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Latin Mass in Northern and Central Mississippi

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Our good friends at Una Voce Mississippi have a launched a petition for the establishment of a Latin Mass apostolate for Catholics living in the Diocese of Jackson; they need to demonstrate the presence of a "stable group of faithful" committed to liturgical reform. Mississippi is one of the few states in the country without a regularly scheduled Tridentine Latin Mass. Here is their announcement:

If you belong to the Jackson Diocese, and can commit to attending a Sunday Latin Mass at least once a month, please send your (1) name, (2) parish, and (3) phone number or email address to: unavocems@gmail.com Also, be sure to include in your email the names of any and all household members -- spouses and children -- who have received their First Communion and wish to lend their support to the effort.

If you have friends and family who support the effort and want to add their name to the petition, pass along their names, parishes, and their email address or phone numbers as well.

If you are committed to the cause of liturgical reform, your contribution to this petition effort is essential, if we are to demonstrate the existence of a "stable group" of faithful in northern and central Mississippi who desire the traditional liturgy.

We respect your privacy. Your signatures and contact information will not be published publicly, and will be presented solely to diocesan clergy or Vatican officials.

The text of the petition is as follows:

We the undersigned, practicing Catholics of the Diocese of Jackson, in keeping with Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, respectfully request to have the Mass of Blessed John XXIII offered at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle or at another nearby parish. We request that Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite be offered on Sundays, feast days, and week days. We would also like to request establishment of a personal parish or the appointment of a chaplain for the extraordinary form of the Mass, as permitted under Summorum Pontificum. Our ultimate goal is the celebration of a High Mass (Missa Cantata or Missa Solemnis) on all Sundays and holy days, and by our signatures we commit to assisting at such celebrations on a regular basis, should they be offered.

Young Catholic Adults Weekend

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The following announcement comes to us from a reader. 

The theme of the weekend is "Evangelising the Modern World."


Book now for the Young Catholic Adults weekend event at Cold Ash Retreat Centre (a couple of miles from Douai Abbey, which was booked up this year).

 *  It will include the following speakers: Fr Gregory Person OP, Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP,  Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, and Br. Gabriel Wilson O.S.B.

* There will be a Marian Procession, Rosaries, Sung/High Masses,  Confession, and socials.

* Gregorian Chant Workshops will also be running, this year led by the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge.

How to Book for the retreat
Prices start at £35 per night. For more details/options,  please see: http://www.youngcatholicadults.co.uk/events.htm for the online booking service; or see the booking form on the events page.

If you have any queries, please ring Margaret on 07515 805015 or Damian on 07908105787.

A Monk's Funeral at Stift Heiligenkreuz

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Our friend Sancrucensis has just posted some beautiful photographs of the funeral of one of his confreres, Fr. Alberich Strommer, who passed away last week at the age of 88.





Solemn Mass at The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

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Recently, there was a Solemn Mass (EF) at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, associated with EWTN. Below, a reader sends pictures for your enjoyment.





The Priestly Vocation and the Traditional Latin Mass - Faith and Tradition Series

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The following story forms the second installment in the Faith and Tradition series here on the NLM. Upcoming stories include the story of an atheist's conversion to Catholicism, and the role of the beauty of religious art in the life of a Catholic artist.
_____________________
Rev. Richard G. Cipolla

To say that discovering and learning the traditional Roman Mass (I shall avoid the problematic term “Extraordinary Form”) saved my priesthood may be too dramatic to begin this personal account of the importance of the Traditional Mass in my life as a Catholic priest. Although I cannot say with any certainty what would have become of my priesthood had I not encountered the Traditional Mass, I can certainly say that that encounter had such a radical effect on me as a priest that I cannot imagine my priesthood without the real presence of the Traditional Mass in my life.

I am a convert from the Episcopal Church, having functioned as an Episcopal minister for nearly eleven years before deciding to enter the Catholic Church. I was always associated with the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Episcopal Church, so the Mass was always at the center of my faith, and I always understood the role of beauty in the celebration of Mass. When the post-Vatican II liturgical changes came in the late 1960s, we adopted most of the changes including the free standing altar and facing the people. I remember so well when facing the people my feeling of being “ultra-cool” and dismissing the protests of the parishoners against the changes with “Father knows best” because “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.”

The proximate reason why I left the Episcopal Church was because of developments within that body that departed from the Catholic understanding of the Church. But the deeper reason was that, after much study, learning and prayer, I saw, like Newman, that the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded and that once one understood this, one had the moral obligation to become part of that Church. The impetus for becoming Catholic was Blessed John Paul’s formation of the Pastoral Provision in the 1980s that made possible for former Episcopal priests who were married to be considered for the Catholic priesthood. I was received into the Church in 1982 and ordained priest in 1984.

I became a Catholic at a time during which there was continuing liturgical abuse, when Catholic music seemed to no longer exist in parishes and in its place saccharine sacro-pop prevailed, a time when Mass seemed more like a high school assembly than the awesome Sacrifice, a time when it seemed as if there was a deliberate forgetting, a mass amnesia, of the Tradition of the Mass. As a Pastoral Provision priest I had the option of being an Anglican Use priest, but I decided against this quite vehemently, for I wanted to be an ordinary Catholic priest at this particular time in the Church’s history. No nostalgia for me, no hankering after the good old days—the Novus Ordo defined the Mass in this present time, and I knew that I must submit to this and do my best to celebrate what the Church had given to me.

This background is necessary to understand the profound effect that learning and celebrating the Traditional Mass had on me. The first ten years of my priesthood were not easy but were a source of grace. But I always felt an incompleteness, that there was something missing, something I should have known but did not. And this sense of incompleteness was always associated with the celebration of Mass. It was at this time that my bishop asked if I would learn the Traditional Mass, because one of the priests who celebrated the two Indult Masses in the diocese had died. I was asked because of my strong background in Latin. I initially refused. My refusal was based on my fear that this would be seen by my fellow priests as a reversion to my old “high-church” (a damnable term) days as an Anglican.

But the bishop prevailed. I learned the Mass at the hands of one of the great mentors of so many priests who have learned the Traditional Mass, Mr. William Riccio of New Haven. He, quite rightly, taught me Solemn Mass first, rather than Low Mass. I remember, more than my ordination, my first Solemn Mass at Sacred Heart Church in New Haven under the sponsorship of the St. Gregory Society, which in the dark days of the Indult, supported the Traditional Mass in an important and heroic way. As I walked up the aisle at my first Mass, I was terrified, frightened that I would forget what I was supposed to be doing. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the thought of remembering all the gestures, the order of things. But I knew Bill was by my side as the MC and that gave me comfort. I got through the Mass through the Offertory without any disasters. And so I started the Canon. I cannot write this except with great emotion, for the moment is so etched into my memory. I came to the consecration and said those words that are at the very heart of Catholic faith and worship. It was then, during the Unde et memores, that suddenly, while saying the words silently, that I realized in a flash of insight, that this was what was missing, this is what I was meant to do as a Catholic priest, this is what joined me to the Tradition of the Church. That was a moment of healing, a moment of grace-ful surprise, surprised by joy, and the joy of that moment changed me as a priest, and in the very real trials of being a priest in the Church at this time in history this moment of joy has never left me.

I am blessed with being a priest in a parish where the main Sunday Mass is the Traditional Roman rite Solemn Mass. This Mass has been a great blessing to our priests and to our parishioners, for its beauty and its depth overflows to the celebrations of the Novus Ordo Mass in both English and Spanish. I am convinced that the presence of the Traditional Mass in every Catholic parish in the world would be a key to that re-evangelization of the Western world that must happen before we can evangelize the world. Hoc est opus nostrum, hoc est labor. May God give us the strength to do what needs to be done.

___________________________

This is the second installment in the Faith and Tradition series on the NLM.

For an introduction to the idea behind the series, click here. Please note the commenting policy in the introduction to the series.

To see the first installment in the series, click here.

What it means to be an altar server

Verbum caro hic factum est

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Even if your Latin is a little rusty, the significance of the additional 'hic' will not be lost on you: Here the Word became flesh. So reads the inscription on the Altar in the House of Mary in Nazareth, over which stands the modern Basilica of the Annunciation, built in 1969. The Altar stands at the side of the lower basilica, whilst the upper basilica fulfils the needs and requirements of large pilgrim groups, being a much bigger church. An octagonal opening in the roof of the lower basilica, the floor of the upper church, allows light to flood into the grotto from the huge conical dome above, built to resemble a lily being offered downwards from heaven.

Lower Basilica
Lower Basilica

Upper Basilica
Whilst visiting recently I was able to play the basilica's new Reiger organs. There is a two-manual in the lower church and a large three-manual instrument in the upper church which has a very useful playback system. I was able to play an improvisation and then wander around the church while the organ played it again, giving me the opportunity to hear how the instrument sounds in the building rather than just at the console. As you might expect, the acoustic in the church is absolutely huge, given its cavernous proportions, but the Austrian firm's voicers have done a tremendous job and the organ sounds with great clarity.

To the side of the basilica is an excavated area including some 1st century dwellings, of which the Blessed Virgin Mary's House is the most significant. Inside an adjoining museum is a stone which is thought to have the earliest 'Ave Maria' carved on it, although it is quite difficult to make out.

The museum also contains the 'Crusader Capitals', beautifully carved sculptures for the pillars of a church which was never built. They were buried to hide them when the town fell to Muslim invaders and were rediscovered relatively recently in immaculate condition: 


There are two other sites of great significance in Nazareth, one being the Church of St Joseph, built over the first century remains of what was thought for several centuries to be St Joseph's carpenter's shop. It later became known as St Joseph's house. The other site is much less well-known, as a result of its hidden location. When I was in Nazareth I stayed at the Convent of the Sisters of Nazareth, just a few metres from the entrance to the Basilica. The Mother Superior told me that when the sisters had bought the site of the convent in 1855, they were charged a premium for the land because they were told that according to local legend, it was the site of the tomb of the 'Righteous Man'. At the time the sisters assumed that this was a ruse to extract a higher price, but when they began to excavate to build the foundations of their convent, some startling discoveries led them to realise that there was indeed something of great significance there.

The Mother Superior took me beneath the cellars of the house which open out into a space which is supported by both Byzantine arches and crusader walls. She explained that they had found a vault which had supported a church, long gone, in which there was a hole through which water could be extracted from a cistern beneath. An exact description of such a church exists in early writings, which was thought to be built over the site of the House of the Holy Family, a cave hewn from the soft rock. It suddenly dawned on me that we were now standing in a cave beneath the vault, with an ancient cistern just to the side. I asked if she was telling me that we were standing in the House of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Being a wise and cautious person, she responded that it is impossible to be sure of anything, but anything is possible. The cave contains the remains of a crusader altar, so it is certainly a site of significance: 

On the other side of the site is a rolling stone tomb, believed to have been the grave of the 'Righteous Man', St Joseph. In my mind's eye I had always imagined that a rolling stone would be enormous, but in fact this stone is only about three feet high. The small entrance, which one would have to crouch to enter, leads into a very cramped tomb containing a flat area to the right where the body would be laid out, and five small niches (one of which can be seen in the photo) in which bodies would be laid to rest. In time, when only bones remained, these would be removed and placed in an ossuary.



Dr Ken Dark, from the University of Reading, UK, has written an in-depth article about these excavations entitled 'Early roman-period Nazareth and the sisters of Nazareth convent' which has recently become available to read online.

The purpose of my recent visit to Nazareth was to work with the Choir of the Basilica of the Annunciation. They were a truly lovely group of people and we particularly enjoyed working on Elgar's Ave verum together. The choir men frequently go to Galilee for all-night fishing expeditions and had just returned from a particularly successful one catching over a hundred fish. They have promised to take me fishing on my next visit. I can't wait.

Thoughts on the Pope's Latest Comments

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Prepare yourself for another round. There will be a wave a news stories about how Pope Francis is backing away from Catholic teaching on homosexuality, abortion, and the like, and how he is working to reverse the course of his predecessors. You will hear this 10,000 times over the next week. In fact, I was just called by a large media company (make that two) to address the subject, and I don't think they much liked what I had to say. Here is what I had to say.

Nothing in the Pope's words undo any Catholic teaching. What's more, he intends no change whatsoever. What he is bringing to these hot-button issues is a humane clarity that reflects an aspect of Catholicism that is frequently overlooked in the world at large. It is the most common perception in the world today that Catholicism is nothing more than a strict set of life rules and the Church herself operates as the more judge and inquisitor not only over its members but over the society at large. This is the perception of the whole import of Catholic teaching. And because of the perception, the scandals of the last ten years have been particularly damaging to the reputation of Catholicism, simply because it permits the accusation of hypocrisy to stick.

But the truth is that this view of Catholicism is just wrong. Yes, there are rules and these rules are going nowhere. They are a fixed part of Catholic belief. But alongside those rules, there is also unfathomable mercy, love, and forgiveness. The view that Catholicism is nothing more than rules is a wildly imbalanced view and it does indeed cry out for correction. What's more, all Catholics know it to be untrue. We know it mainly from the confessional. We've all been there and unearthed our sins and told them. What do we hear in response? We hear mercy. We hear forgiveness and compassion. We are given a path to enter back into personal healing from sin. We are given the grace of forgiveness. We leave with a new sense that things can begin again, and feeling a profound sense of a lifted burden. This is what the confessional offers. Yes, it is a juridical chamber of sorts but that's not its only import. The Church also offers profound mercy and compassion and love and forgiveness for us. That is its stunning power in a world of intolerance and cruelty.

Why does this Pope believe that now is the time for this message? Part of it is his personality. It's his way. He is a pastor and an evangelist. His experiences tell him that this is something he can bring to his ministry. He clearly has a remarkable gift, and he is going with his strongest asset as a personality and a priest. What's more, there is a case to be made this this is exactly what we need right now.

Why? After the Second Vatican Council, so many aspects of the faith came to be completely shattered. The wide perception was that there was no more doctrine. Nothing that was true before is true now. There are no more teachings. Everything old is gone and the new is yet to be created. In response to this nonsense, John Paul II worked for so many years just to clarify and restore. He gave us the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a brilliant document that help put things back together again and provide some clarity. Benedict XVI came next to add theological depth and take on the profoundly important subject of the liturgy of the faith. He too worked to restore and bring dignity and clarity back to these practices.

Pope Francis is next in line. With renewed clarity about doctrine, morals, and liturgy having taken place, and having inherited this template, he is interested in adding a crucial and critical pastoral and evangelistic element that he perceives to be lacking. His contribution is additive, not corrective. And what he has said is clearly true and introduces an element that has always been present but has too often been ignored by the press and the world. Further -- and this should not be forgotten -- he is speaking not as an infallible guide to all things but only as the pastor.

Of course he injects his own way into the discussion. But speaking for myself here, I'm seriously warming to his way. He speaks to the whole world the way we are used to our own parish priests as speaking. He is casual. He is charming. He is a colleague in the faith. This is disarming and it takes some getting used to, to be sure. But for my part, I'm now experiencing joy when I read his comments, not just because what he is saying needs to be said but also because he is saying what is true.

This blog is about liturgy. That subject is very much associated with the last papacy. But that subject is not going away in the new. The new papacy is about additional and equally important things.

We must never forget that the message of the faith to the world is not a static thing but a progressive unfolding of truth that takes on new shapes and colorations depending on the time and place. Why? Because the faith is that big, that gigantic, that momentous. It can never be fully expressed in one age or under one papacy. There is always more to say and more to do. And truly, Pope Francis is doing the Lord's work, just as his predecessors have done.

Vetus Ordo

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"Vetus Ordo" is an interesting term for the extraordinary form of the Mass from the interview with the Pope. If you have only read the press, try reading the interview itself. If you have had doubts about this man, this interview will go a long way to convincing you of his sincerity, humility, and intelligence. When he declares that he is "not a right winger," for example, he means in a Latin American political sense of being an authoritarian leader. That's one of many points you discover from the original. In fact, I find nothing startling in this interview and plenty of wonderfully insightful comments.

Particularly interesting for this blog are his unexceptional comments on the old form of the Roman Rite. He finds its liberalization to be a prudent decision that was motivated by a desire to help, but cautions against its exploitation presumably for political purposes. I find nothing with which Benedict XVI couldn't agree:

Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture... Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today—which was typical of Vatican II—is absolutely irreversible. Then there are particular issues, like the liturgy according to the Vetus Ordo. I think the decision of Pope Benedict [his decision of July 7, 2007, to allow a wider use of the Tridentine Mass] was prudent and motivated by the desire to help people who have this sensitivity. What is worrying, though, is the risk of the ideologization of the Vetus Ordo, its exploitation.

Why You Can't Trust Press Reports

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Let's say a financial reporter for the New York Times called a trader on Wall Street for a story on interest rates. In the course of the conversation, the reporter asks: "now, higher rates means higher yields, right?" The person being interviewed would probably say "how did you become a reporter with this beat?" or he or she might just hang up the phone. Actually, something like that would never happen because the New York Times expects it financial reporters to know their subjects. 

It's different in religion. A reporter from a major news source said to me yesterday, "now, everything the Pope says is infallible, right?" I was gentle in my correction. But when you think about it...wow. These are the people reporting the religion news everywhere today. 

Liturgical Notes on the Ember Days of September

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The origin of the English term “Ember Days” seems to be disputed. Some scholars claim it is merely a corruption of the Latin name “Quattuor Temporum – of the four times (or ‘seasons’)”, through the German “Quatember”, while others derive it from Anglo-Saxon words meaning “regularly occurring.” (ymb-ryne) English-speakers used also to refer to them as “Quarter tense”, another corruption of the Latin name. In German liturgical books of the Middle Ages, they are often called with an entirely different word, “angaria”; for example, the index of the 1498 Missal of Salzburg calls the Ember Days of Advent the “angaria hiemalis”, (i.e. of winter), those of Lent the “angaria vernalis” etc.

This word derives from the verb “angariare – to press someone into service”, which occurs three times in the Latin New Testament. The first occurrence is in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 41), “And whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two.” The other two are when Simon of Cyrene is forced to help the Lord carry His Cross, Matthew 27, 32 and its parallel in Mark 15, 21. The noun “angaria” therefore means “a pressing into service” or “exaction”; according to DuCange’s Medieval Latin Glossary, it was used in Germany to refer to a quarterly tax that was collected at the Ember Days. Missals and breviaries printed for use in Germany do however also regularly use the Latin “Quattuor Tempora”.

The index of the Missal of Salzburg, printed at Nuremburg in 1498. At the bottom of the left column are read “angaria hiemalis” etc. From the website of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.

One of the most beautiful features of the Masses of Ember Saturday is the canticle Benedictus es which follows the fifth prophecy from the Book of Daniel in Advent, Lent and September. (During the octave of Pentecost, the reading is the same, but the canticle is substituted by an Alleluia with one versicle.) As I have noted previously, the Missal of Sarum has a different arrangement for this reading and its canticle on each of the four Ember Days. On Pentecost, the reading found in the Roman Missal, Daniel 3, 47-51, is lengthened by the addition of the Biblical canticle, chapter 3, 52-88; the addition is sung by the reader as part of the lesson, and not with the proper melody of the Benedictus es. As is often the case with the lessons in medieval missals, the text does not correspond exactly to the wording of the Vulgate; there are a number of variants which derive from the Old Latin version of the Bible. Furthermore, several of the repetitions of “praise and exalt him above all forever” are omitted. The reading is then followed by the Alleluia and its verse as in the Roman Missal.
In September, Sarum has the same reading as at Pentecost. It is followed, however by a canticle composed by the German monk, poet and scholar Walafrid Strabo, a student of Rabanus Maurus at the famous abbey of Fulda in the first half of the 9th century. This canticle is a poetic paraphrase of the Benedicite, each verse of which is followed by a refrain, “Let them ever adore the Almighty, and bless him through every age.” At Sarum, the refrain was sung with the verbs in the indicative, “They ever adore the Almighty, and bless him in every age.”; it is split into two parts, which are sung after alternate verses. There are a few other minor variants from Walafrid’s original version.

Omnipotentem semper adorant,              They ever adore the Almighty,
Et benedicunt omne per aevum.               and bless Him through every age.

Astra polorum, cuncta hominum gens,      The stars of heaven, every sort of men,
Solque sororque, lumina caeli.               and the sun and his sister, the lights of heaven.
Omnipotentem semper adorant.          They ever adore the Almighty.

Sic quoque lymphae quaeque supernae,   So also all the waters in heaven above,
Ros pluviaeque, spiritus omnis.                the dew and the rains, and every wind.
Et benedicunt omne per aevum.               And bless Him through every age.

Ignis et aestus, cauma geluque,                Fire and heat, warmth and cold,
Frigus et ardor atque pruina.                    chill and burning and the frost.
Omnipotentem etc.                                  They adore etc.

Nix glaciesque, noxque diesque              Snow and ice, night and day,
Lux tenebraeque, fulgura, nubes.             light and darkness, lightnings and clouds.

Arida, montes, germina, colles,               Deserts, mountains, plants, hills,
Flumina, fontes, pontus et undae.            rivers, springs, the seas and the waves.

Omnia viva, quae vehit aequor,            All things that live and are born on the waters,
vegetat aer, terraque nutrit.               that the air quickens, and the earth nourishes.

Cuncta hominum gens, Israel ipse           Every sort of men, Israel itself,
Christicolaeque, servuli quique.      and the worshipers of Christ, and all His servants.

Sancti humilesque, corde benigno           The holy, the humble, the gentle of heart,
Tresque pusilli exsuperantes                   and the three little ones in their triumph.

Rite camini ignei flammas,                      Justly ready to disdain the flames
jussa tyranni temnere prompti.               of the fiery furnace, and the tyrant’s orders.

Sit Genitori laus, Genitoque                   Praise to the Father, and to the Son,
lausque beato Flamini sacro.                  and praise to the blessed Holy Spirit.

The Three Children in the Furnace, as depicted in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome ca. 275 A.D.

The Ember Days are often said to be connected with the agricultural seasons, especially in reference to the harvest seasons of the Italian peninsula, since they originated in Rome. In point of fact, there are only a few references to harvests and harvest-offerings at Pentecost, only one in Lent (the first prophecy) and none at all in Advent. In September, on the other hand, the references to the harvest are very clear, especially in the Epistles of the Masses. On Wednesday, Amos 9, 13-15, on Friday, the end of the book of Hosea (14, 2-10) and the second reading from Leviticus on Saturday (23, 39-43) all speak of harvests and the fruits of the earth. The last of these prescribes that they be kept “starting on the fifteenth of the seventh month”; according to the Roman tradition, September was originally the seventh month of the calendar, and indeed, September 15th is the earliest day on which the first Ember Day can occur.
To the medieval liturgist William Durandus, however, as probably to most of his contemporaries in the clergy, the most prominent feature of the Ember Days was not thanksgiving for the bounty of God in the harvest, but rather the traditional celebration of these days as the proper time for ordinations. He therefore offers the following allegorical reflections on the three Masses, explaining them in reference to season of the ordinands.  (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, Liber VI, capp. 132-134)
On Wednesday is read the Gospel (Mark 9, 16-28) … about the deaf and mute (boy) whom the Apostles could not heal, since “that kind of demons is not cast out except in fasting and prayer”; which is fitting to this day. For today is the fast of the four times, and therefore two readings are read, so that the ordinands may be taught in the two precepts of charity, or in the two laws.
The Mass of Friday expresses the penitence of the ordinands, whence in the Gospel… they are instructed unto conversion, and in the introit they are invited to seek the Lord. (“Let the heart of them that seek the Lord rejoice. Seek ye the Lord, and be strengthened, seek ye ever His face.”)
The Mass of Saturday is all said for the teaching of the ordinands, lest they be sterile, like the fruitless fig tree, of which the Gospel is read (Luke 13, 6-17), and lest their lives be caught up in earthly matters, like the bent over woman. In the Epistle (Hebrews 9, 2-12), which treats of the first and second tabernacles, they are admonished to serve in the tabernacle of the Church Militant in such wise that they may be presented to the Lord in the tabernacle of the Church Triumphant. … Rightly in this month are the ordinations of clerics done, since in this month took place (in the Old Testament) the celebration of (the feast of) Tabernacles. Now the ordained are the ministers of the Church, established in the seven orders on the day of tabernacles through seven-fold grace.

A must-read Cardinal Burke interview

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Cardinal Burke has given an interview for The Catholic Servant, reproduced in The Wanderer, on the subject of the Church and Modern Society. He speaks, with characteristic clarity, on a wide range of issues including the effects of Summorum Pontificum, the reform of the Curia, the ever-growing rift between Catholic teaching and the political landscape and Catholics, particularly politicians, who fail to understand and support Catholic teaching. Asked if he sees concrete benefits resulting from Summorum Pontificum he replies:
I have witnessed a number of benefits. First, there is now a much stronger sense of the divine action in the Ordinary Form. There was a certain tendency in the celebration of the Ordinary Form to center attention on the priest and the congregation rather than on Christ, Who comes into the midst of the congregation through the ministry of the priest acting in His Person to give the gift of His life as He first gave it on Calvary and to make that sacrifice new for us in each holy Mass. 
Another closely connected benefit is an appreciation of the true reform of the liturgy desired by the Council, namely a reform that would be in continuity with the centuries-long tradition of the Church, not a renewal that would be a break from that liturgical tradition. The celebration of the two Forms of the Roman rite have led to a growing consciousness of the need to retrieve some of the elements of the liturgical tradition too quickly discarded after the Council, contrary to the intention of the Council. 
In other words, what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind was to promote the reform as it was truly desired by the Council, namely a reform in continuity with the centuries- long tradition of the Church and not a rupture.
Later in the interview he links the misinterpretations of the liturgical reforms following Vatican II to the deterioration of the Liturgy and a decline in Mass attendance:
Sadly, in the time after the Second Vatican Council, there was a reform of the sacred liturgy which made it man-centered and banal. In some cases it actually became hard for people to bear because of illicit insertions, foreign agendas, and imposition of the personalities of priests and congregations into the liturgy to the point that people began to think that the Mass was some sort of social activity. If they did not find it acceptable, they did not go anymore.
Read the whole interview at The Wanderer.

Rationalism and Individualism in Catholic Theology

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There are many tendencies in modern thought that are fatal to genuine Catholic theology, but, as a follow-up to my last article, I would like to look at two in particular—rationalism and individualism—and comment on how their subtle influence can be seen in the way we approach the question of the role of the liturgy in a school of theology (and therefore, more broadly, in how any of us understands what theology is and how we should go about studying and teaching it).

The more obvious form of rationalism consists in approaching the doctrines of the Faith as if human reason were adequate to grasp, demonstrate, or explain them—or, perhaps, critique them, if one were unfortunate enough to mistake the darkness of human understanding for a deficiency in revealed truth. Even if one approaches the doctrines with a correct spirit of obedience, with the proper submission of intellect and will to God the revealer or to the Church as teacher, one may still fall into rationalism if one thinks, speaks, or acts as if theology is primarily about studying or arguing over the doctrines rather than assimilating them as food and drink—literally feasting on the mysteries, consuming them, being consumed and transformed by them.

Obviously, one cannot eat a physical book, but one can consume the Word of God in the Eucharistic banquet He spreads for us on the altar of sacrifice, and in this way, one can prepare for, accompany, and bring to perfection the intellectual work of the theologian by the liturgical opus Dei of the baptized Christian. In this perspective, theology is not an esoteric exercise of academic speculation but a special path for the living out of the baptismal call to perfection in charity—a contemplative and apostolic vocation for the building up of the Body of Christ.

This brings me to my next point: the danger of individualism. For many centuries, Western Christians—Catholics first, in the devotio moderna of the late Middle Ages, and then Protestants heavily influenced by that same movement, who in turn reinforced Catholic habits—have been tempted to adopt an individualist, subjectivist piety, a mentality that reduces the life of prayer to “Jesus and me.”

Now, while it is certainly true that there can be no fruitful Christian life without a personal, interior foundation in mental prayer, it is no less true that the highest expression of Christian prayer is social and corporate: the public worship of the Mystical Body of Christ in the Sacred Liturgy, both the Mass and the Divine Office, as well as the other sacramental rites. These are the channels through which our Savior pours out His divine life into all His members, in a way that foreshadows the life of the blessed in the New Jerusalem. Personal prayer has an intrinsic orientation to the prayer of the Church, which in turn waters and fertilizes the interior life; one without the other is incomplete and even runs the risk of distortion or desiccation. It is the same as the relationship between lectio divina and the normative proclamation of the Word in the liturgy: each calls for the other.

What does this have to do with a school of theology? Here there is a subtle danger. Imagine the Dean of a (conservative) Theology faculty speaking thus: “Why, of course, theology must be done on one’s knees; it demands a life of faith and prayer; its life-giving atmosphere is charity. We must undertake the life of study as something proceeding from and returning to the charity shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” All that is profoundly true; who could disagree? And yet these very sentiments could be taken in an individualistic way, as if all we really need are, in one hand, the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas, and in the other hand, St. Teresa’s Interior Castle or St. John’s Living Flame of Love. In other words, one might begin to see theology as something the individual does individually, rather than a gift nourished in the individual as a common good received from the Church, our Mother, most of all through communion with the sacred mysteries present in her divine liturgy.

If, therefore, theology is to be done on one’s knees, this means most of all kneeling at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—kneeling to receive the Word and be united ineffably to the Word. A school of theology must be gathered around the altar in worship of the Word-made-flesh. In this act of being-gathered by the Word and for the Word, the school actually comes into being as an image of the Church, to serve the Church with the intellectus fidei and the propaganda fidei, the listening that is followed by the preaching, teaching, working, witnessing.

If a school’s vision and daily life are not ordered to the sacred liturgy as its source and summit, something essential and fundamental will be missing. And, as my earlier comments suggest, we are speaking of the liturgy precisely as it coheres with, sustains, and expresses the Catholic theological vision itself, that is to say, inasmuch as it retains continuity with Tradition. Many theologians, emboldened by the luminous teaching of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, are admitting and grappling with the fact that we are living in the aftermath of a determined effort to introduce a momentous rupture, a sharp discontinuity, with that Tradition. The massive crisis afflicting the Church today is, at root, nothing other than a crisis of identity precipitated by an unprecedented interference and experimentation with her most holy and tradition-bearing possession, the Mass. This crisis of identity spills over into everything else: the crisis in missionary work, the crisis in ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, the crisis in relations with political entities, the crisis in Catholic education in general and theology in particular.

Let us work and pray so that our commitment to passing on sacred doctrine according to the mind of St. Thomas will be utterly consistent with our commitment to the way of life and prayer he himself led—the life that all Catholic teachers and students should desire to lead, according to the same saint’s example.

Introducing the Ordinariate Use

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From the Friends of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham:



History will be made in the Catholic Church on Thursday 10 October when a new text for the Mass which includes traditional Anglican words is officially introduced in London.

The new text has been devised for use by Ordinariates throughout the English-speaking world as a way of putting into practice Pope Benedict XVI’s vision of allowing former Anglicans who wish to enter the full communion of the Catholic Church to do so whilst retaining aspects of their spiritual and liturgical traditions. Benedict XVI described these as “precious gifts” and “treasures to be shared”.

The new liturgy — the work of a special commission established by Rome and now approved by the Holy See — includes material from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662) as well as the Roman Rite. It will be unveiled with a Mass followed by a media launch at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, Warwick Street, Soho.

The Mass will be celebrated by the Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Monsignor Keith Newton, and the preacher will be Monsignor Andrew Burnham, Assistant to the Ordinary and a member of the commission which devised the Use. Music, drawn entirely from the English tradition, will include pieces by Howells, Elgar, and Bairstow.

Mgr Burnham said: “For some time, the Ordinariate has had its own liturgy, approved by the Holy See, for marriages and funerals and the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham already provides a daily office in the Anglican tradition. But the introduction of this new Ordinariate Use is very important because it means that we now have our own distinctive liturgy for the Mass which brings to the Roman rite beautiful Anglican words which have been hallowed for generations. It gives the Ordinariate unity and a corporate identity.”

The Roman Rite in both its ordinary and extraordinary forms remains available for use by Ordinariate priests and there will be no requirement for them to adopt the Ordinariate Use. However, all Ordinariate clergy will be expected to familiarise themselves with it. Some priests are expected to use it regularly, while others – especially in parishes with a large concentration of “cradle” Catholics in the congregation – may only wish to use it from time to time.

The Mass will be celebrated in Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory’s Church at 6.30pm on Thursday 10 October. All welcome.


The Church Fathers on Music

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Benedict’s call for liturgical renewal is timely and there are young musicians in the Church who are eagerly preparing themselves to answer this vocational call. The teachings of the Fathers offer much-needed inspiration and direction. Threats to the post-modern Church are very similar to those of the third century: anti-Christian sentiment, secularism, and sexual licentiousness. Sacrosanctum Concilium and Sacramentum Caritatis clearly state that the way forward for the development of Christian music must include a dedicated study of traditional Church music as well as a sustained effort to teach this music to the faithful for liturgical worship. At the same time, new Church music must be composed—not by ill-formed neophytes with guitars—but by mature, prayerful, classically trained musicians who have been mentored in plainchant and sacred polyphony and are living the full sacramental life of the Church. Certainly, it would behoove Christian music composers to pay close attention to the warnings and encouragements of the early Fathers, who also lived in a secular pagan society. Their wisdom, far from being irrelevant, is surprisingly germane.

Church Fathers and Church Music

The Connection Between Buckfast Abbey, Boethius and a Full English Breakfast in Hanwell, west London

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Last week I showed some photographs of Buckfast Abbey highlighting how relatively modern abbey buildings can participate in the traditional forms. My interest in the article was in the geometric patterned art and the proportions evident in the guesthouse and cloistered area. Here are some secular buildings from the London suburb of Hanwell that are, I am guessing, late Victorian or early 20th century, so they are built at a similar time to the abbey. These secular buildings also display traditional harmonious proportion. Some may wonder what this has to do with the liturgy and its relevance to the New Liturgical Movement blog. I include these photographs because I think it is important that we not only aim to develop once again a liturgical high culture of art, music and architecture but that we aim also to make re-establish the connection between contemporary culture and the culture of faith alive.

In the past, it has been said, all the great art movements began on the altar. The secular culture echoed the forms of the liturgy and in reflecting them developed the liturgical instincts of all. In simultaneously reflecting and reinforcing the liturgical forms it help to preserve the culture of faith, as well as speaking to those who were not Catholic so that it is developing the liturgical instincts of the as yet un evangelised. We can point historically to the fact that grand civic buildings - created as showcases for secular culture - reflect a liturgical culture. For example, during the baroque period the great governement and royal buildings of the cities in both Catholic and Protestant countries reflected a form that originated in churches. The Houses of Parliament in London reflect a neo-gothic design strongly influenced by the movement in the design of churches at time with figures such as Pugin at its centre. 

I think it is important to remember also that the buildings, art and artifacts of everyday, mundane life can also reflect this liturgical principle. No tourists are travelling to Hanwell to look at the town centre - I just happened to stop off there for breakfast when driving from central London to Heathrow. However, the fact that these Victorian architects sought to make an ordinary town centre beautiful and incorporate principles that point to the liturgical forms (whether they acknowledged that this is what they were doing or not) is significant. For all the fact that traffic was rushing by and I was looking at a pizza shop and an auto mechanic's shop, the presence of some grace is this ordinary environment made it pleasant on a sunny English summer's day (despite the at times unsympathetic modern amendments). In some small way, I believe that this raises the soul to God, even as I eat eggs, bacon, mushrooms and black pudding for breakfast. The desolation of the modern city is caused in part by this disconnect between the sacred and the profane and a glaring absence of beauty.

The tradition of Western proportion has its origins in pre-Christian classical culture and then we find Church Fathers who worked to incorporate this into a Christian context, especially Augustine and Boethius. They sought to reflect a numerical description of the patterns of the cosmos, which are also the basis for the numerical description of the cycles of the liturgy. The assumption behind this is that the beauty of the cosmos is a reflection of its order, which in turn is a participation in heavenly beauty. 

My guess is that the architects who designed these houses and shops in Hanwell did not know about this connection at all, for after the Enlightenment, few did. As the Enlightenment took hold, it was only a remaining respect for tradition kept this use of proportion alive in architectural design. However, when some such as the Bauhaus movement started aggressively to challenge the relevance of tradition as a guiding principle, because few could articulate coherently any further reason for incorporating tradition proportion (beyond a broad principle of respect for the past), it could not withstand the challenge. By the Second World War the ideas of harmony and proportion were almost unknown in our architecture schools. This is why, in my opinion, we must not only look to the past to invigorate our traditions, but we must understand the basis of them too.

In the photographs below I show first the guest house of Buckfast Abbey in Devon. Not that the three storeys are unevenly spaced. They are designed harmoniously so that the first relates to the second as the second relates to the third. Then we see the buildings at a crossroads in the centre of Hanwell, which show the same threefold, rhythmical progression.








An Atheist's Conversion to Catholicism, the Traditional Liturgy, and Young Adults - Faith and Tradition Series

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The following story forms the third installment in the Faith and Tradition series here on the NLM. 

If you would like to contribute your own story to the series, please write to me at jdonelson@newliturgicalmovement.org.  


For an introduction to the idea behind the series, click here. Though the stories thus far have been focused on the role of the usus antiquior in the lives of the storytellers, the series also hopes to highlight stories which talk about the incorporation of more traditional elements in the novus ordo, as well as the role of beauty and sacred art in the lives of the faithful. 

Please keep in mind that contributions to the series will be shared with varying degrees of anonymity (since the import of the story doesn't hinge on knowledge of the author's identity), or even with a closed combox, per the author's preference. I'm happy to present this story from my own parish, which is filled with many similar stories - converts to Catholicism, "reversions" back to the faith after an extended absence, those whose faith has been deeply nourished by the Church's traditions, liturgical life, and sacred art. If you know of similar stories in your own hometown or parish, please consider sending them along to share with others for their edification during this "year of faith." 

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By "Zita Mirzakhani"

I am blessed to say that I am a convert to the Catholic faith from atheism. I proclaimed my atheistic beliefs as early as 10 years of age; following years in darkness, however, and after my last year of college, I spontaneously decided to trek the journey of a renowned pilgrimage, El Camino de Santiago, the Road of St. James. It was on the third day of the Camino that I decided to become Catholic, and I have had an undying fidelity to Christ’s bride since that day of providence. Before flying back to the states from London, I was obliged to visit Oxford where my favorite authors who helped lead me to my conversion lived and taught. It was here where I first experienced the Mass in Latin. It was a solemn high Mass, and it was perhaps the most beautiful experience I have ever had. Though now I know the liturgy, understand what is happening upon the altar, and am familiar with the replies in Latin, in my ignorance on that happy day in Oxford I was able to experience that Mass as a blind child, imagining the angels singing from on high, as I was too embarrassed in this foreign place to turn my head back to get a glimpse of the choir loft.

Upon returning to Miami I immediately began hunting down a suitable RCIA program. The moment I walked into Miami’s historic Jesuit parish, I knew I had found my home. Though the smell of incense penetrates the walls of Gesu, and the old high altar still stands in all its glory within its sanctuary the extraordinary form of the liturgy isn’t celebrated there on a regular basis.

But I was fortunate to learn about the Latin Mass offered at the Mission of St. Francis and St. Clare early on in my faith. I would only visit occasionally, for I considered the place I was baptized in as my home parish, and to be honest, nine a.m. for a young adult is quite early on a Sunday. Nevertheless, about a year ago I began attending the Sunday Latin Mass more regularly, and the more I attended, the more painful it was to miss a Sunday. I had become addicted to the Mass in the Extraordinary form of the Roman rite.

There is an unsurpassed solemnity that the “old” rite carries. I am living proof that you do not need to be an expert in Latin to understand that something holy is happening; quite the contrary, it appears that wider use of this form of the Mass may be necessary today to regain the belief in the holy Eucharist and our Catholic identity.

Though I had become “hooked” onto the Latin Mass, there was something else that drew me to this little mission’s church. It was the youth. Not just because there were young people, but young people I could call my dear friends. You see, I was quite isolated my first two years as a Catholic young woman, since my family is from Iran and very secular, and the rest of my friends and colleagues who surrounded me were either Protestant or of the world; I felt alone in the faith. Gesu, due to its location, is predominantly composed of elderly parishioners—I sacrificed youth in friendship for beauty in my house of worship. But upon becoming a regular at St. Francis and St. Clare, I have found my calendar full, and my social life dizzying. I prayed for friends my first year as a Catholic; then my prayers were answered once I forgot what I was praying for in the first place. The young adults at this little mission’s church in Miami always go to brunch after socializing some over coffee with everyone after Mass. This tradition is the highlight of my week. I look forward to this day, like most adults look forward to happy hour on Fridays after a long week. We talk for hours, and never wary; when we have social outings aside from our Sundays we find much joy and revelry in one another’s company, each and every one of us. We never grow tired of topics of conversation, even if they repeat sometimes (Lord of the Rings, the liturgy, history, our love for the Pope, the modern world, super heroes and the like…)

In terms of evangelization, the beauty of the Mass is of course very effective, but I have also found that the social events of our young adult group can be so as well. For one, those that are near to me have now discovered that I’m not the only “crazy” Catholic. Yet, there is still something more to be said about the Extraordinary form of the Mass. Once, when someone accepted my invitation to come to Mass, she was late and afterwards told me, “I felt like I had stepped into another world.” Isn’t that how the Mass should feel? Otherworldly? Another young person, who is completely ignorant of Catholicism, and who had just attended her first Mass about a week prior to coming to St. Francis and St. Clare told me afterwards that “it was only after I attended Mass with you there that I truly got a sense that something holy was going on”.

I do not like being labeled as a traditionalist, or “traddy”, for I am Catholic; I believe being traditional is already implied. It reminds me of a scene from Brideshead Revisited when Sebastian Flyte is describing his family and off-handedly makes a remark about Catholics. Charles replies that Catholics “seem just like other people,” and Sebastian declares, “My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not—particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It's not just that they’re a clique…but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time.” Perhaps we have been trying to hide “it” for too long. With my new found friends at St. Francis and St. Clare I’ve had to get used to the fact that I don’t have to be wayward and defensive any longer, I can simply be who I have become and better flourish in this beautiful faith that we live.

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To see the first installment in the "Faith and Tradition" series, click here. The second installment is available here. Please note the commenting policy in the introduction to the series.

Juventutem London

Chant Research Today

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I asked Richard Llewellyn to write up some thoughts about the current state of chant scholarship. This is his first submission.

We may have all noticed that the NLMblog offers more posts about church music : chant, choral musica of all periods. This is obviously a good thing: music is perhaps the most essential human liturgical element in our services. Many steps have been taken over the last fifteen years towards applying Sacrosanctum Concilium properly. The number of liturgical and musical scolars has hugely increased since the 1970s, though often outside of the liturgical life of the church for the latter. Sadly, in many churches, people still tend to sing during mass, instead of singing mass.

In order to expand our perspectives, we might want to look at two things when concerned with improving our liturgical lives. One is the musical research of the last 50 years about both written musical sources and traditions. The other one is the complete Roman ceremonial of cantors at mass, as descibed in the early roman and diocesan sources.

The Benedictine chant school is concerned essentially with written musical sources. Their focus is really about studing the musical signs in the medieval written scores. This is a lot about understanding a musical notation that is not as precise as that of Prokofiev. Also they care for monastic use, where sixty monks or more sing the whole of the propers.

Many professional musicians and musicologists also address tradition transmitted through chant and polyphony treaties of the late antiquity and middle ages, or even orally transmitted when still available. These give loads of informations for performance practise, ie how to play what is not written down in the scores. We need to note that this work had already begun in the 19th century by some first- class professional musicans, lay and clerics alike : father Lambillotte sj, Paris conservatoire head F-J.Fetis, scolars like Edmond de Coussemaker who compiled most of the known chant music treaties. We should also talk about father Dechevrens (1840-1912) who was the first real semiologist (Cardine actually took a lot from him…). He tried to make a synthesis of both written and oral sources. At Solesmes they took the view that it was too complicated, perhaps too oriental, and so carried out a strong and caricatural polemic.

The knowledge of these church musicians was immense. They were not concerned with restoring benedictine life. They were just concerned with getting the right music scores, and with singing chant properly.

Our faith rests on Holy Scriptures and Tradition. In music, it is about the same : written scores when available, and traditions transmitted either orally or through music treaties.
The trend for baroque, then renaissance, and now medieval music, makes that most treaties are available to the general public. So now we can work properly.

The main addition since the Council is the proper study of the Roman chant sung at papal functions before the move to Avignon : we call it Old-Roman chant. This was impossible at the time of Dom Pothier, because chant manuscripts were discovered only after the publication of his Graduale at the beginning of the 20th century…By now, thanks to the post council studies, we have also better understood the process by which Roman and Gallican chant were hybridated at the time of the Frankish kings, ie Pepin the short, father of Charlemagne who became empereur. We have also understood the modality of the ealier chants, which does not fit in the Grec octoechos system, but that fits more a Syrian or Alexandrine modality.

The other issue is the study of the cantorial liturgical practises from the Ordines Romani and later ceremonials, notably the diocesan ones. Cantors were historically minor clerics or instructed lay people, with subdeacons at the top of the hierarchy. There was an official ministry of cantors who were instituted by parish priests (formulae found at the end of the Tridentine C.E) - so it was not a minor order.

The liturgical books of the Roman rite that we use (Martinucci, Stercky, Fortescue, and so on), follow the rite of the papal court, which was more designed for chapels (ie big rectangular rooms of the papal residencies), and also for their use in the titular churches of the cardinals. So this rite was not really designed for local cathedrals, or even not for the papal altar of the Roman historical basilicas. Those who have read and use them know that the model is that of the Sixtine chapel and papal basilicas where cantors are in side galleries, and when assistants in cope at vespers are not the cantors of the scola.

One can find the ceremonial designed in Rome for diocesan pontifical and curial masses in the Ordines Romani, for example : written at the time of the Carolingians, they were basically describing what we « still » find in the Rite of Lyon – though at Lyon they developed their own liturgical uses for cantors.

There is also this myth that French diocese ceremonials with 1/3/5/7 deacons and subdeacons were gallican and so antiroman. This is not true ; this is late XIXthe century propaganda. They are all in the ordines romani written in the IXth-Xth centuries. Also, Trent and Quo primum tempore only imposed use of the Roman text : it let the choice of music and ceremonies to the ordinaries, no matter how old they were. Hence the reason why loads of European dioceses could keep their customs down to Vatican I or Vatican II.

As far as cantors are concerned, there was a true liturgical role, both in Roman basilicas, and in cathedrals. Notably they had to take care of the water cruet at the offertory. If things like cantorial staffs had a Hebraico-Syriac origin, the various ceremonies were essentially old Roman ceremonies coming from the papal services. Several local ceremonials also offer some very important musical information, such as the way to impose an antiphon, or to vary the tempi of the chant pieces. Strangely they all more or less say the same things, though coming from different places.
Lastly we must take into account the fact that prior to the move to Avignon, there were four roman uses in Urbe : that of the chapters of the main basilicas, that of the cardinals in their titulum, that of the administrative curia, and that of the Pope who kept his old purely Roman ceremonies and chant.

So, in this series of articles, I would like to give an overview of the main chant treaties and liturgical Roman customs of cantors as transmitted down to us. There are the chant and music treaties of the late antiquity and early middle-ages, but also those of musicians of the later times who kept the old traditions and so could built up musical developments in a hermeneutic of continuity.

Carrying Forward the Noble Work of the Liturgical Movement

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I have a personal library chock full of books of liturgical theology and popular devotion from the early twentieth century to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. As I have studied these works over the years, one thing has struck me with increasing amazement and a growing melancholy: the vast majority of these authors, in their publications before the Council, evinced a deep and tender love of the traditional liturgy of the Church. They knew its every phrase, gesture, and chant, its vessels and vestments, its historical development, the delicacy of its minutiae no less than the grandeur of its broad features. They desperately wanted the faithful to appreciate just these treasures. Through indefatigable labors of preaching and publishing, they dedicated their lives to making known the glorious splendor of the Church’s public worship, which had tended to be locked away as the preserve of specialists. What the Liturgical Movement wanted above all was this: intelligent, active participation of the faithful in the traditional liturgy of the Church—not in some other kind of liturgy.

In short, many famous proponents of the liturgical movement would get classified today as traditionalists. Were you to take their major writings and quote portions of them chosen more or less at random, without attribution of authorship, probably 90% or more of the readers would peg the authors as members of an ultra-conservative or traditionalist school. It is not as if these authors lack innovative or problematic ideas; it is not as if some of them did not go off the deep end in the mid- to late sixties, as did so many priests, monks, sisters and nuns in the same period. Rather, it is we ourselves, in our liturgical thinking and practice, who have deviated so far from the Catholic tradition that even the more radical proponents of change in the mid-twentieth century can nowadays look moderate, restrained, and old-fashioned compared to the voluntaristic chaos in which the local churches find themselves today. Some of the better theologians saw the destruction coming and lamented the day: noble souls like Louis Bouyer, whose searing book The Decomposition of Catholicism (1969) plotted the suicidal trajectory on which the reform was headed, although he himself had earlier been an eager participant in the liturgical movement.


So, what did the liturgical movement want, if we can judge from the vast mass of publications it left behind, most of which are now forgotten? In practice, they wanted greater awareness of the meaning of the rich tapestry of prayers, rituals, and symbols; greater congregational singing of the responses and the easier chants of the Ordinary of the Mass (and this really is easy enough, as I have seen in 24 years of experience as a choir director); and a generally more serious and solemn character for the daily liturgy, instead of the omnipresent low Mass. They wanted the people to be knowingly and lovingly involved in the celebration of the mysteries, not as mute spectators, to use a phrase from Pius XI, but as engaged participants—engaged, however, in the complex and subtle manner appropriate for human persons: interiorly and exteriorly, in mind, heart, and body, with voice and silence, acting when appropriate, but also, and more fundamentally, receiving, listening, watching, absorbing.

In all of these goals, they were disappointed, and indeed repudiated. If anything, such men as Romano Guardini and Louis Bouyer are not the fathers of the superficializing revolution that took place, but rather of groups seriously dedicated to the liturgical apostolate, like the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter or the Institute of Christ the King; and Joseph Ratzinger, not Annibale Bugnini or Piero Marini, is the legitimate heir of their theology.

What the Liturgical Movement turned into in its late cancer phase was second-rate modern(ist) theology embedded in a prosaic, earthbound, unimaginative spirituality, along with a tremendous naivete about sociology and worship, plus a good bit of plain dishonesty in their lopsided ressourcement, advocacy scholarship, narrow agendas, and peculiarly modern form of archaicism that did not seek to restore the mentality and spirituality that corresponded to the external elements they purportedly recovered from early Christianity.

Let us consider just this last aspect, as does Catherine Pickstock in the short Blackfriars essay she published prior to her book After Writing. Are we trying to make a mockery of ourselves by talking about returning to the practices of the early church? Are we ready to restore solemn penances—the sending out of penitents on Ash Wednesday and their public reconciliation on Maundy Thursday? Shall we revive the severe, almost crushing ancient penances that were part and parcel of the Church’s daily life? Are we ready to begin each Mass with a slow and beautiful procession down the main aisle, accompanied by the chanting of psalms? Are we prepared to heap incense upon the burning cinders and fill the church with the sound of men’s choirs? Are we really willing to follow St. Paul and the whole ancient tradition by forbidding roles to women in public worship? Are we ready to have bishops pronounce, in the context of the solemn Sunday Mass, excommunications on stubborn heretics and apostates? This sort of thing was bread and butter to the early Christians. Or are we trying to get back to the simple “house worship” of the very first generation of Christians? How very convenient that we know so little about those first Christians! We can make things up as we go along, supported by highly imaginative hypotheses and reconstructions—reminiscent of artistic renderings of our distant ancestors, hairy broad-browed cavemen, tossing a log on the bonfire—so that unhistorical and revolutionary agendas may be cloaked under an appearance of scholarly authority and pastoral solicitude.

Once, a friend and I were talking about whether the laity have a vocation to the mystical life. It is sadly ironic that the Catechism of the Catholic Church decides the question positively for the first time, when never before in the history of the Church has there been so little in her liturgical life to foster contemplative prayer and the mystical gifts. The Catechism also notes that conscience can be properly formed and heard only when there is sufficient interior silence—another condition well-nigh abolished in the new liturgy as it is celebrated almost everywhere. The old liturgy opened to many serious Catholics a path of asceticism and a path to contemplation. Its beautiful stillness, pregnant silences, richly nourishing prayers, poignant gestures, and (in those fortunate locales where a musical revival had occurred) its exquisite chant melodies made the regular life of public worship a continuous schooling in the prayer of the heart, a repeated call to ever deeper penetration of the mysteries of faith, a recurrent opportunity for exercising the theological virtues, a convivial context for receiving higher graces from God.

All saints agree that the mystical life is founded upon a healthy asceticism. Where is this asceticism present in the new liturgy? Are the Ember Days and Rogation Days celebrated? Is the pre-Lenten season observed? What of the daily Lenten fast and the multitude of days of abstinence? Why were the character of the Lenten collects and postcommunions so radically altered away from the constant theme of detachment from the world, salutary hatred of self, contrition for sins? The changes, which are many and significant, represent a practical repudiation of the fullness of ascetical spirituality, and thus a closing-off of the steep and narrow path of mystical initiation attained at the cost of intense spiritual warfare and discipline. The ancient liturgy is truly ancient: it breathes the spirit of the martyrs, the Fathers, the monks and hermits, the mystics. Where is that spirit today? Which Catholics are coming face to face with it, week after week, day after day?

Pierre Hadot wrote an influential book entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life, showing that philosophers of antiquity were more than mere intellectuals; they were striving to be, you might say, saints of the rational life, mystics of logos, priests of sophia. The traditional Catholic already has his Way of Life: it is the ancient Liturgy. In this school of endless subtlety and abiding simplicity, he finds an entire way of life which encompasses and transcends the truths and blessings of human or philosophical wisdom. The liturgy gives him at once a broad and clear teaching on holiness and an inexhaustible wealth of new insights, new layers of meaning he may never have noticed before but which are already present in the texts he has always known. The liturgy is where he goes for his identity, purpose, and strength. He does not think of changing the liturgy to conform it to himself; he rather strives to conform himself to the liturgy, to be formed by it and for it, so that Christ Jesus may be formed in him.

This is what the original Liturgical Movement was all about, and this is the work to which we of the New Liturgical Movement are called today. Be the challenges what they may, let us carry forward the noble work, the best principles, of our forebears, as we seek to spread far and wide the inexhaustible riches of the traditional liturgical life of the Catholic Church.
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