
Sturdy, much loved, authentically "folk."
Now we're reduced to pedestrian pablum,
Mass-produced pop tunes, an over-hyped joke.
5.How can this stuff, drawn from the dread "Gather,"
Worthily bear heart-felt praise to the Lord?
How can this prattle, this yammering blather,
Suitably clothe prayer to Him, most adored?
Wait just a mo'! Is that their intention?
Ignore the One Godhead, in Persons Three?
Honoring 'stead, a quite different "person,"
The FIRST person, plural? Yes, us, ourselves, we!
6.Down with this dogg'rel shaped by committee!
Trite ditties penned by purveyors of shlock!
Ye hucksters a-hawking soul-sapping songbooks:
The Sacred Restored will no doubt be a shock.
For breaks a new dawn! let new songs be sung now,
New but organic, "in tune" with the past!
Soon, true reform, so thirsted, so longed for!
Our "desert" of forty years ending at last.
This quote is parody in and of itself:
I was struck during that service by ... how poorly written the psalm setting was. It was awful. I thought to myself—I could write this badly!
Ladies and gentlemen, make up your own punchline.
So in honour of this remarkably ingenuous bit of truth-telling, another song parody: unsure of the source... but I know how the author feels. (I used to cut and paste and save without noting the URL, and now would be hard pressed to verify much of what I thought was valuable or interesting. It's not from the Moratorium site. Ah well...)
To the tune, (not noted, but one needs no confirmation,) of "Gather Us In."
1.Here in this place, music is droning
Here, prayerful silence vanished away.
Hear in this space, the very walls groaning,
Echoing back that insipid cliche.
Plodding along, its tune uninspired
Its rhythms monot'nous, dogmas obtuse,
It's harm'nies simplistic, (its singular virtue?
No chance for that cantor to really cut loose.)
2.We are the young, we smell condescension,
We are the old, our needs are ignored,
Peering, we note, with sad comprehension
Ev'ry PIP seems either angered or bored.
Please, not that song! we've heard it too often.
Please, not that song! It's nothing but drek.
St Peter's barque, on swells of Art once borne,
Om'nously, now's headed straight for a wreck.
3.Lyrics profound once prevailed at the altar
Poets and mystics, each did his part,
Words of such grace, from Office or Psalter
Pinnacle of the hymnographer's art.
Once there was verse by Bede, odes of Ambrose,
Phrases from Faber, Aquinas and Neale,
Know'ng as "orandi," so followed, "credendi,"
What matter's what we believe, not what we "feel."
4.Enrobing these prayers? their musical mantle?
First there was chant, transcendant and true;
Then came the Byrds, Palestrinas, and Bruckners,
Tallises, Mozarts... a Haydn or two.
And good, homely tunes, true voice of the people;
Sturdy, much loved, authentically "folk."
Now we're reduced to pedestrian pablum,
Mass-produced pop tunes, an over-hyped joke.
5.How can this stuff, drawn from the dread "Gather,"
Worthily bear heart-felt praise to the Lord?
How can this prattle, this yammering blather,
Suitably clothe prayer to Him, most adored?
Wait just a mo'! Is that their intention?
Ignore the One Godhead, in Persons Three?
Honoring 'stead, a quite different "person,"
The FIRST person, plural? Yes, us, ourselves, we!
6.Down with this dogg'rel shaped by committee!
Trite ditties penned by purveyors of shlock!
Ye hucksters a-hawking soul-sapping songbooks:
The Sacred Restored will no doubt be a shock.
For breaks a new dawn! let new songs be sung now,
New but organic, "in tune" with the past!
Soon, true reform, so thirsted, so longed for!
Our "desert" of forty years ending at last.
Of Funerals and Perfection and Falling Short
Peter O'Toole in an interview told a story about having, in his roistering days, sent a jacket to the dry cleaners that had been through rather a lot, too much for tweed.
It was came back with a note pinned to it, "It distresses us to return work that is not perfect."
He tells the story as an apology for a movie, or a role, or something of which he is not particularly proud.
Now let me say, first off, I am too lazy to claim that I always strive for perfection, it would be hypocritical to do so.
But at things that really, truly matter, I do my best.
Not perfection, but MY best. (The biography of St Francis that I'm reading has interesting things to say on the "medieval" striving for spiritual perfection.... really? such efforts are medieval? but I digress...)
So I do my best.
But I understand that "everyone has his reasons."
And that everyone has different priorities, so opinions may vary as to what "really, truly matters."
But I cannot but gnash my teeth when I am doing my level best to... well, do my level best.
And someone who doesn't know, or doesn't care tries to prevent it.
Sometimes, truly infuriatingly, it is someone whose business it isn't even.
I don't expect HN, or SMM or even JT to agree with me. I don't expect the first two to be as well informed in matters specific to my area as I have worked hard to become. (I don't expect the first-named to even care to become informed, but that's another story.)
But they certainly all have a greater right than the average PIP to express their views, and have me at least give them a hearing (and of course, the last named, more than that, he has a right to expect compliance. And oddly, of the three, it is of course the one with not only the least knowledge but the least authority who most expects the world to ask "how high?" when the order to "Jump!" is issued. But again, long digression, NOT what this is about.)
Yesterday we had a funeral so tiny that pall-bearers needed to be hired.
One of the funeral choir's number buttonholed me waving her copy of the In paradisum, and asked, not trying to hide the disgust she always displays in reference to this recessional, "do we HAAAAAFTA sing this? the funreal's so small they'll be outside before we get to the song!", meaning the hymn which I always program for immediately after as a concession to those who resisted my minimal moves toward orthopraxis.
I explained for the umpteenth time, that the In paradisum, (almost invariably in English, I hasten to assure you, in respect for the liturgical sensibilities of my pastor,) is an actual prescribed part of the ritual, unlike the hymns which are merely tacked on.
"Yeah? Then why don't the other priests do it?"
And what could I answer?
That I can't say, but that perhaps at other parishes they are either unaware of or unconcerned with what the liturgical books actually ask for?
One of our priests, for instance, regularly preaches at funerals that funeral vestments "used to be black" but since Vatican II, white is "what's called for." How could I tell him no, purple actually, and then black, and then white in some places but only as an indult.
And if he doesn't know what the actual rite calls for, what chance is there of the PIPs, or the PILs knowing?
Funeral liturgical praxis is generally woeful in the Church in this country, and it is understandable that it should be, (for more reasons than inaccuracies often spread by those given charge of it.)
A family in mourning, or even shock are in no condition to receive catechesis on the right conduct of the liturgy, the importance of ars celebrandi, (at least not directly.)
They are in need of catechesis on so much more immediate concerns (the actual teachings of Holy Mother Church, for instance, on worthy reception of the Body and Precious Blood of Christ, the good death, the necessity of prayer for the dead, purgatory, atonement...)
And the charge to be "pastoral" is often carried out badly. Some think an equivalent is "being nice by giving people whatever they ask for."
They don't realize that rite ritual has a catechetical power all its own, that solemnity can inform, that obedience can teach.
And funerals become the "gateway" do-it-yourself liturgy, and the infection spreads.
Infinitesimally small concessions often turn out to be virulent.
From using "other suitable hymns" we get to ignorance of the very existence of propers, then to other unsuitable songs," then to the anything-goes Mass.
During the Mass why shouldn't we have Over the Rainbow?
Tura-lur-lura?
A toast with the beer he loved?
Her favorite poems read?
A 20 minute "roast" of the deceased and all his family friends and their humorous foibles?
An opening greeting, welcoming "this party, this send-off" delivered by the cheery bereaved?
Yes.
No joke.
ALL of these.
Nothing made-up, or second-hand.
It is not necessary to exaggerate to make this point.
1st Communion and Confirmations are not far behind in their wanton hi-jacking and privatizing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but frankly, if the Liturgy is to be "fixed," if the world is to be saved, I'm not sure it won't have to start with the Mass of Christian Burial.
It was came back with a note pinned to it, "It distresses us to return work that is not perfect."
He tells the story as an apology for a movie, or a role, or something of which he is not particularly proud.
Now let me say, first off, I am too lazy to claim that I always strive for perfection, it would be hypocritical to do so.
But at things that really, truly matter, I do my best.
Not perfection, but MY best. (The biography of St Francis that I'm reading has interesting things to say on the "medieval" striving for spiritual perfection.... really? such efforts are medieval? but I digress...)
So I do my best.
But I understand that "everyone has his reasons."
And that everyone has different priorities, so opinions may vary as to what "really, truly matters."
But I cannot but gnash my teeth when I am doing my level best to... well, do my level best.
And someone who doesn't know, or doesn't care tries to prevent it.
Sometimes, truly infuriatingly, it is someone whose business it isn't even.
I don't expect HN, or SMM or even JT to agree with me. I don't expect the first two to be as well informed in matters specific to my area as I have worked hard to become. (I don't expect the first-named to even care to become informed, but that's another story.)
But they certainly all have a greater right than the average PIP to express their views, and have me at least give them a hearing (and of course, the last named, more than that, he has a right to expect compliance. And oddly, of the three, it is of course the one with not only the least knowledge but the least authority who most expects the world to ask "how high?" when the order to "Jump!" is issued. But again, long digression, NOT what this is about.)
Yesterday we had a funeral so tiny that pall-bearers needed to be hired.
One of the funeral choir's number buttonholed me waving her copy of the In paradisum, and asked, not trying to hide the disgust she always displays in reference to this recessional, "do we HAAAAAFTA sing this? the funreal's so small they'll be outside before we get to the song!", meaning the hymn which I always program for immediately after as a concession to those who resisted my minimal moves toward orthopraxis.
I explained for the umpteenth time, that the In paradisum, (almost invariably in English, I hasten to assure you, in respect for the liturgical sensibilities of my pastor,) is an actual prescribed part of the ritual, unlike the hymns which are merely tacked on.
"Yeah? Then why don't the other priests do it?"
And what could I answer?
That I can't say, but that perhaps at other parishes they are either unaware of or unconcerned with what the liturgical books actually ask for?
One of our priests, for instance, regularly preaches at funerals that funeral vestments "used to be black" but since Vatican II, white is "what's called for." How could I tell him no, purple actually, and then black, and then white in some places but only as an indult.
And if he doesn't know what the actual rite calls for, what chance is there of the PIPs, or the PILs knowing?
Funeral liturgical praxis is generally woeful in the Church in this country, and it is understandable that it should be, (for more reasons than inaccuracies often spread by those given charge of it.)
A family in mourning, or even shock are in no condition to receive catechesis on the right conduct of the liturgy, the importance of ars celebrandi, (at least not directly.)
They are in need of catechesis on so much more immediate concerns (the actual teachings of Holy Mother Church, for instance, on worthy reception of the Body and Precious Blood of Christ, the good death, the necessity of prayer for the dead, purgatory, atonement...)
And the charge to be "pastoral" is often carried out badly. Some think an equivalent is "being nice by giving people whatever they ask for."
They don't realize that rite ritual has a catechetical power all its own, that solemnity can inform, that obedience can teach.
And funerals become the "gateway" do-it-yourself liturgy, and the infection spreads.
Infinitesimally small concessions often turn out to be virulent.
From using "other suitable hymns" we get to ignorance of the very existence of propers, then to other unsuitable songs," then to the anything-goes Mass.
During the Mass why shouldn't we have Over the Rainbow?
Tura-lur-lura?
A toast with the beer he loved?
Her favorite poems read?
A 20 minute "roast" of the deceased and all his family friends and their humorous foibles?
An opening greeting, welcoming "this party, this send-off" delivered by the cheery bereaved?
Yes.
No joke.
ALL of these.
Nothing made-up, or second-hand.
It is not necessary to exaggerate to make this point.
1st Communion and Confirmations are not far behind in their wanton hi-jacking and privatizing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but frankly, if the Liturgy is to be "fixed," if the world is to be saved, I'm not sure it won't have to start with the Mass of Christian Burial.
Patriarch Teoctist, R.I.P.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- The head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, who made history when he invited the late John Paul II to his Orthodox country in 1999 but was criticized for being too close to former Communists, died Monday. He was 92.
Patriarch Teoctist died of a heart attack following surgery on his prostate gland earlier Monday, doctors at the Fundeni hospital told Realitatea TV.
Teoctist was appointed to head the church in November 1986, but briefly stepped down after anti-communist protesters in 1989 said he had been too conciliatory toward former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He had refused to condemn Ceausescu's destruction of Orthodox churches in Bucharest. He was reinstated a few weeks later.
I wonder how much longer the "church men who collaborated with the oppressors" scandals will go on after the effective fall of communist socialism.
Nazis, Communists, tribal warlords... weak men with good intentions have always made deals with the devil.
Of course the genocides in Africa (how hideous that that word must be used in the plural!) , and the primal urge to "find a way" guarantees more accusations and perhaps more revelations (not always the same thing.)
I also note, completely aside, that the Patriarch was 92. I note this with joy.
I pointed out to Himself just yesterday that Benedict is a vigorous eighty, he has led a temperate life, he takes exercise, he has immediate access to the very finest medical care, and perhaps most important, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY!
He will, God willing, have time to accomplish much.
Anyone reading this, please offer up a prayer right now for the Holy Father.
Patriarch Teoctist died of a heart attack following surgery on his prostate gland earlier Monday, doctors at the Fundeni hospital told Realitatea TV.
Teoctist was appointed to head the church in November 1986, but briefly stepped down after anti-communist protesters in 1989 said he had been too conciliatory toward former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He had refused to condemn Ceausescu's destruction of Orthodox churches in Bucharest. He was reinstated a few weeks later.
I wonder how much longer the "church men who collaborated with the oppressors" scandals will go on after the effective fall of communist socialism.
Nazis, Communists, tribal warlords... weak men with good intentions have always made deals with the devil.
Of course the genocides in Africa (how hideous that that word must be used in the plural!) , and the primal urge to "find a way" guarantees more accusations and perhaps more revelations (not always the same thing.)
I also note, completely aside, that the Patriarch was 92. I note this with joy.
I pointed out to Himself just yesterday that Benedict is a vigorous eighty, he has led a temperate life, he takes exercise, he has immediate access to the very finest medical care, and perhaps most important, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY!
He will, God willing, have time to accomplish much.
Anyone reading this, please offer up a prayer right now for the Holy Father.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Benedict the Clear-eyed
Clear-eyed, and more -- plain spoken.
Pope Surveys Post-Vatican II Trials
Aide Says He Gives Vision of Realism and Humility
VATICAN CITY, JULY 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says he had great enthusiasm during the Second Vatican Council, but acknowledges the difficulties the Church has faced since those years.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi recounted the Pope's words during the most recent edition of the Vatican Television program "Octava Dies."
The Vatican spokesman was commenting on the Holy Father's question-and-answer session last Tuesday with priests from two dioceses of northern Italy.
Father Lombardi recalled that the Bishop of Rome answered a priest who spoke of living through the Second Vatican Council, the hopes of "changing the world," and the difficulties of the succeeding years.
The Pontiff replied: "I also lived the time of the Council with great enthusiasm; it seemed that the Church and the world had met again. We had hoped a great deal -- but things showed themselves to be more difficult."
Father Lombardi affirmed that the question-and-answer session had a "relaxed climate of reciprocal confidence among those who have dedicated their lives to so many years of pastoral service in a difficult world that is in constant change."
In this context, "the Pope delineates with a few very effective sketches the Church's path of the last decades, profoundly interpreting it in the context of the contemporary world," the Vatican official added.
Real hopeFather Lombardi said Benedict XVI recalled "above all the cultural crisis of the West that exploded in '68, with the fascination for Marxism and the illusion of creating a new world, and the crumbling of the communist regimes in '89: the fall of the ideologies that did not give room to faith but rather to skepticism.
"The Christian proclamation has to come to terms with this context," the Vatican spokesman added. "And the Church faces it with realism and humility without ceding to the triumphalism of those who think that they have found the way to the new world."
At the bottom of this is the humility of the Crucified, which will always be contrasted by the great powers of the world, but which generates a real hope that is manifested in the creative vitality of the Church: in her communities and her movements, in the new responsibility of the laity, in ecumenical relations, in liturgical and spiritual experiences.
"The Pope of great theological ideas and great cultural wealth is also the one who helps us to live the simultaneously humble and rich condition of the hope of the Church on its way, as he says: 'With our feet on the ground and our eyes turned toward heaven.'"
Pope Surveys Post-Vatican II Trials
Aide Says He Gives Vision of Realism and Humility
VATICAN CITY, JULY 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says he had great enthusiasm during the Second Vatican Council, but acknowledges the difficulties the Church has faced since those years.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi recounted the Pope's words during the most recent edition of the Vatican Television program "Octava Dies."
The Vatican spokesman was commenting on the Holy Father's question-and-answer session last Tuesday with priests from two dioceses of northern Italy.
Father Lombardi recalled that the Bishop of Rome answered a priest who spoke of living through the Second Vatican Council, the hopes of "changing the world," and the difficulties of the succeeding years.
The Pontiff replied: "I also lived the time of the Council with great enthusiasm; it seemed that the Church and the world had met again. We had hoped a great deal -- but things showed themselves to be more difficult."
Father Lombardi affirmed that the question-and-answer session had a "relaxed climate of reciprocal confidence among those who have dedicated their lives to so many years of pastoral service in a difficult world that is in constant change."
In this context, "the Pope delineates with a few very effective sketches the Church's path of the last decades, profoundly interpreting it in the context of the contemporary world," the Vatican official added.
Real hopeFather Lombardi said Benedict XVI recalled "above all the cultural crisis of the West that exploded in '68, with the fascination for Marxism and the illusion of creating a new world, and the crumbling of the communist regimes in '89: the fall of the ideologies that did not give room to faith but rather to skepticism.
"The Christian proclamation has to come to terms with this context," the Vatican spokesman added. "And the Church faces it with realism and humility without ceding to the triumphalism of those who think that they have found the way to the new world."
At the bottom of this is the humility of the Crucified, which will always be contrasted by the great powers of the world, but which generates a real hope that is manifested in the creative vitality of the Church: in her communities and her movements, in the new responsibility of the laity, in ecumenical relations, in liturgical and spiritual experiences.
"The Pope of great theological ideas and great cultural wealth is also the one who helps us to live the simultaneously humble and rich condition of the hope of the Church on its way, as he says: 'With our feet on the ground and our eyes turned toward heaven.'"
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
We have standards and practices?
On the late lamented Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin (I suppose, it was his show,) wrote this exchange, which stuck with me.
(Someone has presented an idea.)
Dubious executive: I dunno, we'll have to run it by Standards and Practices.
Smart-ass on-air personality: We have standards and practices?
Executive: You know we do, those guys in the suits are Standard and Practices.
Smart-ass: no, I mean, we have actual standards?
I think of it as discussions turn to rubrics.
I imagine some Liturgy-monger after being told his latest idea is in violation of the rubrics:
I mean, we have actual rubrics?
It seems Mary Jane had similar thoughts.
Many people in positions of actual authority literally don't know.
July 21, 2007
The Constant Temptation
It is the constant temptation of the liturgist and the creative, artistic mind to want to "set things right."
Truer words were never spoken. This line comes from a discussion of various liturgical changes made in the post-Vatican II period. And while it's easy (and in some cases, correct) to attribute sinister motives to some of the players, it's probably not true for all.
How many of us have gazed out at the listless (or so they seem) congregation and thought "if only we could do something that would wake them up"? I've thought it - and I've learned to squelch it quickly. There's no reason that my "creative liturgy" is more justifiable than anyone else's. Oh, but how I long some days "to set things right."
That is why we have rubrics. I've found the discussion of the difficulties of the extraordinary rite interesting. Commentators keep talking about how hard the rubrics would be to learn, with the unspoken implication that there are no rubrics at all in the Novus Ordo.
Excuse me.
I would be grateful if we followed the rubrics in the ordinary rite.
(Someone has presented an idea.)
Dubious executive: I dunno, we'll have to run it by Standards and Practices.
Smart-ass on-air personality: We have standards and practices?
Executive: You know we do, those guys in the suits are Standard and Practices.
Smart-ass: no, I mean, we have actual standards?
I think of it as discussions turn to rubrics.
I imagine some Liturgy-monger after being told his latest idea is in violation of the rubrics:
I mean, we have actual rubrics?
It seems Mary Jane had similar thoughts.
Many people in positions of actual authority literally don't know.
July 21, 2007
The Constant Temptation
It is the constant temptation of the liturgist and the creative, artistic mind to want to "set things right."
Truer words were never spoken. This line comes from a discussion of various liturgical changes made in the post-Vatican II period. And while it's easy (and in some cases, correct) to attribute sinister motives to some of the players, it's probably not true for all.
How many of us have gazed out at the listless (or so they seem) congregation and thought "if only we could do something that would wake them up"? I've thought it - and I've learned to squelch it quickly. There's no reason that my "creative liturgy" is more justifiable than anyone else's. Oh, but how I long some days "to set things right."
That is why we have rubrics. I've found the discussion of the difficulties of the extraordinary rite interesting. Commentators keep talking about how hard the rubrics would be to learn, with the unspoken implication that there are no rubrics at all in the Novus Ordo.
Excuse me.
I would be grateful if we followed the rubrics in the ordinary rite.
Monday, 23 July 2007
The war 'twixt loft and sacristy
NOT at my parish, I hasten to add!
Very contentious thread http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/07/she-shouted-oh-shut-up-and-stormed-out-of-the-sacristy/#comments
on Fr Z's, which he prudently closed.
The incident, from Orthfully Catholics http://orthfullycatholic.blogspot.com/2007/07/high-masslow-mass.html:
Today I served the RCIA Reunion Mass, which was a very interesting experience. As it was attended by people who had come home through the RCIA programme the priest and catechists decided we should show them what home they had come to by having a Latin High Mass (Ordinary Form obviously) but the Music Directress didn’t like this idea. When she was told the Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei were going to be in Latin plainchant she shouted, ‘Oh, shut up’ and stormed out of the sacristy. She then jumped in at each of those times accompanying Paul Inwood style tunes on the electric keyboard. The only thing she couldn’t put a stop to was the professional singer we had got in to sing ‘Panis Angelicum’ [sic] at Communion, however she did fight back by singing some happy clappy song straight afterwards."
I weighed in, of course, http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/07/she-shouted-oh-shut-up-and-stormed-out-of-the-sacristy/#comment-26328
"I am not excusing such behavior ... but if this was a regularly scheduled Mass, the music for which has always been this person’s responsibility, I think she had a legitimate grievance... last minute changes made by someone else with no thought to the preparation that might have already gone into it, or what instantaneous preparation might now be required"
I noticed that, Fr Z's readership being what it is, naturally the response was overwhelmingly supportive of the musical and liturgical sensibilities of said Music Directress's antagonists.But I was struck that only other musicians seemed to acknowledge that MDs are constantly the brunt of such dumping upon, justifiably bridle at having changes sprung on them and delivered by fiat (often from someone with no authority to do so,) and that there may be more to the story.
The always kind and wise Michael E. Lawrence:
Music directors of varying stripes in churches the world over are disrespected in ways that many would find hard to believe. Much of this disrespect, regrettably, comes from the clergy ...It may also be good to keep in mind that this might well have been one episode amongst a number of things, and it MIGHT not have been about ideological factors. Perhaps, if the music director was indeed approached with this at the last minute, it might not have been the first time that such a request was made minutes before Mass was to begin.
And this from Veiled Woman
"The crowning incident came when [a "dear woman who holds a Master of Theology" yet once declared "Vatican II outlawed Latin!”who "Holds the parish liturgies hostage" ]and the pastor she influenced threatened to fire me if I did not sing a “hymn” set to a Disney tune, “It’s a Small World” as requested by a parishioner who wintered in Florida. We have a new pastor now and her power is diminished, but I seriously doubt that we will ever see a Latin Mass in this parish.
Why do I stay? One reason: the job helps support our only child, a 19 year old seminarian, who loves the Latin Mass. Where did he develop that love? Not at our parish."
(That one truly horrified me, as I have made jokes that I naively thought were over the top about the "It's A Small World" settings of the ordinary contributing to the Disneyfication of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.)
Mary Kay:
"How do you know that those who approached the music director didn’t provoke her out of their own frustration? Granted, not the best response, but 'shut up' sounds more like a response to [a provocation] rather than a neutral stating 'We’re singing these songs.'"
Gavin:
I’m assuming that this musician was neither qualified, prepared, or willing to do chant. That priest put her on the spot, and I’ll tell you she acted a lot more civilized than I would have. If my priest were to say to me, ON A SUNDAY no less, “Gavin, I want you to do On Eagle’s Wings four times at Mass today”, he’d have my resignation and no musician for the Mass. While I strongly disagree with this woman’s hatred of Latin, the priest was just a jerk to demand something that she could not and did not want to do.
One aspect no one brought up -- the possibility that the musician had put a great deal of preparation into something else especially for the occasion.
ST J's choir loves to tell two stories that speak to such a situation.
1. Permission to sing a complex and difficult choral creed for a "big" Mass, lot of work to perfect it, and when the time came, the priest just started reciting it. (Apparently the director waited patiently until it concluded and then, as the priest was inhaling to begin the General Intercessions played the intro to the prepared Credo full organ.)
2. The cranky bishop who simply shouted from the sanctuary up to the loft, in the middle of some choral anthem, "That's enough o' that for now!"
I am occasionally left out of the loop when the scheduling for our "Three Rites" of Baptism, changes, despite the fact that it is they who do the scheduling who mandate the use of the absurd Becker, and that they know that not all the cantors can do it competently, and that cantor scheduling takes place nearly a month before the Mass where "final rite," overshadows all other considerations and ceremony, and that they would prefer two cantors (hard enough to be certain one will show up sometimes!,) if there is no choir; and finally that, in the ever user-unfriendly GIA scores, reading inserted names (also as requested by those who do the scheduling,) so that they can be sung is always a challenge, so I personally go to the trouble and time of setting it on the computer, (in an often vain attempt to make it easier for the choir or cantor.)
Fr is terrific, he understands, or at least understood when it was so presented, that music no more occurs spontaneously at Mass than does the sermon -- and does a seven minute homily require 7 minutes of his time to prepare? and is always apologetic and abashed if a change is required last minute.
(Yet, my impression is that change is sometimes required, five minutes before Mass, whereas my impression is also that even with several weeks lead time, it is always too late to tell a lay reader that, oh, say, a votive Mass will replace that of a Sunday in Ordinal time.)
The only time our relationship in this regard was in any way strained was the OLofP incident, and while he was unreasonable (how would I have known in time for the Sunday Masses, much less the anticipated one, that a committee of which I am not a member, and which had met at 2:00 that Saturday afternoon, had decided that a particular song was to be sung at every Mass for the next month?) I was detached enough from the situation that I could remain perfectly cool, as well as a little indulgent and sympathetic to him because of the WOB with whom he was constrained to work.
And I think because I was able to be cool, there was no baggage from the incident.
Lawdie, I've gone on here, haven't I......?
I'll leave it to another post to discuss the draconian but not entirely lack in merit "rules" set forth by another poster before the thread was quashed.
Very contentious thread http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/07/she-shouted-oh-shut-up-and-stormed-out-of-the-sacristy/#comments
on Fr Z's, which he prudently closed.
The incident, from Orthfully Catholics http://orthfullycatholic.blogspot.com/2007/07/high-masslow-mass.html:
Today I served the RCIA Reunion Mass, which was a very interesting experience. As it was attended by people who had come home through the RCIA programme the priest and catechists decided we should show them what home they had come to by having a Latin High Mass (Ordinary Form obviously) but the Music Directress didn’t like this idea. When she was told the Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei were going to be in Latin plainchant she shouted, ‘Oh, shut up’ and stormed out of the sacristy. She then jumped in at each of those times accompanying Paul Inwood style tunes on the electric keyboard. The only thing she couldn’t put a stop to was the professional singer we had got in to sing ‘Panis Angelicum’ [sic] at Communion, however she did fight back by singing some happy clappy song straight afterwards."
I weighed in, of course, http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/07/she-shouted-oh-shut-up-and-stormed-out-of-the-sacristy/#comment-26328
"I am not excusing such behavior ... but if this was a regularly scheduled Mass, the music for which has always been this person’s responsibility, I think she had a legitimate grievance... last minute changes made by someone else with no thought to the preparation that might have already gone into it, or what instantaneous preparation might now be required"
I noticed that, Fr Z's readership being what it is, naturally the response was overwhelmingly supportive of the musical and liturgical sensibilities of said Music Directress's antagonists.But I was struck that only other musicians seemed to acknowledge that MDs are constantly the brunt of such dumping upon, justifiably bridle at having changes sprung on them and delivered by fiat (often from someone with no authority to do so,) and that there may be more to the story.
The always kind and wise Michael E. Lawrence:
Music directors of varying stripes in churches the world over are disrespected in ways that many would find hard to believe. Much of this disrespect, regrettably, comes from the clergy ...It may also be good to keep in mind that this might well have been one episode amongst a number of things, and it MIGHT not have been about ideological factors. Perhaps, if the music director was indeed approached with this at the last minute, it might not have been the first time that such a request was made minutes before Mass was to begin.
And this from Veiled Woman
"The crowning incident came when [a "dear woman who holds a Master of Theology" yet once declared "Vatican II outlawed Latin!”who "Holds the parish liturgies hostage" ]and the pastor she influenced threatened to fire me if I did not sing a “hymn” set to a Disney tune, “It’s a Small World” as requested by a parishioner who wintered in Florida. We have a new pastor now and her power is diminished, but I seriously doubt that we will ever see a Latin Mass in this parish.
Why do I stay? One reason: the job helps support our only child, a 19 year old seminarian, who loves the Latin Mass. Where did he develop that love? Not at our parish."
(That one truly horrified me, as I have made jokes that I naively thought were over the top about the "It's A Small World" settings of the ordinary contributing to the Disneyfication of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.)
Mary Kay:
"How do you know that those who approached the music director didn’t provoke her out of their own frustration? Granted, not the best response, but 'shut up' sounds more like a response to [a provocation] rather than a neutral stating 'We’re singing these songs.'"
Gavin:
I’m assuming that this musician was neither qualified, prepared, or willing to do chant. That priest put her on the spot, and I’ll tell you she acted a lot more civilized than I would have. If my priest were to say to me, ON A SUNDAY no less, “Gavin, I want you to do On Eagle’s Wings four times at Mass today”, he’d have my resignation and no musician for the Mass. While I strongly disagree with this woman’s hatred of Latin, the priest was just a jerk to demand something that she could not and did not want to do.
One aspect no one brought up -- the possibility that the musician had put a great deal of preparation into something else especially for the occasion.
ST J's choir loves to tell two stories that speak to such a situation.
1. Permission to sing a complex and difficult choral creed for a "big" Mass, lot of work to perfect it, and when the time came, the priest just started reciting it. (Apparently the director waited patiently until it concluded and then, as the priest was inhaling to begin the General Intercessions played the intro to the prepared Credo full organ.)
2. The cranky bishop who simply shouted from the sanctuary up to the loft, in the middle of some choral anthem, "That's enough o' that for now!"
I am occasionally left out of the loop when the scheduling for our "Three Rites" of Baptism, changes, despite the fact that it is they who do the scheduling who mandate the use of the absurd Becker, and that they know that not all the cantors can do it competently, and that cantor scheduling takes place nearly a month before the Mass where "final rite," overshadows all other considerations and ceremony, and that they would prefer two cantors (hard enough to be certain one will show up sometimes!,) if there is no choir; and finally that, in the ever user-unfriendly GIA scores, reading inserted names (also as requested by those who do the scheduling,) so that they can be sung is always a challenge, so I personally go to the trouble and time of setting it on the computer, (in an often vain attempt to make it easier for the choir or cantor.)
Fr is terrific, he understands, or at least understood when it was so presented, that music no more occurs spontaneously at Mass than does the sermon -- and does a seven minute homily require 7 minutes of his time to prepare? and is always apologetic and abashed if a change is required last minute.
(Yet, my impression is that change is sometimes required, five minutes before Mass, whereas my impression is also that even with several weeks lead time, it is always too late to tell a lay reader that, oh, say, a votive Mass will replace that of a Sunday in Ordinal time.)
The only time our relationship in this regard was in any way strained was the OLofP incident, and while he was unreasonable (how would I have known in time for the Sunday Masses, much less the anticipated one, that a committee of which I am not a member, and which had met at 2:00 that Saturday afternoon, had decided that a particular song was to be sung at every Mass for the next month?) I was detached enough from the situation that I could remain perfectly cool, as well as a little indulgent and sympathetic to him because of the WOB with whom he was constrained to work.
And I think because I was able to be cool, there was no baggage from the incident.
Lawdie, I've gone on here, haven't I......?
I'll leave it to another post to discuss the draconian but not entirely lack in merit "rules" set forth by another poster before the thread was quashed.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
A word of caution about the Extraordinary Rite
http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=eb317976-83d6-41ff-b662-7aca18cf8774
Christopher Zehnder in California Catholic has this to say:
"...one of the greatest fears of 'progressive' Catholics is the return of the Bad Old Days before Vatican II -- the days when the “Spirit” did not dash about the Church as freely as It does today. The 'Tridentine' Mass, of course, is for many the symbol of that oppressive past, just as wisecracking celebrants, 'Glory and Praise,' altar girls, and liturgical dance routines are of the age of liberation. The return of the Tridentine Mass is the reemergence of the stern, old Patriarch just when we were beginning to have fun,"
before going on to bemoan the sloppy ars celebrandi of some devotees.
This has certainly not been my experience, but it is a warning worth heeding.
Christopher Zehnder in California Catholic has this to say:
"...one of the greatest fears of 'progressive' Catholics is the return of the Bad Old Days before Vatican II -- the days when the “Spirit” did not dash about the Church as freely as It does today. The 'Tridentine' Mass, of course, is for many the symbol of that oppressive past, just as wisecracking celebrants, 'Glory and Praise,' altar girls, and liturgical dance routines are of the age of liberation. The return of the Tridentine Mass is the reemergence of the stern, old Patriarch just when we were beginning to have fun,"
before going on to bemoan the sloppy ars celebrandi of some devotees.
This has certainly not been my experience, but it is a warning worth heeding.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Thank you, Rainer and Gerald!
From Gerald of Closed Cafeteria, his own translations of the Marienleben.
(Wouldn't a staged reading in the nave of St John's, , maybe Bob and Aline, maybe Margaret and Mary Ellen and Alyse too? , interspersed with Marian music be a corker? Hmmmmm... the Nieland Magnificat, maybe the wonderful calypso carol, the glorious 4th verse of the Christina Rosetti poem with Holst's glorious music, one the the SAVAE "restorations" or whatever they are, Zdravasbud, the Arcadelt, a psalm for Joseph to chant in Hebrew....)
http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-of-mary-das-marienleben.html
The Birth of Mary
O how hard it must have been for the angels
to not suddenly break into song, the way one breaks out crying,
because they knew: in this night the mother is born for the boy,
for the one soon to appear.
Flying they kept silent and showed the path
where, alone, the house of Joachim lay.
Oh, how they felt within themselves and within space pure thickening,
but no one was allowed below with him.
For, already the two were beside themselves
A neighbor came by, curious, unable to comprehend,
And the old man, carefully, went and silenced the mooing
of a dark cow; for things had never been like this.
The Presentation of Mary in the Temple
To understand what she was like then,
you have to imagine yourself in a place
in which columns affect you;
where you can retrace stairs
where arches full of danger
bridge the chasm of a space
that remained within you,
because it had been made, towering,
of such pieces that you can no longer
remove them from yourself lest you demolished yourself.
If you have reached that state, if everything within you
is stone, wall, ramp, view, curve, then try
to remove the big curtain in front of you
with both hands:it sparkles of very noble things
and surpasses your breath and touch.
Up, down, palace built upon palace,
Railings stream wider from within railings,
and surface above surface on such edges
that vertigo, as you can see, grasps you.
Clouds of incense diffuse what is close,
but still the most distant aims right
inside of you with its straight rays -
and now, when the glow from clear bowls
of flame plays on slowly approaching robes:how can you bear it?
She, however, came and raised her eyes
to view all this.
(A child, a little girl among women)
Then she ascended silently, filled with confidence,
towards the spoiled luxury which made way for her:
For that is how much everything that men built had
already been exceeded by the praise within her heart;
by the desire to give herself to the signs within her:
The parents wanted to lift her up,
the looming figure with the bejeweled chest
seemed to receive her:
But she passed through everyone,
small as she was, slipped from every hand
into her destiny, which, higher than the hall,
was ready, and heavier than the temple.
The Annunciation
Not that an angel entered (realize this),
scared her. Just as others would not startle
if a ray of sunlight or the moon at night
busied itself in the room, the form in which
an angel walked, did not scare her;
she barely had an idea that this stay was
difficult for angels. (O if we knew just how pure
she was. A doe once beheld her in the forest and
became so fond of her that within her was conceived
the unicorn, the animal from light, the pure animal)
It did not scare her that he entered,
but that he was so utterly present, the angel,
bearing a young man's face, and turned to her;
that his gaze and hers, looking up to him, collided
as if everything outside had become empty,
and everything that millions saw, did, wore
became condensed in them: only her and him;
Seeing and seen, nowhere else except in this very spot
- see, that scares, and both startled.
Then the angel sang his melody.
The Visitation of Mary
She still bore it easily in the beginning,
but ascending she sometimes already
was aware of her wondrous body,
and then she stood, breathing,
on the high mountains of Judea.
But not the land, her own fullness
was laid out around her;
walking she felt: one never transcends
the greatness she now felt.
She felt compelled to lay her hand
on the other body, further along than she was.
And the women dizzily approached one another,
touching clothes and hair.
Each one, filled by her sanctuary,
protected herself with her cousin.
O, the Savior within her was still a blossom,
but the Baptist in the cousin's womb
was already moved to leap for joy.
Joseph's Suspicion
And the angel spoke and made an effort
with the man clenching his fists:
But don't you see from every crease
That she is cool as God's morning.
But the other man looked at him, gloomy,
mumbling: what has changed her so ?
Then the angel cried: Carpenter! Do you
still not realize that this is the Lord's doing ?
When you make boards, in your pride,
do you really want to challenge the one
who humbly causes, from the same wood,
leaves to sprout and buds to swell ?
He understood. And when he lifted the gaze,
quite frightened, to the angel, he was gone.
He removed his thick cap slowly.
Then he sang praises.
GO READ THE REST! http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-of-mary-das-marienleben.html
(Wouldn't a staged reading in the nave of St John's, , maybe Bob and Aline, maybe Margaret and Mary Ellen and Alyse too? , interspersed with Marian music be a corker? Hmmmmm... the Nieland Magnificat, maybe the wonderful calypso carol, the glorious 4th verse of the Christina Rosetti poem with Holst's glorious music, one the the SAVAE "restorations" or whatever they are, Zdravasbud, the Arcadelt, a psalm for Joseph to chant in Hebrew....)
http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-of-mary-das-marienleben.html
The Birth of Mary
O how hard it must have been for the angels
to not suddenly break into song, the way one breaks out crying,
because they knew: in this night the mother is born for the boy,
for the one soon to appear.
Flying they kept silent and showed the path
where, alone, the house of Joachim lay.
Oh, how they felt within themselves and within space pure thickening,
but no one was allowed below with him.
For, already the two were beside themselves
A neighbor came by, curious, unable to comprehend,
And the old man, carefully, went and silenced the mooing
of a dark cow; for things had never been like this.
The Presentation of Mary in the Temple
To understand what she was like then,
you have to imagine yourself in a place
in which columns affect you;
where you can retrace stairs
where arches full of danger
bridge the chasm of a space
that remained within you,
because it had been made, towering,
of such pieces that you can no longer
remove them from yourself lest you demolished yourself.
If you have reached that state, if everything within you
is stone, wall, ramp, view, curve, then try
to remove the big curtain in front of you
with both hands:it sparkles of very noble things
and surpasses your breath and touch.
Up, down, palace built upon palace,
Railings stream wider from within railings,
and surface above surface on such edges
that vertigo, as you can see, grasps you.
Clouds of incense diffuse what is close,
but still the most distant aims right
inside of you with its straight rays -
and now, when the glow from clear bowls
of flame plays on slowly approaching robes:how can you bear it?
She, however, came and raised her eyes
to view all this.
(A child, a little girl among women)
Then she ascended silently, filled with confidence,
towards the spoiled luxury which made way for her:
For that is how much everything that men built had
already been exceeded by the praise within her heart;
by the desire to give herself to the signs within her:
The parents wanted to lift her up,
the looming figure with the bejeweled chest
seemed to receive her:
But she passed through everyone,
small as she was, slipped from every hand
into her destiny, which, higher than the hall,
was ready, and heavier than the temple.
The Annunciation
Not that an angel entered (realize this),
scared her. Just as others would not startle
if a ray of sunlight or the moon at night
busied itself in the room, the form in which
an angel walked, did not scare her;
she barely had an idea that this stay was
difficult for angels. (O if we knew just how pure
she was. A doe once beheld her in the forest and
became so fond of her that within her was conceived
the unicorn, the animal from light, the pure animal)
It did not scare her that he entered,
but that he was so utterly present, the angel,
bearing a young man's face, and turned to her;
that his gaze and hers, looking up to him, collided
as if everything outside had become empty,
and everything that millions saw, did, wore
became condensed in them: only her and him;
Seeing and seen, nowhere else except in this very spot
- see, that scares, and both startled.
Then the angel sang his melody.
The Visitation of Mary
She still bore it easily in the beginning,
but ascending she sometimes already
was aware of her wondrous body,
and then she stood, breathing,
on the high mountains of Judea.
But not the land, her own fullness
was laid out around her;
walking she felt: one never transcends
the greatness she now felt.
She felt compelled to lay her hand
on the other body, further along than she was.
And the women dizzily approached one another,
touching clothes and hair.
Each one, filled by her sanctuary,
protected herself with her cousin.
O, the Savior within her was still a blossom,
but the Baptist in the cousin's womb
was already moved to leap for joy.
Joseph's Suspicion
And the angel spoke and made an effort
with the man clenching his fists:
But don't you see from every crease
That she is cool as God's morning.
But the other man looked at him, gloomy,
mumbling: what has changed her so ?
Then the angel cried: Carpenter! Do you
still not realize that this is the Lord's doing ?
When you make boards, in your pride,
do you really want to challenge the one
who humbly causes, from the same wood,
leaves to sprout and buds to swell ?
He understood. And when he lifted the gaze,
quite frightened, to the angel, he was gone.
He removed his thick cap slowly.
Then he sang praises.
GO READ THE REST! http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2007/07/life-of-mary-das-marienleben.html
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