Everyone will want one....

I have occasionally joked, (lovingly!) of the Thom Browne vibe one of the sartorially splendid leading lights of the Reform of the Reform movement gives off.

But he, like the majority of us in the CMAA, is at the aesthetic disadvantage of belonging to the laity - not for us the rose colored cope embroidered with gold, the collapsible travel biretta, or the blindingly beautiful silk damask humeral veil.

But it seems we can all have our own mozetta! it would not impede keyboard work in the least, and be no obstacle to most chant masters' chironomy. Oh yes, there are some with sweeping thetic gestures, but for the most part...
God bless Thom Browne. (Now, where to find the three thousand dollars or so...)

"To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant"

...as Blessed John Henry Newman so famously said.

Swedish mega-church founder Ulf Ekman has announced his intent to enter, along with his wife, into communion with the Catholic Church.

(Actually, translations of reports, and I most certainly do not speak a single word of any Scandinavian language, differ on whether his announcement at Sunday service was that they "would" or that they "had.")

"First Loft" Problems

There's an expression some people, including myself, use to remind themselves, or others, that we fortunate folks like to whinge about minor problems that only exist because on the whole our situations are so great.

First World Problems.

"The cable is out" sounds pretty petty to someone who has no cable, who seems to be livin' large to someone with no TV, who might as well be royalty to someone with no electricity in his house, which is a problem someone struggling to reach a refugee camp alive would be grateful to take on.

There is a thread going on at the CMAA forum, a poster asking for advice on how to deal with a priest reluctant to implement the musical reforms which would bring their parish's liturgy closer to the ideal as he envisions it, (when did the chattering class begin dropping the "en" from that word? I digress...)

As the thread grew, I realized that I would have been thrilled to have had that problem at my old parish.
And frankly, the music situation at my current parish, (for which I am in no way responsible, and in which I am involved only as a PIP,) makes me aware that I didn't know how good I had it.
Another poster has mentioned this, "Many would love to be in that position instead of where they are not allowed to sing chant at all. Is your goal singing beautiful sacred music, or just the restoration of Latin? They are not the same thing," and it set me to musing on the priorities we set, or fail to set as church musicians.

A manifesto, of sorts, would not be out of order, giving a hierarchy of aims, the first of which must surely be the salvation of souls, our own included. The worship of God and the sanctification of mankind are the end to which all else, including music that is "beautiful, sacred and universal," or "the active participation of the Faithful" are directed. Fcap is not an end in itself, nor is the "right" music.

Of course, one of the reasons most of us became liturgical musicians was because we believe offering the appropriate music, even when it is resisted or or even disliked by celebrant or congregants, is one of the surest paths to that worship and that sanctification.

But we need to put that aim of ours in perspective.

We need to love our choirs more than the music. We need to love our pastors more than chant. We need to love the people of our parishes more than Latin.

And this, from a recent homily by Archbishop Sample of Portland, seems apt, although he is speaking about a different aspect of the liturgy than music.

‘I’m a bishop of the Church, I must know [the Extraordinary Form of the Mass]’  And I encourage my priests and my seminarians to learn and to know this rite.  Even if you never have a chance to celebrate it, knowing it, experiencing it – I guarantee you – will affect the way you celebrate the Ordinary Form.

It seems to me, that we can take the same approach to working on music that is truly beautiful, sacred and universal, rather than the trite, parochial, more suited to devotion things we often find ourselves forced by circumstances to sing or play.
Working on, studying, singing, teaching, practicing music we will never have a chance to use in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will inform, will transform how we render some lesser music.

And it will transform us.

Gerhard Kretschmar, ora pro nobis

I don't know exactly how one goes about asking for the intercession of the as yet uncanonized, my understanding is that as long as the cult is not given what seems to be "official status" by inclusion in liturgical celebrations, the Faithful are free to pray to whom they choose?

Otherwise, how would one have sought the intercession of a dead person, subsequently been granted a miraculous favor by God, and subsequent to that, had your (and your doctor's) word accepted and be invited to the beatification ceremony of the dead person?

I cannot but think this soul is in heaven, and while taking joy in the Beatific Vision, will be a powerful advocate for the spreading of the Gospel of Life.

the Holocaust didn’t just happen. The Nazi’s had a beta-test version called T4.  T4 was an outgrowth of public health measures for healthy babies taken to a macabre logical end: if its healthy babies that are desired, then let’s kill the unhealthy babies. And, that’s precisely what the Nazi’s did. The methods used to kill these innocents would then be instituted on a mass scale in the genocidal campaign against the Jews. As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes it:

The “euthanasia” program represented in many ways a rehearsal for Nazi Germany’s subsequent genocidal policies.

German researchers, in 2003, identified the first child victim of T4. His name was Gerhard Kretschmar. The boy’s father had written to Hitler asking that the parents be allowed to kill their son. Hitler sent his own doctor to examine the 5-month old, who he described as:

 The child had been born blind, seemed to be idiotic, and a leg and parts of the arm were missing.

Gerhard was killed and so began the euthanasia program against those with disabilities in Germany.

Well, only if they ASK for it....

Oh my God, I am heartily sorry.
What sort of reparations can humanity possibly make?
The King of the Belgians has signed into law the measure permitting parents to slay their children.

Worship of the Lord is the Primary End of the Liturgy

The Vivace Newsletter contained this article today, I don't think Mr Mawby, an admirable contemporary composer of liturgical and other sacred music, will mind its reproduction here

Vivace! 124 March 2014
God-Centred or Man-Centred?

I was recently employed as the Editor of a Hymn Book published by Kevin Mayhew Ltd. The meetings of the Editorial Committee were extremely interesting and there was much discussion on whether contemporary hymns had been too man-centred.

This question not only applies to hymns, it is basic to a consideration of liturgy and its purpose. Pope Benedict - when he was still a Cardinal - stated that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of liturgy. He wrote that the worship of God is its prime end, all else is secondary. This is a profound statement that should help shape contemporary views on liturgical worship.

It throws into perspective some contemporary hymns that have been written since Vatican 2. So many have concentrated on the condition of men, women and their needs. There is undoubtedly a place for this but there is a far greater demand for hymns centred upon our Creator. The texts of hymns should be primarily concentrated on God and not on mankind. Scientific discovery has given us a far greater knowledge of the wonder of our Creator: this should inspire us to write hymns of worship and not those of supplication – please God give me what I want, preferably today!

Pope Benedict’s remarks also apply to the composition of liturgical music. Much of it is written in a style unsuited to worship: it sets out to appeal to congregations using styles that have no place in liturgy. I have no doubt that Gregorian chant is the ideal liturgical music. It has a sense of prayer that transcends time and space. The best polyphony is also suited to worship but music that is written in a catchy pop style clearly isn’t. Much contemporary hymnody is fine but a lot of it is banal, lowest common denominator, junk. There is a wide difference between sacred and pop and, however hard you try, it is not really possible to adapt the latter to worship. Church music should appeal to the spirituality of people and not to their baser instincts.

Pope Benedict’s statement also affects the ritual of worship and the posture of the priest. One is regularly left with the impression that the Celebrant of a Mass is performing rather than praying; so intent upon making the message attractive that he manages to obliterate any sense of worship. [Amen.(This is Scelata talking). Monday the celebrant at the Mass I heard could not resist a libellous joke about St Katherine Drexel's religious colleagues. And he couldn't wait until his homily to share it with us, it appeared in his 'introductory remarks'] [An item allowed in the Order of Mass with which I am growing increasingly impatient.].

The editorial committee of the Mayhew Hymn Book posed a most important question: its implications are vast and these need to be considered with great care. I pray that a balance will be struck and that the worship of God will be placed in its correct perspective. Praising our Creator is of far greater importance than praying for the needs of mankind.


Colin Mawby KSG

Let us hope that his (and the Pope Emeritus's [sp?punc?]) opinion prevailed at that editorial board meeting. (I am assuming that any topic which provoked "much discussion" did not find the participants in that discussion enjoying ...unanimity.

The proprietary feelings Catholic have for "their" pews has always amused me.
 I had to save one half, that is, four seats, of a front side pew once so that some psalmists would be able to reach the ambo easily, and then slip out to join the rest of the musicians in the loft.
Maybe 20 minutes before time to begin, a man arrived and stood glaring at us.
I explained the situation, and standing in a three quarters empty church which would never fill to much more than half, he gestured widely and wildly, and hissed "and where in the world do ya think I'm gonna sit?"

 And yet I now have "my" seat. I inherited the Rose's seat at weekday Mass, and on Sunday, Himself and I, after two years of jockeying with an older couple who may be snowbirds, seem to "own" our seats.
Raised protestant, he likes the front.... me, I was always a behind-pillars, or leaning-against-a-back-wall kind of congregant.... the things one does for love, huh?

There is a lovely little old lady we sit next to -- Himself tells me that on days when I have had to attend another Mass, she cold-shoulders him, but she is certainly friendly enough to me AND HIM when I am there. I'll take his word for it, but he is very sensitive.

She had pointed out a listing in the bulletin, the intentions for one Mass to me, and several days before, I made a point to ask the lay reader scheduled for that Mass, whom I know slightly from daily Mass, if she knew how to pronounce The Rose's last name, and I'm afraid I drilled he on it.

The on the day, before Mass I went back to the sacristy to see what visiting priest we had and I told him, truthfully, that I would never have been forgiven if I hadn't schooled him on on the pronunciation of the Rose's surname.

Lovely man, he understood, (not sure how, because I choked up and became utterly inarticulate, how after so long can I miss her and weep for her every day? well, no matter,) he understood and he nailed it.

(The lay reader did not fare so well, but gamely gave it a real try and then ended up stumbling over the next intention, a name which came out perilously close to a Irish obscenity.)

But all in all, she would have been very pleased. (And I am serious, she would have been furious had the most common mispronunciation been sounded - she would have haunted me. She roused herself from near coma states to correct doctors toward the end.)

Anyway, the little old lady stayed to the very end of Mass.
This is significant, because she is a nicotine addict who idgents fom about the Offertory onward, and rushes out othe cloister to have a ciagarette immediately after she recieves at every other Mass.

I saw her forbearance as a lovely tribute.

Yes, The Rose would have been pleased.

The Meek Warrior

Sandro Magister can be a bit overwrought (or do I just think that because of reading him in translation from the Italian?) and he can be a bit too Look-At-What-I-The-Insider-Knows, but this is an interesting take on the contradictory manner in which the media, at least in this country, treat of Benedict, compared to the treatment given both his predecessor and his replacement:

[W]orldly cunning could not have been used against ... Benedict XVI. He, the meek one, preferred conflict in the open field, with the courage of the yes that means yes and the no that means no, "in season and out of season," as in Regensburg, when he lifted the curtain on the theological roots of the connection between faith and violence in Islam, and yet again on the "non-negotiable" questions. This is why the world was so ferocious with him.

Private Businesses, Public Policy

Should it be illegal for a baker whose religion teaches that same sex activity, (including the "activity" of marriage) is sinful to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding?

Should it be illegal for a tee-shirt maker be allowed to refuse to manufacture shirts promoting a white supremacist group's ideaology?

Should a hindu convention hall owner be forced to allow devil worshippers to rent his facility?

Can a vegan B & B proprietor tell meat eaters who rent a room that they cannot eat McNuggets on the premises?

Are any of these hypotheticals analogous to any others?

Setting an Example Through Funerals

I cannot recommend highly enough this article by Andrew Motyka, on programming a funeral liturgy in a way that is ACTUALLY appropriate and ACTUALLY likely to not raise the hackles of those who jerk their arthritic knees at the suggestion that campfire songs are not an acceptable accompaniment to the Unbloody Re-Presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary.

(No, the fact that his efforts are very similar to the tack that I took in trying to reform funeral praxis at my former parish has nothing whatever to do with the approval with which  I speak of his methods.)
(Albeit with a LOT less cooperation from TPTB at my parish.)
(Not that I feel sorry for myself or anything.)
(Oh, and not just TPTB but the funeral choir, on whose good will I depended utterly if there was to be any chance at all of reform. The biggest battle may have been trying to replace "May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind...." with an English In Paradisum.)
(And this was not even an Irish-American parish.)
(Never was able to use Requiem aeternam instead of the Taize "Jesus Remember Me.")
(Okay, enough with the parenthetical statements.)

The Life of the Church?

Benedict made a surprise cameo at this weekend's ceremony ... and immediately raised questions about whether Benedict might occasionally be reintegrated back into the life of the church.

Does anyone at AP actually read what they write?
"Reintegrated"?

As if he, and indeed, everyone of us is not already and always part of the "life of the Church"?
Do they understand the concept of universality? or more important, prayer?

Of what do they think "the life of the Church" consists?
And do they think if they aren't reporting on something it isn't happening?

It's like those sad little people who complain that others aren't engaged in their own fetishized notion of "Effcap" because "if I can't see or hear you, you must not be engaged."

At least AP didn't add to the ludicrous conspiracy theories in which people who should know better are indulging.

I just watched a few minutes of Secrets of the Vatican, and I am sick to my stomach.

Giving God His due, with minimum exertion

"Elements of the rite tend to be neglected and, in the end, disappear altogether, in direct proportion to the number of options by virtue of which they may be replaced or modified."

I shall call this Dom Mark's Law and I see evidence of the law's validity in realities in all spheres of life.

Although what he is discussing has become most familiar, to those of us with an interest in Liturgy and Liturgical music, as the Fearsome Fourth, the Anthrax in the Envelope,the alius cantus aptus, the GIRM's 4th option for accompanying the entrance, offertory and communion "processions."

I might insert, after "number of options," "which require less effort or thought" by the persons with responsibility for choosing among the options, but that's a minor quibble.

Humilty, and Me-mility

Yesterday in Sunday School, while discussing I can't remember what, I was moved to confess to my fifth-graders that I have an enormous head, and am full of myself and always think I'm the smartest person in the room... or at least I did.

So I disagreed with a lot of people, about a lot of things.
And there was a thing, or two, about which I simply disagreed with the Church. (I'm not talking about prudential matters.)

Well, about 20 years ago, and I don't know what occasioned this brain storm, but I somehow finally realized that over many decades, many centuries there were and had been many men and women, a whole lot wiser, and a whole lot more learned and a whole lot holier who thought differently from me, who thought with the mind of the Church.

And I realized that it was possible that they were right. Maybe probable that they were right.

Okay, they were right.

Which meant I was wrong.

And I decided that I could accept something without understanding it, I would accept it. I would simply surrender.
And I learned so much, and so many things became so much better for me, and easier for me, and more meaningful for me, and things in my life came together, and... but that's really not the point.

The point is, I need to listen to people who are wiser and more erudite and holier than I am.
And I try to.
So...

What am I to make of this?

After having devoted nearly forty years to a worthy “reform of the reform”; after having taught and defended the Novus Ordo Missae to the best of my ability; after having composed — to a certain acclaim, even from a dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Liturgy — an entire monastic antiphonal in modal plainchant for the French liturgical texts; after having composed hundreds of plainchant settings for the Proper of the Mass in the vernacular; after having fought mightily for the restoration of the Proper Chants of the Mass; after having argued to the point of exhaustion for an intelligent obedience to the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani; after having poured myself out in lectures and in preaching to priests, seminarians, and religious, I am obliged to conclude that I could have better spent my time and my energy humbly carrying out the traditional liturgy such as I discovered it — and such as I so loved it — in the joy of my youth. I say this not with bitterness but with the seasoned resignation of a weary veteran lately come home from an honourable defeat in the liturgical Thirty Years War.

 (And this?)

Dom Mark made a powerful impression on me a few years ago.
I have to  think about all this.
No, I have to pray about it.

Overheard at Mass

Apparently, God forgives you for being so dang nosy.

"He pardons all your inquiries."

A Last Glimpse...

Wasn't that somehow touching, when Benedict removed his ... is that called a zucchetto? ... when speaking to the Holy Father?

Missing Her, 2

 

Tomorrow is her birthday. Tomorrow was her birthday. Would have been. No, tomorrow is her birthday.
Chronos is an artificial construct, or rather, an indulgence of the Almighty Father so we don't get crazy confused.
Kairos is the reality.
I wish I could be alone all day tomorrow, not pained by the heedless nor pestered by the sympathetic.

But I can't.
Yet again, thanks You, Lord, for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
I don't remember where I found this, years ago, so I can't give credit, but it refers to Teresa of the Andes, the first Chilean saint, or rather, the first to be canonized.

From the cloister, Santa Teresa de Los Andes, writes to her grieving mother, "How I would have loved, mother dear, to be by your side to console and weep with you. But our souls met by the tabernacle" (LT 113).
------
More than simply being a pious thought to comfort her mother, the little Carmelite offers a deep insight into the mystery of the Eucharist. True, it is primarily Jesus Christ whom we encounter in the Most Holy Eucharist. But when we commune with the perfect Body of Christ in the Eucharist, we also have a communion with the entire Mystical Body of Christ, the Holy Church, with all of her  members, all Christians, in all places, in all times, who ever were or ever will be; not just with those members who, through accident of geography or chronology, happen to be physically present.

Papa!

So here I am, paraphrasing Irving Belin as I drag my sorry carcass out of bed this morning, ("Someday, I'm going to murder my cell....phone...." doesn't have quite the ring to it though, does it?), and what is the first sight on the news?

Okay, my third, first was Sochi, second a Marina fire....

The Pope Emeritus at the Mass installing the new Cardinals.
This makes me almost as happy:

the crowd inside the basilica had been asked to refrain from applause during the ceremony

 I miss him.

(Please put down that cane and pick up that pen.)

"For 38 days, nothing mattered more than our love for...."

 ...their child. Their severely disabled, child.
Their severely disabled, dying, newborn child.

 But "in the midst of an ordinary life" where is that love?

This is a stunning, beautiful testament to the preciousness of a human life, whatever its "imperfections", and a wonderful reminder that the "easy" times can be the most difficult times to be our best selves.

For 38 days, nothing mattered more than our love for Silvan. Like any parents love-struck with their newborn, we stroked his skin, sniffed his loamy head and marveled at his starfish hands.

But unlike ordinary parents who hold hope for a future adult within their love for a child, Silvan as a newborn was all we had. Knowing our time was brief, we loved him fully in the present. He taught us how to do that. For all our rage and grief, joy overwhelmed us in his presence. For 38 days, Silvan was our life, and then, once he was gone, the habit of new love continued.

On a reverse sort of honeymoon, grief united us. Stripped of petty complaints, we felt grateful for everything, for waking to sunlight on the bed, for each other’s hands beneath the sheets. With the dark humor of comrades in suffering, we called any kind of parenthood other than what we had endured “parenting lite.” We had held our child until the end.

That kind of love can feel...  heroic, in a way the daily grind seldom does, and Monica Wesolowska, a lovely writer, captures both ends of that spectum.

Idle Curiosity About Someone's True Colors

Heard about the re-release of a movie, (in whose initial release I had no interest,) this morning and "What's Up Tiger Lily?" was referenced, and I recalled that I had always wondered, did the same Woody Allen who said colorizing Black and White movies without the explicit sanction of the original director was "sinful" and "immoral," receive permission from Senkichi Taniguchi to lay down the new soundtrack for that director's work?