Bishop Galeone on the Latin Mass at Noon EST Saturday

Fr. Z has the details on an encore presentation of an interview with Bishop Victor Galeone of the Diocese of St. Augustine which will be air at Noon EST tomorrow. Be sure to check it out.

The Four Seasonal Marian Antiphons

Lucy Carroll has a nice piece in the new Adoremus Bulletin on the four seasonal Marian antiphons and why you should know them and sing them.

History of the Dominican Liturgy: Section Two: Conciliar Adaptions, 1962-1965 [Part 1]

[Continuing with Fr. Augustine Thompson's series on the Dominican liturgy around the period of the Council and the adoption of the Roman rite, we move into the conciliar period. Fr. Thompson is now a contributor of the NLM of course, but it seems to make the most sense for me to simply continue out this series as I have been. This is the first part of this second section.]

Section Two: Conciliar Adaptions, 1962-1965
by Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.

With the publication of the new Breviary and the Calendar of 1962, projects to reform the liturgy began to change. With the exception of the reformed Easter Vigil, the reforms of the 1950s had been relatively minor affairs, even the calendar reforms were noticeable principally to priests, not the casual layperson at Mass. As changes increased in quality and importance during the early 1960s, expectation that major reforms were in the offing began to spread and, in liturgically conscious circles, proposals for greater simplifications became common. Friars assembled at the General Chapter of Bologna in September 1961 produced a set of petitions for communication to the Congregation of Rites. Mostly these dealt with the distinctive aspects of the Dominican Solemn Mass. Proposed changes included having the Gospel read from the pulpit facing the people, instead of toward "liturgical north" (the left wall of the nave). They asked that the unfolding of the corporal during the Epistle be abolished and that the rite for incensing the friars be simplified. For Low Mass, they petitioned that the "Prayers at the Foot of the Alter" be said in a voice loud enough for the congregation to hear. Permission was sought also to write new prefaces (the rite at this time had only 16) and for dropping the "preces" at all hours except Lauds and Vespers.[56] An extraordinary General Chapter was held the next year at Toulouse in preparation for the Second Vatican Council.[57] It passed little legislation on liturgy, but heard reports on reform of the Missal.[58]

Changes in the posture of the friars in choir during Office did not require petitions to the Congregation of Rites as changes in the rite itself did, and, as requested by the General Chapter, such new norms were promulgated at the beginning of 1963.[59] These were extensive. The complex rules for raising and lowering the capuce at Mass and Office were reduced to raising it only when sitting. Abolished as well were the repeated uncoverings of the head at the Holy Names and at various verses in the Gloria -a practice that had paralleled the tipping of the biretta by secular priests. The profound bows at the names of Mary and Dominic became head-bows, and the (admittedly late medieval) head-bow at the mention of the Precious Blood disappeared entirely; bows by the choir at the blessing of the reader were gone. The rubrics did, however, preserve the bow at the Gloria Patri during the psalms and during collects up to "qui vivit" in the doxology. Bowing for the Confiteor at Prime and Compline was replaced by kneeling, which was considered more "penitential." At Mass, the ancient system of bows and prostrations on the forms by the friars in choir was replaced by standing facing the altar, sitting, and kneeling, using the same rubrics already used by lay people at High Mass. This had the effect of introducing kneeling during the Canon and erased the need to prostrate at the consecration. The elaborate medieval use of the body in prayer, so typical of medieval Dominican devotional works like "The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic," was now gone. Finally, rubrics for conventual Low Mass were codified on the Roman model and "dialogue format" became the norm.

In the document itself, the authors spelled out the logic guiding these changes. Four principles were observed: 1. Simplification and conformity to the general practice of the Church; 2. preservation, where possible, of primitive Dominican practice; 3. greater uniformity among ceremonies; 4. greater conformity with the Roman Rite.[60] In practice, norms 1 and 4 predominated, and norm 2 seems to have had no influence on the legislation at all. In this, the new choir rubrics were a sign of what was to come: from this point forward the effects of reform were to be to erase what ever was distinctive in the Rite and conform to Roman practice. The pastoral problems of a distinct Rite in the midst of near universal Roman liturgy as well as hostility from the secular (and some Dominican) priests at Dominican "difference" would slowly be removed.

Within months, approval from the Congregation of Rites arrived for revision of the rubrics of the Mass itself.[61] This document presented the old and new rubrics in parallel columns to facilitate the change over. The reforms removed much of what seemed "different" about the Dominican Mass, at least from the point of view of the Congregation. Among the most important changes, the priest no longer had capuce up going to altar; he prepared the chalice at the Offertory, not on arriving at the altar; the practice of bowing to the Crucifix was replaced by simple head bows; the very ancient practice of saying the historically late parts of the Roman Canon with hands folded is gone, replaced by the "orans" position throughout. In addition, the rite is simplified somewhat: Gone are the prayer "Actiones Nostras" on arrival at the altar, making the cross on the altar before kissing it, holding the chasuble up against the altar when kneeling, the distinction between the deacon's and priest's hand position when reading the Gospel; and finally the double sip of the Precious Blood at the priest's communion. Also gone is the practice of coming to the center of the altar for the genuflection during the Creed. The corporal is placed in the burse at the remaking of the chalice rather than having this postponed till after the Last Gospel. Positively, coherent rubrics are finally provided for the people's communion, and the Confiteor at that point is formally suppressed.[62] Other than the approval of new saints' days, the first part of the conciliar reform of the Dominican Rite was complete.[63]

Within six months of this legislation, Pope John XXIII died, on 3 June 1963. The Council was suspended for the papal election. It chose Cardinal Giovanni Montini of Milan as pope, who took the name Paul VI. These events interrupted the reform of the Rite underway in early 1963. The new pope was known to be sympathetic to the Liturgical Renewal and far less old-fashioned in his piety than John XXIII. The momentum of liturgical change, already strong, increased. This was capped by the promulgation of the Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium on December 4, 1963. Although in many ways a conservative document that called for the retention of Latin in worship (while allowing the readings in vernacular) and gave Gregorian Chant "pride of place" over all other forms of music, the document did propose simplification of rubrics and rites and revision of the Lectionary to provide for a greater selection of readings. It also called for extensive changes in the Office, in particular the replacement of the weekly psalter with a four-week one. In many ways more important in practice than the conciliar document was the motu proprio of the new Pope Paul VI, Sacram Liturgiam, issued on January 25, 1964.

Both documents were published in the Analecta in the spring of 1964.[64] On 15 March 1964, the new Master General, Fr. Aniceto Fernandez wrote to the provincials to clarify the meaning of the two documents for the Dominican liturgy.[65] In his letter he took pains to emphasize that Sacrosanctum Concilium had included the Dominican when it said that other rites legitimately recognized are to have equal right and honor" and that "it expects and wills that they be preserved in the future and in every way nourished." But, this did not exclude reforms.

The Order would have to find a way to assimilate these documents. To this end, a liturgical commission was created by the Master General on 24 June 1964.[66] Friars who lived through the period say that changes mostly were introduced as news of them appeared in the local Catholic press, much as they were made by secular clergy for the Roman Rite. Some priests acted more slowly, some anticipated future changes. Dominican liturgical experts such as Fr. William Bonniwell and Fr. Ansgar Dirks had, by this time, concluded that further attempts to preserve the Dominican liturgy and modify it to conform to the reforms affecting the Roman Rite had ceased to be worth the trouble. They urged the immediate adoption of the Roman liturgy.[67] But opinion was divided. Even before the Commission was established, the Master General had permitted the vernacular as it was used in the Roman Rite. Furthermore, Prime was suppressed and the celebration of Lauds and Vespers were to be emphasized above the other hours.

These acts marked a significant shift. Within the monastic tradition, the hours, whether major or minor, served to sanctify the day (and night) by regular breaks for prayer. The emphasis on morning and evening prayers above the other hours represented the liturgists' hypothetical "cathedral office" where these hours were supposed to have alone been celebrated for the laity and were considered sufficient to sanctify the day. Like the loss of Prime, part of the monastic office from before St. Benedict, this represents a move toward a spirituality intended for lay people and the secular clergy. A similar intent marked the Master General's decision to delegate the power to dispense from attendance at choir office to the provincials, thus making it easier to grant.[68]

These acts of the Master General prepared the friars for the publication of reforms in the Solemn Mass that were already in preparation before Pope John's death. These were published in the April-June 1964 fascicle of the Analecta.[69] Some of these changes involved the texts used at Mass and, to some extent, represent the desire to restore primitive Dominican practice. For example, the Mass propers of St. Peter Crysologus, St. Stephan, and St. Brigit in the 1933 Missal simply reproduced the Masses found in the respective commons of the Roman Missal. New Masses were now provided using Dominican propers and readings. Awkward Latin, perhaps the result of medieval copying errors, was corrected in a number of collects, and the Mass "Pro Infirmis," found in the ancient Humbert Codex, is restored.

More extensive and less of a return to ancient sources were the changes in the rubrics of Solemn Mass.[70] Among the most important of these changes: the major ministers no longer recite the propers with the priest; kissing the priest's hand is suppressed; the deacon stops raising the priest's chasuble when he turns for the Dominus Vobiscum; servers leave their candles lighted for the whole service, rather than snuffing and relighting them repeatedly (a medieval wax saving practice); and the humeral veil is now placed on the credence table, not the altar, after its last use. Most of this involved suppression of what had become, for most, fossilized remnants of medieval etiquette. Nor did these reforms change the rite in its substance, but one further change, the introduction of the new communion formula ("Corpus Christi.") and suppression of the Sign of the Cross over the communicant with the host affected every congregant going to communion. They now had to respond "Amen" before receiving. In his comments on this, Fr. Dirks reminded the friars that the petition to adopt this form, already in use in the Roman Rite, was in accord with the "participatio actuosa" called for by the Council.[71]

Pressure to conform to the Roman use continued, especially now that dialogue Mass was becoming more and more common, and Dominican priests faced the issue of celebrating Mass in secular parishes where congregations (at least to some extent) had begun to answer the priest in the (Roman) Prayers at the Foot of the Altar. To address this problem, permission was granted in late 1964 for Dominicans to use the Roman Rite Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, even in the context of the Dominican Mass, if they celebrated in secular churchesB-a permission extended, within a year, even to Masses in Dominican churches "when people are present."[72]

Footnotes:

[56] Acta Capituli Generalis Provincialium S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Bononiae (18-24 Sept. 1961) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1961), n. 153-58, 165-173.

[57] Acta Capituli Generali Electivi Sacri Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Tolosae (22-229 Iulii, 1962) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1962).

[58] This originated with the commission to prepare a replacement for the 1933 Missal: Acta Capituli Generalis Electivi S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Romae (11-17 Apr. 1955) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1955), n. 90; whose tasks were later expanded: Acta Capituli Generalis Diffinitorum S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Calarogae (24-30 Sept. 1958) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1958)n. 162, to include reforming the role of the deacon at Solemn Mass.

[59] "Schema Simplificationis Caeremoniarum in Choro Servandum," ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 54-62 (this is the Jan-Mar. fasc. of 1963), issued in accord with n. 137 of the General Chapter of Toulouse (1962). The commentary of Fr. Ansgar Dirks is found on pp. 58-62.

[60] Ibid., p. 54 "Institutum Liturgicum proposuit schema simplificationis caeremoniarum in choro servandum, ita ut: 1. simplificationes legibus ecclesiasticis vel usui generali Ecclesiae non sint contrariae. 2. In quantum fieri possit, serventur usus nostri primitivi. 3. Augeatur cohaerentia inter caeremonias. 4. Augeatur conformitas cum usu generali Ecclesiae, id est cum Ritu romano."

[61] SCR, "Diversae Variationes in Missae Rubricis" (Prot. N. o.42-963--3 Apr. 1963), ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 171-180.

[62] Ibid., 178-79.

[63] The SCR approved these calendar changes: new feasts of blesseds: Bl. Peter Sanz et companions (3 June); Bl. Ignatius Delgado and companions (11 July); Bl. Joseph Melchior (27 Jul.) and B. Francis de Posadas (20 sept). St. Catherine of Siena raised to a Class I feast, Raymond of Penyafort to second class. See ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 296-97. Provision was also made for a Votive Mass of the Virgin and for the readings of St. Martin de Porres: ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 394-95 (readings on pp. 408-13

[64] ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 333-67.

[65] "Litterae de Sacra Liturgia," ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 404-05" "Sacrosanctum Concilium declarat se omnes ritus legitime agnitos aequo iure et honore habere eosque in posterum servari et omnimode foveri velle atque exoptat."

[66] Its members were Chrysostom Vijverberg (praeses), Joseph Bernal, William Bonniwell, Ansgar Dirks, Louis Gignac, Pierre-Marie Gy, Damien Govert, Leopold Jager, Paulinus Miller, Aimon Rouget, Antonino Silli, Antonin Vismans: "Commissionis de Re Liturgica Instituto," ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 661.

[67] Oral communications of Fr. Antoninus Wall, O.P. (ordained 1950), Fr. Samuel Parsons, O.P. (ordained 1957), and Fr. Albert Gerald Buckley, O.P. (ordained 1957), given 8-12 August 2005. All of the Western Dominican Province, U.S.A. Fr. Bonniwell describes decision that the Order should abandon the rite, and the consternation it caused Cardinal Browne at a meeting of Dominican liturgists to discuss that question during the Council: see Interview with Dominican friar Fr. William Bonniwell, O.P. (1886 1984) [Videotape],interview by Fr. Antoninus Wall, O.P., filmed by Gavin Colvert (1982), Archives of the Western Dominican Province and in personal possession of Fr. Wall.

[68] ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 309. To some extent the cutting down of the Office was also behind the abrogation of the reform which provided that antiphons be recited before and after every psalm: SCR letter (Prot. n. 117-960 -6 Aug. 1964), ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 653, although this also restored an older practice.

[69] SRC Decree (Prot. N. o.65-963--30 May 1963), SRC decree (Prot. N. o.11-964--19 Feb. 1964) p. 470-74, 477-84; with commentary by Ansgar Dirks, ibid., 474-77.

[70] Ibid., pp. 477-84.

[71] SRC rescript (Prot. N. o.11-964 -19 Feb. 1964), ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): "Quia decretum de nova formula in sacra communionis adhibenda valet pro solo Ritu Romano, superiorbius tamen opportunum visum est, ad actuosam et fructuosam fidelium participationem fovendum, ut nova formula pro Ritu nostro acceptaretur, Reve.mus Pater Procurator Generalis a S. Sede rescriptum petiit quo decretum S.R.C. ad Ritum nostrum applicarentur."

[72] SCR decree (Prot. n. o.104-964 -24 Nov. 1964), ASOFP, 37 (1965-1966): 61; extended to Dominican Churches in SRC decree (Prot. n. o.29-965 -8 May 1965), p. 165.

BooksForCatholics.com: Latin-English Sunday Missal

Title: Latin-English Sunday Missal

"As beautiful a Sunday missal for the old Latin Mass as has ever been published."

- Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro, Rome

• 20 full-color, full-page illustrations by great masters
• Includes the ordinary of the Mass for Sunday and the full Nuptial and Requiem Masses—does not contain the full set of Sunday readings
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• Bulk pricing available for parishes and traditional Mass chapels
• 180+ pages
• $8.95 (First edition only)

A large investment was made by Roman Catholic Books to publish this new and enhanced Latin Mass Booklet Missal. We’re asking for your full support and for donations to offset the costs of this and future printings. Our expectation is to print one million copies by 2015 so that this Tridentine Mass Booklet Missal is widely available throughout the English-speaking world. Thank you for all your support of our work!

Link to Product: Latin-English Sunday Missal

English Usus Antiquior Varia

First, the BBC has this audio offering (Realmedia format):

From the middle of the 16th century until the 1960s Catholic mass was celebrated in what's known as the Tridentine rite - it was in Latin and it took its name from the Council of Trent where it was agreed. Then, when the Church tried to modernise at the Vatican Council in the early 60s, in came the idea of mass in modern languages - there were reforms to involve the congregation more in services too. But many Catholics remained passionately attached to the old way of doing things and Pope Benedict has now made it easier for people to hear the old-style service if they want to. The Latin Mass Society is providing training for priests who want to know how to do it. Alcuin Reid is the editor of the most recent edition of the standard manual for the rite.

Second, a statement from the Latin Mass Society at the start of their Oxford training conference:

Statement by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales

For immediate release: Tuesday 28th August 2007

“The support and blessing that Archbishop Nichols of Birminhgam has given to our training school for priests to learn the older form of Mass is a tremendous encouragement not just for the Latin Mass Society but for the whole Catholic Church in England and Wales,” Julian Chadwick, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society said today.

Archbishop Nichols had, at his own request, opened the conference with a sung Latin Mass according the newer form. Preaching at the opening Mass, Archbishop Nichols enjoined the more than fifty clergy present to “remember that what you study here is not a relic, not a reverting to the past, but part of the living Tradition of the Church.” Present at the Mass were two other bishops noted for their support of the older form of Mass. Nichols also stated that clergy must “strive for improvements in the way the ordinary (newer) form of the Mass is celebrated.”

Chadwick said, “Archbishop Nichols has shown that generosity and welcome that Pope Benedict has asked all bishops to give to Catholics who seek to worship according to the older rites.”

A few more from Oxford

A few more Oxford shots. These are of good size and I didn't want to shrink them too much, so click on the thumbnail to get a nice, full screen view.

Wild and crazy polyphony

Co-blogger Michael Lawrence is going to kill me for posting this but I found it funny and interesting enough. It is a video taken at the Friday night "coffeehouse polyphony" at the Colloquium this year - a half fun and half serious night of sight reading and singing of all sorts. You can tell by the exaggerated howls of laughter that people were pretty wound up!

Michael does the introductions and conducting. (I'm singing something here, though I don't remember what part.) The the music begins, and it becomes rather serious. Then it ends to fantastic applause. Maybe you had to be there! Yes, there are intonation issues but who knew this would be on a video for the world to see? Gravely irresponsible for me to post this!

The piece being read is Samuel Wesley's "Si iniquitates observaveris," which is for 3 voices. It is a wonderful piece, by the way.

Pontifical Mass at Oxford

Further photos from Oxford in addition to those presented by Dr. Shaw just a few moments ago (see the post below this one -- and incidentally, I should like to find for here more such video of the event; if you have it, or know someone who does, please let me know), from a Solemn pontifical mass offered by Bishop Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma (click to see larger image):

'Faux bourdon' chant and Pontifical High Mass at the Oxford conference

I don't know anything about this, but I'm told the technique the Schola Sainte Cecile is using in this clip is called 'faux bourdon', singing the chant in harmony. I'd be interested to know more about it; Fr Conlon tells me he remembers it being done in Westminster Cathedral in the early 1960s.

This clip is from the Magnificat of the Solemn Vespers on Tuesday. It's a terrible video, taken with my digital camera, because it was extremely dark in Merton chapel, which was lit mainly by candles. It looked lovely, although I'd have preferred to follow Vespers with a booklet using larger type.

This schola is superb. Their singing at Pontifical High Mass today was quite wonderful. It is a great joy to hear chants which I know well, and have sung myself, sung to these standards.

Also singing today at Pontifical Mass was a polyphonic group directed by a local organist and school teacher, Andrew Knowles. They were really superb; their Kyrie (a Vittoria piece) took my breath away.

Bishop Slattery preached a sermon of great wit and profundity, noting the contrast in age between his diocese of Tulsa (forty years), first with St Rose of Lima (celebrated today), then with Merton College chapel (13th C.), but noting that the Roman Mass was famed for its antiquity centuries before Merton College was even thought of. He linked the authenticity of our celebration of Mass with the fact that the mystery we celebrate is the mystery by which we have been redeemed. Every one has been very taken by Slattery's charm; he was a splendid patriarchal presence in the sanctuary.

I note that I'm not the only one to have had trouble taking photographs of the chapel sanctuary; the light shining from the enormous window behind the altar makes things very difficult, and I hate using a flash during Mass. But here are some photos of Pontifical Vespers with Bishop Rifan; the conference banquet, with Bishop Slattery sitting between Julian Chadwick, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society, and Prior Hugh Allen of the Canons of Premontre (Manchester) (Bishops Rifan was the other side of Mr
Chadwick); Bishop Slattery and Bishop Rifan processing out of Mass; and of Merton bar full of priests (on Tuesday evening), which I thought was amusing.

The Conference has been a great success. As well as the splendid public liturgies, the priests attending have been put in touch not only with their liturgical heritage but also with like-minded priests from all over the country. Everyone seems to be leaving with a great sense of conviction about the value of the Traditional Mass, and a great sense of optimism. The Latin Mass Society hopes to repeat the Conference next year, and in future years, to build on these exciting foundations.

A Goulden Anniversary

"I believe that the justification of art is the internal
combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its
shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The
purpose of art is not the release of a momentary
ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual,
lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."

--Glenn Gould
from his essay, "Let's Ban Applause!"

Recently, in a wonderful used bookstore, I came across Peter Ostwald's _Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius_. Who could resist this? This week, I've been pouring over this book, and I've accomplished little else.

In the midst of reading this testimony on the life of one of the 20th century's most enigmatic musical geniuses, I did some Google searching on Gould and found out that, beginning September 1, the Glenn Gould Year commences. It marks the 75th anniversary of his birth and the 25th anniversary of his untimely death.

I first heard about Gould (originally rendered "Gold," hence the title), when, as a teenager, I was shown Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould [1], a set of vignettes which corresponds with the number of movements in J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, a piece which Gould brought to the forefront of the musical world. I was immediately intrigued, and over the years have only become more and more fascinated with this character, who was famous as a pianist but also played the organ magnificently.

Gould is one of those artists who seems either to be loved or hated. Some complain about his unorthodox musical interpretations. Others allege that his virtuosity is a fraud, that the light action of his piano gave him an easy way to achieve his trademark clarity, even as he employed extraordinarily fast tempi. Those who have played fugues on light action instruments know that this argument is a line of nonsense.

In any case, whatever one thinks of Gould's work, surely the fair-minded will admit that not only his musicianship but also his artistic ideas call us constantly to think critically about how we go about making music. This is important. It is not good enough to sit at the keyboard and pound out notes from the page, nor is it always healthy to play a piece the way we've always played it, or the way our teachers told us to play it. I find that even a short time spent with a Gould recording goes a long way toward dusting off the musical cobwebs that gather thanks to mundane routine--one of the most dangerous occupational hazards of the church musician.

A word about the quote which opens this post. This excerpt has a lot to do with Gould's desire to move beyond public concert settings. At age 32 (that seems to be a popular number with him), Gould played his last concert and spent the remaining years of his life playing for radio, television, and recording studios. He felt that the separation of the performer from the audience allowed him to serve the music better, more completely to ignore the demands of the taste of the public. This might come across as narcissistic, but really there is a lot of truth to what Gould is saying. He reports an episode in a concert in which he caught himself schmaltzing up the music just to try to reach every member of the audience. This is a most astute point.

Well, I've rambled on enough, and at a very Gouldian late night hour, so most likely the less I say the better off I'll be. Visit this site to learn more about Glenn Gould. Also, watch this video. Genius at work.

--------------------

[1] I was going to link to Amazon here, so that interested parties could buy this movie for themselves. To my shock, these dvd's are selling for approximately 150USD. Apparently it's out of print now. I'll take note and guard my copy with my life. VHS copies seem to be available for a more reasonable price.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Alexy II Praises Letter on 1962 Missal

ROME, AUG. 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's move to allow for wider celebration of the Roman Missal of 1962 has received a positive reaction from the Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow.

"The recovery and valuing of the ancient liturgical tradition is a fact that we greet positively," Alexy II told the Italian daily Il Giornale.

Benedict XVI's apostolic letter "Summorum Pontificum," published in July, explains new norms allowing for the use of the 1962 missal as an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration.

"We hold very strongly to tradition," he continued. "Without the faithful guardianship of liturgical tradition, the Russian Orthodox Church would not have been able to resist the period of persecution."

When asked about the relationship between Rome and Moscow, the patriarch said: "It seems to me that Benedict XVI has repeated many times that he desires to work in favor of dialogue and collaboration with the Orthodox Churches. And this is positive."

Regarding a possible meeting between Alexy II and Benedict XVI, the patriarch said it must be well-prepared, and "be an encounter that truly helps to consolidate relations between our two Churches."

NLM Dominican rite expert

The NLM is pleased to announce that Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. is now a formal contributor to the NLM.

Fr. Thompson, as many of you know, is a Dominican who is professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. He is also extremely knowledgeable on the topic of the Dominican rite -- and is responsible, of course, for the continuing series examining the changes in the Dominican rite just prior to the Council and after it.

The NLM sees part of its mission not only to promote the usus antiquior and reform of the reform as regards the Roman rite, but also to promote the other liturgical rites and uses of the Church, particularly those in the Latin rite tradition.

In that way, we are all very pleased that Nicola De Grandi recently joined us as our resident expert on the Ambrosian rite, and now Fr. Thompson as regards the Dominican rite -- mind you, they are not solely limited to these topics of course.

Hopefully, with due time, more of these rites and uses will be covered, just as we have likewise sought to find contributors in various disciplines, and in various regions of the Catholic world. I think this can be enriching and enlightening for all involved.

More Oxford training session photos

Further to NLM's own Joseph Shaw who is at the Oxford usus antiquior training conference, the Schola Sainte Cecile also have some photographs of their own:

(Looking back from just before the sanctuary toward the organ. The screen you see there was originally intended to be the rood screen with the seating being part of the chancel. The mediaeval church never met its original aspirations, but makes a splendid venue for the celebration of the Divine Office and Mass -- with due Catholicizations of course!


The sanctuary and altar. It's amazing to me how this view of the chapel can become engrained so quickly. Seeing these photos reminds me greatly of the very same images I saw at CIEL Oxford last September.


Vespers: Bishop Rifan of Campos, Brazil


Acting as deacon is a deacon, the Rev. Dr. Laurence Hemming of the Society of St. Catherine of Siena


The Offertory: Some of you may recognize this vestment set from the Chartres Pilgrimage. They are one of my very favourite set of vestments.

To see all of their pictures, please visit their site via the link above and go through the various posts.

Oxford Priests Training Conference

A few quick images from Solemn High Mass today at the Oxford Priests Training Conference organised by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. The celebrant was Fr Anthony Conlon; the splendid vestments were on loan from Luzar Vestments. Bishop Slattery of Oklahoma is in the second picture; he will be celebrant at Pontifical High Mass tomorrow. This evening Bishop Rifan will celebrate Pontifical Vespers.

The canons with tonsures are American: they are Canons of the New Jerusalem, a new Traditional order. The singers of the liturgical schola are French.

The conference is going well, with 43 priests and seminarians attending to learn how to say the usus antiquior, the Traditional Mass. They are all ages and come from all over the country; interestingly, they include a number of convert clergymen from the Church of England.

Thank You

I would like to thank those readers who have been praying for a good start for our new schola in Philadelphia. Last Wednesday's turnout was pretty good, and it looks like we'll have even more people this week.

So, again, thank you, and keep in touch.

Psalmorum et Canticorum

Versus Psalmorum et Canticorum, the predecessor volume to Communio, is available for free download.

Philadelphia Parish to Offer Traditional Latin Mass

Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Philadelphia, PA will begin offering weekly Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on Sunday, September 16 at 8:00am. This parish also celebrates the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite in Latin each Sunday at 10:00am, and this Mass will continue in addition to the 8am TLM.

Our Lady of Lourdes is located at 63rd St. and Lancaster Avenue in Philadelphia's Overbrook section. It is only a few blocks from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. The church is accessible via SEPTA's R5 rail line.

May God prosper the work of this parish.

Sacred Music Colloquium: The Movie

We had this idea this year to make a video of scenes from the Colloquium. It's not everything it could be, and there are aspects we would all change in retrospect but it was the first time, and we live and learn. In any case, here it is, and we can only hope it does some good.

Notre Dame Motu Proprio Update

I was greeted this morning with excellent news from our friend the Sober Sophomore regarding the implementation of Summorum Pontificium on the campus of Our Lady's University.

After several weeks of promising rumors, Campus Ministry has determined on a very favorable course of action regarding the Tridentine liturgy: a regularly-scheduled recited mass in the Extraordinary Form will be celebrated in the chapel of Alumni Hall dorm (it's generally considered one of the most beautiful on campus, and possessing a fine high altar, shown above) at 8 AM on Sundays, starting after September 14; and starting in second semester, missae cantatae will be offered once or twice a term on special occasions with music by the official university choirs. This is extremely promising, and also likely to spread interest in the rite among a wider section of the student body. You can find the official statement here.

In recent years, I have found Campus Ministry to be very responsive to grassroots requests for traditional devotions such as Eucharistic Adoration and the now-annual Procession, as well as sponsoring, I'm told, a trip last year to St. John Cantius for their annual All Souls' Requiem! This good news only further reinforces my impressions of this excellent trend.

Legendary Beauty in Sleepy Hollow

Yes, that Sleepy Hollow.

This past weekend, I skipped town before the Fall rush, and went to New York to visit some friends. On Sunday, I was able to attend the Traditional Latin Mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown), NY. This building had been an Episcopal church, built, if I understood correctly, with funds from none other than Washington Irving. It is one of many handsome buildings in this picture perfect town which is nestled along the placid pools of the Hudson River.

There were some things which stood out which I'd like to share with the readership here.

First of all, in keeping with Fr. Z's Rule Number 4, this traditional community (Una Voce Westchester) takes up a monthly collection that is given to the Immaculate Conception parish. A great number of this Mass's attendees are also registered as parishioners there. In addition, the pastor of the parish goes out of his way to make the group feel welcome. Caritas seems to be the operational word here.

Secondly, I was able to meet a number of people at the convivium after Mass. It really seems to be a trend that traditional communities are close knit, happy places in which people hang around for an hour or more socializing. I enjoyed meeting these most interesting people. They are full of energy and have joyfully offered their talents for the good of their community. Note well: They are not sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work; they're doing it themselves. It should also be noted that they're able to talk about subjects other than Catholic liturgy. This is a healthy thing. I detected not a trace of "bitter" traditionalism.

Thirdly, the schola at the Sleepy Hollow Mass is first rate. (Full disclosure: The magister musicorum, David Hughes, is a friend of mine. Nevertheless, I assure you of my objectivity.) Only the best music is used, and it is always well-organized and well-rehearsed. It is a model schola for others, and if the music at newer celebrations of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is like the music at Sleepy Hollow, the 1962 missal is bound to flourish. If lesser music is used in places where the motu proprio is implemented, the 1962 missal is bound to suffer the same fate it suffered in times past. The folks at Sleepy Hollow are helping to save the 62 Missal from 1962.

Sleepy Hollow is accessible via the Metro North railroad. Take it from New York to Tarrytown. From there the church is about a ten minute walk.

I would like to thank all of the good folks at Sleepy Hollow for their warm welcome on Sunday. I hope to visit again soon.

Almost One Year Later, the Classical Use plays prominent role in Oxford Again

Fr. Finigan over at the The hermeneutic of continuity has the preliminary goods on the training conference in the usus antiquior which begins tomorrow in Oxford at Merton College.

He has two posts today related to this:

Oxford LMS conference

Tomorrow morning I have a funeral (please pray for the repose of the soul of Maud Nazer). Then I will be off to London again, to catch the bus from Victoria to Oxford for the Conference organised by the Latin Mass Society to introduce priests to the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. Because of the funeral, I will miss the Mass celebrated by Archbishop Nichols in the morning but I hope to be there in time for Alcuin Reid's lecture at 3pm. I am looking forward to a couple of days in a City which brings back many fond memories of three years spent in the company of good friends.

My particular role, as well as giving one of the sets of tutorials, is to participate in the discussions with the experience of being a parish priest fostering traditional liturgy in a normal parish. Apparently there are over 50 priests attending. Many lay people will also be coming for the public liturgical celebrations during the conference (at the Merton College Chapel.)

Dom Daniel Augustine Oppenheimer (Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem) will celebrate the Solemn Mass on Wednesday 29 August at 11.45am

Bishop Rifan will celebrate Pontifical Vespers on Wednesday 29 August at 6pm

Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma will celebrate the closing Pontifical High Mass in the Traditional Rite on Thursday 30 August at 11.45am.

There will also be traditional Lauds on Wednesday and Thursday at 8am and traditional Vespers on Tuesday at 6pm.


Assisting Bishop Rifan

Bishop Rifan was at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, this evening to celebrate a Pontifical Low Mass. I was scheduled to say a Missa Cantata but was happy to say a private Mass earlier in the parish and act as Assistant Priest for the great man. Mgr Gordon Read was the other AP. Neither of us had acted in this capacity before so we needed some prompts here and there. Fortunately, I managed to retain much of what is in Fortescue's mercifully brief chapter on the subject.

Bishop Rifan heads the Apostolic Administration of St John Vianney, established in 2002 in the Diocese of Campos, Brazil, to which about 30,000 faithful are attached. At the end of Mass, after unvesting at the altar and kneeling to say a thanksgiving at the faldstool, he asked us two capellani to accompany him to the back of the Church where he remained to greet all those who had come to the Mass. Nearly all of the people knelt to kiss his ring in recognition of his office as successor to the apostles.

Over dinner afterwards, Bishop Rifan told us of a recently founded group of Franciscans with whom he is great friends. They work with the poor and have established 100 houses in ten years. One of their houses cares for 600 poor people. They have perpetual adoration, live an exemplary life of Franciscan poverty.

Speaking to me personally, the Bishop spoke of how important it is that traditionalists should always show charity to others and avoid bitterness and dissension. His concern was transparently genuine and pastoral. It was a joy to spend an evening assisting him and I look forward to seeing him again at other events this week.

[The NLM intends to provide coverage of this event of course, which is receiving quite a bit of press in England. We should have some of our own NLM eyes and ears there so to speak.]

Renovations and Counter-Renovations

We are blessed that there is much good work beginning to gain speed in the liturgical field -- which Summorum Pontificum has given a further shot in the arm -- not the least of which a re-birth of interest in the traditional ecclesiastical architecture and ornamentation.

A fact of this transitional period out of a transitional period, however, is that there still is the danger of further senseless and, indeed I should even go so far as to say, tasteless and ideologically oriented "renovations". This may be all happenstance -- the natural, even innocent, consequence of a still extant mindset of not so distant decades enacting itself -- though one wonders, at this stage of the game if perhaps this isn't also out of a desire to leave some lasting legacy in a time when the shift back toward our tradition is becoming more and more plain? A kind of desire to make the change (and really to enact a hermeneutic of rupture) "before its too late". We see such behaviour in other domains, so its not difficult to imagine in this domain either of course. Such is speculative of course and I put it out as a general consideration.

Regardless of the reasons, certainly by now it should be beyond a reasonable doubt that such revisions were certainly not mandated by the Council, and not at all necessary to be congruent with the modern Roman missal. In fact, pursuing such seems to only serve a congruence with a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, which sees this as necessary to fit with 'the modern liturgy' as they define it in opposition to the tradition -- whether that be the liturgy itself or the architecture which the liturgy informs.

Of course, it must be said that not all revisions or renovations are beyond the pale, but what are the nature of the revisions/renovations? Are they truly necessary and by what standard do we say they are? Is the standard actually correct? Also, what solutions may allow a warranted renovation to occur, while maintaining a congruency with a traditional architectural and liturgical vocabulary and a hermeneutic of continuity with the same?

What raised this issue in my mind was this article about a renovation that happened in London a few years back, and which is apparently commented upon by author Moyra Doorly in her newly published book, No Place for God (published by Ignatius Press).

Here are the before and after pictures:

BEFORE


AFTER


Even forgetting the "before" picture and taking that aspect out of this matter, there is a great deal to be critiqued from a liturgical level -- not to mention simply on the level of aesthetics. It's critiquable on its own 'merits', regardless of whether the church was built new or whether it replaced what was in the before picture; it is the fact that there is such a before picture, however, that makes the matter even more lamentable.

The good news angle on this sort of renovation is that it proves one thing: if a church or chapel can be taken from a very traditional state, to one such as this above, then likewise is the reversal of that process also possible. Chapels and churches subject to needless or less than desireable renovations can eventually be restored. Moreover, even those that were built new in recent decades can just as much be brought into a more traditional architectural and liturgical vocabulary as those that were taken out of it.

Black out has ended

My copy of Catholic Answers arrived and it has an article on the 1962 Missal, with a large color photo of a priest saying Mass ad orientem. It suddenly occurred to me: I haven't seen such a photo in a mainstream Catholic mag in ages. So this has inspired some reckless thought, which I now offer:

Isn't that strange that there would be such a historical blackout on our history, such that magazines would sense a taboo against publishing images such as this? I suppose you could say, oh, there was no taboo; it was just the practice. Actually, I don't think so. Most all Catholic publications adopted this practice. So too with Catholic publishers of books. All priests had to be facing the people; here was proof that you accepted the reform and that you had no sympathy for those bad traditionalists who regretted the losses.

In this way, and in a strange way, largely inadvertently, the prohibition on the free celebration of the extraordinary form tended to close off our history, to erect a huge wall at the year 1970. Now suddenly, it's as if the Pope has invited the whole Catholic world to observe the beautiful world of our past, in living color. And so, for example, even the NPM has published an article on the music of the old Mass, says Cantate Deo.

Is Baroque "Absolutist"?

One thing I frequently hear is that Baroque churches look too much like royal palaces, operahouses or governmental buildings. However, it is not that Rome's grand churches look too palatial, but that Versailles looks too ecclesiastical. The Baroque began in Rome principally as an ecclesiastical style, and was only after that taken up elsewhere as a fashionable symbol of legitimism and monarchy. Even then, there were distinctive differences between secular and ecclesiastical Baroque, just as there were differences between secular and ecclesiastical Gothic.



The question of how Renaissance classicism came to be applied to church architecture is a long and complex question; suffice to say that there were other factors in it besides a mere substitution of heathen classical for Christian Gothic. There were questions of classical magnificence versus Gothic simplicity, as well as the nationalist overtones of Italian classicism (and its Christian Romanesque antecedents, such as the Baptistery in Florence) in the face of "il maniere tedesco," the alien German manner of building. But that is a matter for another time.

In any case, Trent chose to retain the classical manner not simply on a modish whim, but because they saw in its antique precedent the potential for a return to the purity of the Constantinian church. Some frescoes of the period were even consciously modeled on Roman wall-paintings. While archaeologically somewhat dubious, it still reminds us of the immense significance that the Roman orders still held for the early Christians, who chose to retain them in a meaningful manner in their basilicas.



Trent's somewhat puritanical classicism in time developed into the triumphal baroque. The change can begin to be seen around the first, second and third decades of the 17th century, with the work of Carlo Maderno and, later, his nephew Borromini and his rival Bernini. A galaxy of luminaries great and small soon trailed after them--Cortona, Rainaldi, Longhi, Vittone, Juvarra--that stretched well into the following century. The proto-Baroque was a more humane, ornamental, and perhaps even more physically sacramental development of the simple classical Counter-Reformation aesthetic represented by the Gesu and the other churches of the new orders sprouting up in Rome.

In time it became more festive and sculptural, and eventually increasingly plastic and florid with its more roccoco offspring in Germany, Spain and Mexico. These charming outliers are exaggerated ornament are best understood against the backdrop of the Baroque heartland of Italy, and Rome in particular. While not detracting from their beauty, they do not necessarily constitute the central essence of the style, which, rather than plastering ornament wall-to-wall (as in many Spanish examples), is instead about a rich union of painting, sculpture and architecture, a clever use of perspective, of hidden light sources and contrasting forms, and an iconographic ideal that ties the whole building tgether as an intellectual whole. Versailles, and the Roccoco opera houses of Germany, are the imitators of this ecclesiastical style, rather than its progenitors. Indeed, the palaces of the Baroque era in Italy began out as rather severe Renaissance cubes, and as in France only took on the swags and cherubim of Bernini and the rest as the Baroque church became an established fixture on the architectural scene. Even so, it would be difficult, once aware of the period's conventions, to mistake a palace for a church.



Another confusion in this fact lies in the dome, that wonderful manifestation of heaven reaching down to earth. We see a dome in the U.S. and tend to think, automatically, of the capitol in Washington, D.C. The ubiquitous Baroque dome, the image of the heavens, thus feels more governmental and institutional than it was ever intended to be. In truth, the American capitol dome, completed in the 1860s, was modelled in part on St. Peter's in Rome, and very few royal buildings in Europe featured a dome before the 19th century, it being typologically associated with the Church. (The only outstanding example to the contrary, Castle Howard, lies in Protestant England). The pediment as well had a more strongly ecclesiastical connotation in the southern countries of Europe then than it does today. Only in America would we think it appropriate to house a legislature in a building modelled on a Renaissance church.

Of course, if it were the other way round, it would not be the first time we borrowed a royal or governmental image to represent the house of God. Much church ritual, especially pontifical ritual, derives in some real way from the civil ceremonial of the late Empire (indeed, "Ite, missa est," may have been the formula used to dismiss a civil proceeding); while the early Christian basilicas were closely related to Roman basilicas, which housed the judiciary or served as royal audience halls. Such royal imagery remains relevant today, even in an age of presidents and power-brokers, because Christ remains king even if there are no other kings to compare him to. Indeed, the royal dignity of Christ remains even more important today precisely because He is virtually unique, and because it represents our relationship to Him in a certain way that would be lost in any feast of "Christ the President."

That being said, it is not the Church that imitates the state in the Baroque, at least at its birth, but the state that imitates the Church, and once again in the case of the American capitol with its bloated Michelangelesque dome.

Dobszay and the most underrated book on liturgy of our times

Like many readers of this blog, I love books on liturgy, particularly those dealing forthrightly with the problems of the 1970 Missal, its relationship to the older Missal, and the problems of the transition back or forward to an integrated liturgical tradition.

When I first read Laszlo Dobszay's remarkable work The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform (Church Music Associates, 2003) I was stunned and thrilled: finally a work that seemed to exhibit a comprehensive understanding of both the details and the big picture. I was just blown away by it completely, and marvel at how much time and investigative energy I might have saved had I read this book when it first came out. It is beyond me why it hasn't received more attention.

Dobszay, both a liturgical scholar and a brilliant musician, points out that many of the problems in the liturgy today come down to matters of music, or rather, it is not likely that a full understanding of the problem of today's liturgy can be acquired without an understanding of the issue of music. He discusses how the reform was undertaken without due regard for the treasures of inestimable value, and the missteps ended up unleashing every manner of profane art into the heart of the Catholic experience. His treatise is not merely a screed against this fact: it deals in details with role of the propers, the place of the Psalms, the effects of music on the liturgical structure, the relationship between the old and new Missals, the practical problems of co-exist, and the prospects for the future.

What I like most about this book is the stable, truth-telling, non-evasive, scholarly approach. The author is not taking up space merely trying to convince you of an agenda. Rather, he wants the reader to come to understand a new perspective on the reform. Nor does he avoid hot button issues: holy week, the Divine Office, the impact of the high/low cultural split on liturgy, and the endless confusion created by permission for the "Alius cantus aptus." The honesty of his whole treatment leaves you both pleased and realistically optimistic about the prospects for reform.

In any case, there is a persistent problem is actually getting the book, as many readers know. Thus do I bring very good news. Fr. Robert Skeris has the last remaining 80 copies in his office. He is pleased to send them to people at $20 per book, and that includes postage. So if you want this book, and I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in Catholic liturgy to do so, send him cash or a check for $20 for each copy. Ask for the Dobszay book:

Rev. Dr. Robert Skeris
Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Ave., N.E.
Washington, DC 20064

Institut St. Philipp Neri - Assumption

The Institute of St. Philip Neri (a German based classical use priestly society) has new photos up of their Assumption Mass in the usus antiquior.

A sampling:

If you go through their pictures, it looks like they had quite a lovely parish feast following the Feast itself.

Fraternidad de Cristo Sacerdote y Santa María Reina

Via Le Forum Catholique comes this image and some information about the Fraternidad de Cristo Sacerdote y Santa María Reina:

This photograph is of a Solemn Mass in the usus antiquior held in the diocese of St. Jacques of Compostelle, at the House of the aforesaid Fraternity in Pontevedra-Spain. They describe themselves as a "community formed for diocesan priests, religious, and laity.

Is anyone familiar with this Fraternity?

Fifty Essential Catholic Hymns

The list of universal hymns of Catholic people has settled into a solid 50 chants that constitute an essential foundation of sacred music shared by Catholics in all places and times, the music that you will need to know to participate in international liturgies and the music that holds up over time, from season to season, to be sung by the people (schola exclusive chants are not in the list). They are all peoples' hymns, and though some are harder than others, none should be too difficult for non-musicians, provided they are heard and sung enough.

They also happen to be the basis of a vast amount of musical exploration in the 16th century and following and so constitute the basis of the modern Western musical tradition. Here is our real "folk" heritage.

There may be readers who know them all; most readers of this blog will know perhaps half. As a result of grave neglect and diversion for several decades, most American Catholics know none (I guess on my part). Is there anyone who would say that this is a good thing?

Adoremus Te, garage schola

This is just so incredibly charming. A schola in practice, singing Palestrina. Notice: no arm-waving director. I couldn't tell where the group is from actually.

Late Summer Diversions

It's summer, meaning it's both busy with projects and also a time, moreso than others perhaps, for leisurely diversions -- there is a certain irony in that.

As regards the latter, I've begun to read a rather interesting book from St. Augustine Press, On Hunting by Roger Scruton.

The title may sound like it is focused solely upon the matter of the hunt, but it is a much broader focus than that:

"To say that On Hunting is a book on fox hunting is like saying that Moby-Dick is a whaling yarn.

"Modern people are as given to loving, fearing, fleeing, and pursuing other species as were their hunter-gatherer forebears. And in fox hunting, they join together with their most ancient friends among the animals, to pursue an ancient enemy. The feelings stirred by hunting are explored by Scruton, in a book that is both illuminating and deeply personal. Drawing on his own experiences of hunting and offering a delightful portrait of the people and animals who take part in it. Scruton introduces the reader to the mysteries of country life. His book is a plea for tolerance toward a sport in which the love of animals prevails over the pursuit of them, and in which Nature herself is the center of the drama.

"Among the most dramatic and ironic discoveries that On Hunting offers the typical American reader is that hunting is about a love of and respect for animals, rather than a blood-thirsty hatred of them, and that the sport, far from being limited to an upper-class, old-monied aristocracy, is really one promoting an egalitarian meritocracy."

I'm only a bit into the book so far, but quite interesting and it seems like it may touch into some Pieperian sort of themes.

History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1946-1969 [The Pre-Conciliar Reforms - Part 3]

[Continuing Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.'s history of the reforms of the Dominican liturgy.]

The reforms of 1961-1962 were the result of legislation from the General Chapter of the Order held at Bologna from 18-24 September 1961, which itself was responding to John XXIII's project to reform the Roman Rite rubrics and calendar.1 This chapter requested the Master General to transmit to the Congregation of Rites reforms prepared by the liturgical commission and others requested by the provinces during preparation for the publication of new liturgical books. Changes in the calendar, described in part above as the result of earlier legislation, went into effect on [39] January 1, 1961 in correlation to similar changes in the Roman Rite. This reform made official the new nomenclature for feasts and, in addition, reduced some old feasts of three readings to memoriae with just a collect. These feasts were mostly Marian feasts or occurred during the Octave of Christmas.[40] The logic here seems to have been to reduce the excess of Marian feasts and to rehabilitate the Christmas Octave. Eight feasts were abolished outright or merged with other feasts.[41] In that case, the goal seems to have been to remove duplications and purge the calendar of legendary material.

Much of this legislation was dedicated to restoring or simplifying the Temporal Cycle.[42] This work was necessitated by the drastic reduction in the number of octaves during Paschaltide and after, and by the need to produce ferial offices to replace them. Ascension Time was created for the days after Ascension and new Sunday offices (or rehabilitated old ones) were provided for the "Green Sundays" after Trinity. The loss of the Sunday in the Octave of Epiphany was remedied by moving the Baptism of the Lord to that date. Along with these changes came a series of rubrical reforms related to them. Holy Innocents, which Dominicans had always observed somberly out of respect for the sorrow of the child martyrs' mothers, now got a Gloria, and its violet vestments were replaced by white. The legend-filled readings of eight feasts’ second noturns were replaced by those of the new Roman Office. Assumption lost its medieval allegorical Gospel of Mary and Martha, and the collects against pagans and schismatics received new, more polite, titles ("For Propagation of the Faith," "For Unity of the Church"). Finally, a new collect for the civil authorities replaced the old one "For the Emperor."[43] Certain remaining medievalisms were also addressed: superiors received the rite to determine which little hour Mass would follow, thus solving the problem of penitential Mass after None.

In the middle ages, the responsories of Sunday Matins came in series known as "histories." Medieval piety considered these musical presentations of Old Testament narratives very important, and, if they were impeded by a feast overriding the Sunday, they were transferred to a day in the following week, lest they be lost. This practice was abolished as the histories had ceased to play a role in most friars’ liturgical piety, and they were usually just recto-toned rather than being sung with their ancient Gregorian melodies. On the other hand, the melodic antiphons of the psalter were now to be sung before, as well as after, the psalms. The Litanies of the Rogation Days could now be done in vernacular--a somewhat odd place to introduce the common tongue, as the Litany response of "Ora pro nobis" was probably among the easiest for laity to learn.[44]

These changes in the calendar and rubrics were so numerous and so complex, that the Order's liturgist, Fr. Ansgar Dirks, provided a summary of them (correlating them with changes in the Roman Rite) so that friars could more easily make the necessary changes in their books.[45] Six months later the New Calendar and its rubrics were printed in toto in the Analecta, in a format that was easy to copy or cut out and insert into the Missal. It was too large to fit in the Breviary, but this was less pressing since a new edition of that book would come out by the end of the year.[46] This new calendar included one addition, the feast of the newly canonized St. Martin de Porres.[47] Perhaps the single most useful item in this material was the Fr. Dirk's tables of concurrence and occurrence, which show which offices and Masses to use when there is a conflict of feasts.[48] This put a set of still very complex rubrics onto a single page in a convenient form.

One year later, Pope John XXIII's reforms of the Roman Rite Mass, issued in his decree Rubricarum Instructum (15 December 1960), were adapted for the Dominican Missal and put in force on January 1, 1961 along with the calendar by a comprehensive decree.[49] Aside from institutionalizing the changes made earlier for Holy Week and the calendar, which they repeat, these reforms are mostly fairly minor and mostly concern simplification of the rituals of the Solemn High Mass. The priest no was no longer required to read the Epistle and Gospel quietly while they are sung by the subdeacon and deacon, something he had done sitting (not at the altar), although he did continue to read quietly the Ordinary and Proper chants (nn. 477-78, p. 89). This restored the thirteenth-century practice. The replacement of the "Ite Missa Est" with "Benedicamus Domino" on minor feasts (when one of the minor hours followed immediately) was abolished, to be retained only if a procession was attached to Mass, as on Holy Thursday (n. 471, p. 87). Conversely, the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar were to be omitted when other rites preceded, as at the Easter Vigil or on Candlemas (n. 388, p. 75). And, most famously, the recitation of the Confiteor before the people's communion was suppressed (n. 467, p. 87). This rite, like exposition of the host at the "Ecce Agnus Dei" that followed it (which is even later), were elements from the rite for distribution of communion outside of Mass that had crept in after earlier reforms that placed the people's communion back within Mass. If the logic of omission was that the Confiteor was an "accretion," then it would have probably been best to omit both of these. But the “Domine non sum dignus” remained.

The rubrical changes promulgated were relatively minor, but two were quite radical. Now ministers who did not have the skill to sing the Epistle or Gospel could simply recite them without music (n. 479, p. 89--as in Rubricarum Instructum, n. 514). This went totally against the Dominican cultivation of the choral Mass as a purely musical expression of worship and was a big step toward the modern practice of the priest merely reciting Mass with (often extraneous) songs interspersed. Another provision specifically affected Low Mass: the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar might now be recited in pleno (loud enough for the people to hear). Although it was never mentioned in any Order legislation, this change is probably connected with the newly popular "Dialogue Mass," in which the congregation recited not only the people's responses but also what had previously been private dialogues between the priest and ministers. Dialogue Mass was first approved in 1958 by Pope Pius XII, but the practice was older and Dominicans had probably begun to use it by at least that date.[50] This change simply regularized the practice. In this change the distinct roles of the priest, his other ministers, and the congregation were becoming conflated and confused--in the name of participatio actuosa.[51]

It is of interest that the Dominican Rite, as in use in 1962, did not include the name of Joseph in the canon. As the liturgist Fr. Ansgar Dirks noted in his "Adnotations" to the Order's adoption of the new communion rite on 19 February 1964, it was only with the approval of that reform that the friars received verbal permission to include Joseph in the canon, a full two years after that change had been made in the Roman Rite.[52] Some, perhaps most, Dominican priests had already added the name of Joseph after the papal decree, wishing to conform to the practice of the Roman Church.[53]

The last item in the volume of the Analecta containing this legislation was a series of abstracts from "Veterum Sapientia," Pope John's directive that Latin instruction be improved and that seminary classes all be taught in Latin. It seems that, in spite of the rapid changes of the last few years, few anticipated abandonment the Western Church's liturgical use of the Latin language.[54] But even before that year was out, the General Chapter of Bologna (18-24 September 1962) was drawing up requests for the next extensive rubrical revision on the missal.[55]

[The series continues in the next installment, looking at the conciliar adaptations to the Dominican litury between 1962-65]

Footnotes:

[39] Acta Capituli Generalis Provincialium S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Bononiae (18-24 Sept. 1961) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1961), esp. nn. 147-175, pp. 95-101 "De Re Liturgica."

[40] "Variationes in Calendario," ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): nn. 6-7, pp. 94-95. Affected were: St. George, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, The Stigmata of St. Francis, Our Lady of Mercy, St. Thomas Becket, St, Silvester, and the Compassion of Virgin.

[41] Ibid., n. 8, p. 95: Chair of Peter at Rome and Chair of Peter at Antioch (merged), Invention of tbe True Cross (May 3), St. John before Latin Gate, The Apparition of St. Michael, St. Leo II, St. Peter in Chains, St. Vitalis, and the Discovery of the Body of St. Stephen.

[42] "Variationes in Officium de Tempore," nn. 18-32, ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 96-101.

[43] "Variationes in Proprio Sanctorum and Variationes in Communi Sanctorum," ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 102-105 (Matins readings suppressed for Conversion of St. Paul, Purification of Virgin, The Crown of Thorns, Vigil of Sts. Peter and Paul, St, Irenaeus, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Raphael; ibid., n. 43, p. 102 (Holy Innocents); ibid., n. 52, p. 104 (Assumption); ibid., pp. 105-06 (collects).

[44] ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962), nn. 174-175, p. 39 (antiphons); ibid., n. 212, p. 44 (responsories); ibid., n. 85, p. 19 (litanies).

[45] "Variationes in Breviario et Missali O.P. ad Normam Novi Codicis Rubricarum," ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 94-109.

[46] SCR, "Instructio de Calendariis Particularibus" (14 Feb. 1961), ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 213-225, is the promulgation; the new calendar follows on pp. 227-38, with its own promulgation, "Calendarium O.P. Iuxta Novas Rubricas" (Prot. Num. 8.88/961--14 June 1961) attached. The new Breviarium iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum, 2 vols. (Rome: S. Sabina, 1962) had to be amended for last minute changes by Supplementum ad Breviarium Ordinis Praedictorum, Novis Rubricis et Novo Calendario Aptandum (Rome: S. Sabina, 1962) as soon as it was published.

[47] A third-class feast for Bl. Diana, Cecilia, and Amata (9 June) would be added by the end of the year: SCR decree (Prot. N. o.92-962), ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 649

[48] ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 91-92. This decree also provides that the requirement of reciting the antiphons before and after the psalms in the Office as required by the new Roman rubrics was dispensed until the new Dominican Breviary was published.

[49] ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 1-4, reprints "Rubricarum Instructum" (SRC Prot. N. O. 126/960--21 Jul. 1960). The Dominican adaption is "Rubricae Breviarii et Missalis Iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum," pp. 5-106, which Brown sent for approval to the Congregation on 25 Jul. 1960.

[50] Experiments with dialogue Mass go back to at least the 1930s. Pius XII approved it in "Musica Sacra et Sancta Liturgia" (3 Sept. 1958).

[51] Fr. Dirks borrowed the phrase from the instruction "Musica Sacra et Sacra Liturgia (3 Sept. 1958), in ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 50: "fidelium actuosa participatione fusius actum est."

[52] ASOFP, 36 (1963-1964): 485: "Inde adhinc fere duos annos factum est nomen S. Ioseph Canoni Missalis nostri inserendum, sed tunc gratia 'viva voce' concessum est." St. Joseph's name was inserted into the Roman Canon by papal motu proprio on 13 November 1962. Joseph's name entered the Roman Missal issued on Nov. 13, 1962 in accord with the SCR decree "Novo Rubricarum Corpore" of 23 Jun. 1962--not a text never printed in ASOFP as no formal petition was made by the Order to adapt its contents.

[53] Oral communication of Fr. Albert Gerald Buckley, O.P., of the Western Province, U.S.A. (11 Aug. 2007).

[54] ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 657-82: reprints those parts of Veterum Sapientia (22 Feb. 1962) that would effect Dominican education.

[55] Acta Capituli Generalis Provincialium S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Bononiae (18-24 Sept. 1961) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1961), n. 153-58.

The Catholic Herald on Pugin

Brace yourself for an outbreak of Pugin-mania

by the Abbot of Downside

A few years ago the name Pugin would have meant little outside a small circle of enthusiasts for the work of the great 19th-century Catholic architect or critics of the former Lord Chancellor’s expensive taste in wallpapers. With the publication of Rosemary Hill’s brilliant new life I suspect Pugin-mania will become endemic and a new Gothic revival may be just around the corner. One can only hope.

The biography comes at an ideal moment as far as the debate about the future of our historic built environment is concerned. The Catholic Church in England is rediscovering its rich artistic patrimony, in which Pugin played a pivotal role, which could have an important part to play in bringing the people of this country back to their cultural roots and to their senses. The headache inherent in the high maintenance of many of our great church buildings will always be difficult, but I suspect the lack of imagination shown by many in handling the future of these sacred places is the greater problem. Counsels of despair can become a mindset in our hostile secular world.

Pugin’s imagination ran riot in a blaze of colour and Gothic arches, “pointed” rather than Gothic as he preferred, but he was wonderfully visionary in seeing the way in which the building environment reflected the society which constructed them and the way in which good buildings could comfort and change men and women’s hearts. Pugin was no academic historian and lacked the professional’s grasp for dates and complications but he was a masterly social critic who contrasted the inhumanity of his own age with what he perceived as the superiority of the Middle Ages when it came to priorities and individual care. He was a revisionist who disdained the Victorian idea of progress and had no time for the Renaissance. His Catholicism reflected his dual French and English inheritance and owed nothing to Ultramontane models.

The concept of Medieval was a pejorative one for Pugin’s contemporaries as it for many of ours. For the early 19th century it was an irrational and superstitious epoch. In the early 21st century it can appear as undeveloped and pre-scientific. The idealisation of any past age, always a romantic construction based on limited evidence, can be a perilous model, but Pugin reminds us that architecture should be about quality building reflecting an aspirational quality of life. His Medieval model, as contrasted with industrial society, rated service above management, style above economy, care above control. His ideals have been seen as signposts not only towards the welfare state but to the developing social teaching of the Catholic Church which reached its first full maturity at the end of the 19th century.

Pugin’s sensitivity about the use of appropriate materials and traditional skills, taken up and developed by William Morris and others, has a contemporary ring in a world where environmental issues are becoming increasingly urgent and important. Modern architects are learning to be less wasteful in energy and carbon emissions a century and a half after Pugin pointed the way. More significantly, most of us are beginning to see how important it is that our living spaces respect our diminishing resources and our perceived obligation to be stewards of God’s creation. What we need perhaps is a new Pugin who can contrast our wasteful ways with those of an ideal, balanced, environmentally friendly world. We need someone with the passion, imagination and cheek of that great Victorian architect to move us towards a fully articulated Catholic understanding of the environment. In the Catholic desire to proclaim a culture of life the living world should not be ignored.

The Rt Rev Aidan Bellenger is the Abbot of Downside
Copyright, The Catholic Herald

Source: The Catholic Herald - Britain's leading Catholic newspaper

Full and open seminars for priests

The National Catholic Register is preparing a story on how priest seminars on training for the extraordinary rite are filling up. True. There is one seminar that is not yet full: St. John Cantius and the CMAA, Missa in Cantu, October 17-19, 2007. It is not exclusively for the old form. The purpose is to train celebrants of the Roman Rite to sing, sing, sing the Mass, as a means of ennobling the liturgy - English and Latin. It is about half full now, which is pretty remarkable given that it is two months away.

What is the universal music of Catholic people?

Yesterday, I spent some time accumulating a short list of music that Catholic people are likely to sing at Mass during the year, a core repertory that might be the foundation of a universal hymnal. Right now, no such thing existsm so far as I know. The Kyriale is wonderful but too limited because it excludes chant hymnody. The Liber Cantualis is also short on material in some way.

In any case, my point isn't to lobby for a new hymnal but merely to draw attention to what we might think of as a universal list of music of the people. It excludes chants reserved for the schola and music that people don't tend to sing (Sequences) and leaves aside Ordinary chants completely. Again, the criterion here is music for the people for the Roman Rite (old and new forms).

There are only 41 pieces here. Before you say that this is way too few, consider how many you can sing at the drop of a hat. I would guess that all but two or three are unknown to 98% of Catholics in the United States. Consider too that these tunes might also be considered the foundation of the whole of Christian music and even the Western musical tradition, insofar as they were the most frequently set during the golden age of polyphony and thereby served as the basis on which music was made in succeeding centuries. Is it too much to ask of Catholics to become conversant in the people's musical language of the ages?

Adoro Te
Alma redemptoris
Anima Christi
Asperges me
Attende Domine
Ave Maria
Ave Maris stella
Ave regina Caelorum
Ave verum
Christus vincit
Confirma hoc
Cor Jesu
Creator Alme Siderum
Crucem Tuam Adoramus
Crux Fidelis
Da pacem
Ecce nomen Domini
Gloria, laus et honor
Hodie Christus
Inviolate
Iste Confessor
Jesu dulcis
Litany of Saints
Magnificat
Maria Mater gratiae
O filii et filiae
O lux beata Trinitas
O Panis dulcissime
O Salutaris
Oremus pro Pontifice
Pange lingua
Panis angelicus
Parce Domine
Pater Noster
Puer natus
Regina caeli
Rorate caeli
Salve mater
Salve Regina
Stabat Mater
Sub tuum praesidium
Tantum Ergo
Te Deum
Te lucis
Tota pulchra es
Ubi Caritas
Veni, veni, Emmanuel
Veni Creator
Vexilla Regis
Vidi Aquam

In pace in idipsum

Every so often, you hear a piece of music and become obsessed by it and search and search until you find out more, maybe even getting the sheet music. This happens to everyone. Ok, it happens to me more than it happens to most people. In any case, this is what happened to me on Thomas Tallis In Pace in idipsum. It is nothing short of amazing. I could hear it 10,000 times.

The problem was that the file on CPDL was damaged. The library archives didn't have it. A friend on the Gregorian list sent me an ancient copy but it was not usable for moderns, and I had another friend do a Finale version, and then I did the neumes and stuck them in using Photoshop and so on and so on. The result result is that we now have the piece!

I hate to link a Midi because they are so dreadful, but here is one.

The words in Latin:

In pace, in idipsum, dormiam et requiescam.
Si dedero somnum oculis meis,
et palpebris meis dormitationem,
dormiam et requiescam.
Gloria Patri etc.

English:

In peace, in true peace I shall sleep and rest.
If I give slumber to my eyes
and to my eyelids drowsiness,
I shall sleep and rest.
Glory to the Father, etc.

Not for morning Mass!

Sant' Agnese in Agone

Some photos, courtesy of a good friend and fellow Baroque enthusiast, Matthew Enquist, of one of my favorite Roman churches, Sant' Agnese in the Piazza Navona, built, I believe, on the site of her martyrdom and containing a relic of her skull, which is about the size of a large baseball, given she was still little more than a girl when she was killed.

Sant' Agnese is one of the most cleverly-designed Baroque churches in the Eternal City, taking what might be a liability--a peculiarly cramped site wider than it is deep, and making it an organic, even essential, aspect of the design. As you study these photos, note the church, while highly ornamented, is actually free of a lot of the Roccoco lettuce that is usually mistaken for Baroque architecture, and also the vivid use of polychromy and colored marble, evidence that classicism has a tradition of striking color as well-established as the Gothic. There is also a clear and well-defined system of iconography at work here, with winged putti playing in the higher, heavenly vaults just as one finds angels in the higher registers of churches from the earliest days of ecclesiastical art, as well as the use of the vegetal Corinthian order as a symbol of Christian triumph (and, also, probably feminine grace) common in numerous Roman shrines.

ITER LITURGICUM

A brief post to suggest everybody interested in Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy (also at the highest level) -and with a minimum knowledge of the Italian language- to vist the Iter Liturgicum Italicum by Prof. Giacomo Baroffio, former director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, from the the website of the Faculty of Musicology of Pavia University, in Italy.

You will a find large, well updated collection of repertories mainly focused on codicology and liturgy (a small liturgical dictionary, a bibliographical collection of works about liturgical books, a list of liturgical calendars, a paper about readings for Easter Vigil, etc).

A special mention to a precious inventory of Italian liturgical manuscripts, and the Iter Liturgicum Ambrosianum with a full list of all manuscript sources of the Ambrosian Rite.

Photos from the Solemn Premonstratensian rite

As many have noticed, one mission that the NLM has set for itself is to promote the various traditional liturgical rites found in the West.

To that end, I'm delighted to present some pictures of a solemn Mass in the Premonstratensian rite from the Norbertine Abbey of Frigolet near Avignon. The photographs date to around the mid 1950's.

(The Abbot about to be vested; the deacon is wearing the almutium)


(Procession before the offertory prayers)


(The paten being held in the air by the deacon during the Pater Noster)

More such photos may be forthcoming. I thank the Norbertine who kindly sent these to me and who is looking for more such.

The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny: Major Public Debate in Frankfurt, Germany - over 400 Hear Mosebach [UPDATED]

[The following comes from The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny and is a report on the debate reported a few days ago with Martin Mosebach and Prof. Robert Spaemann participating. The following is an article written in Germany. I've added in a few comments now that I have time.]

To Strengthen the Sacred: a Topical Forum points out Different Paths

An Audience of 400 present at a Discussion on the Reintroduction of the Old Mass

By Doris Wiese-Gutheil

Frankfurt. A topical news forum of the Frankfurt cathedral circle ”Church and Science’ showed that there are totally different ways to revitalize the Sacred in the Catholic Church. On Monday, August 20, around 400 attendees crowded into the main auditorium of the “Haus am Dom” to experience the disputation between recognized experts on a hot topic: “Reconquering the Sacred” and the reintroduction of the Latin mass according to the Tridentine rite. Quite a few others capitulated and left in the face of the overcrowded auditorium.

The remaining 400 nevertheless persevered courageously despite the crowding and heat, enthralled by the exciting and at times caustic discussion. The liturgist and Church historian Arnold Angenendt (University of Muenster) right away aptly characterized the scene as: “Two for, two against – there’ll be fireworks!” Even though both theologians, Angenendt and Albert Gerhards, a liturgist at he University of Bonn, made efforts to reconcile the contradictory positions - as did the philosopher Robert Spaemann – many a cutting word was said.

In particular, Martin Mosebach, the author from Frankfurt and the recipient of this year’s Georg Buechner prize, defended vehemently his love for the old Roman liturgy – just as he had already expounded it in his 2002 book “the Heresy of Formlessness.”

The 56 year old lamented that as a Catholic who hadn’t gone to church between 1962 and 1975, he had found nothing the same upon “the return of the prodigal son.” The Second Vatican Council and the liturgical reform of the 60’s had destroyed the “essence of Catholic Christianity”; the Church today only hangs on to “dwarf forms.” Such a loss, according to Mosebach, is “disastrous for a religion whose core idea is the word Tradition.” Mosebach’s hope is that the Tridentine rite, which Pope Benedict XV legalized again at the beginning of June, will serve as the standard for the New Rite. Even so, the New Rite - in the German language and with the priest facing the faithful – remains the main form of the Catholic mass, also according to the will of the Pope.

The philosopher Robert Spaemann also lamented the “liturgical reform dictated from above” of 40 years ago, carried out in part “dogmatically and with brute force.” It could not stop the disintegration of the church; rather it pushed the adherents of the old Latin Mass onto a “fringe of indecency.” Nevertheless, the 80 year old made a plea that both sides refrain from persecuting each others’ opinions. The pope in his decision deliberately wanted to assure that “the confrontation ceases.”

The two liturgists Angenendt and Gerhards indeed demonstrated various historical errors in the arguments of Mosebach and Spaemann. The rite of the mass was not at all a ”treasure” passed down unchanged for 2000 years but had been reformed again and again, often for the better; [NLM comment: this doesn't follow of course; first of all, its highly doubtful either Spaemann or Mosebach would suggest the Roman liturgy is unchanged. The nature of the changes, reforms and developments need to be further taken into account. Further, how does such mean that "the rite of mass was not at all a 'treasure'"? That seems to be an odd conclusion that doesn't follow.) further – for example, when Christianity freed itself from the idea of female impurity, when the canon of the priest was changed or when the “active participation” of the faithful was revitalized. In the mass one must always struggle to “express the Sacred more profoundly.” According to Gerhards, however, it’s not just the old rite that achieves this: "it takes place through the disposition of the Faithful.”

Source: http://www.bistumlimburg.de/

Welcome to Town, the Real World

Two friends of mine from different parts of the country, settled into a parish of their liking, more or less, picked up to move to other parts of the country, leaving their parishes behind and encountering a terrifying situation in looking for a new parish. Both of them are in a state of complete shock.

They are bouncing from parish to parish only to find liturgy after liturgy dominated by pop music and liturgy directors with heads full of mush, places completely untouched by the reform of the reform. They describe themselves as living in a liturgical house of mirrors in which crazy and menacing heads of Marty Haugen haunt them at every turn. It is driving both of them batty, and even to despair. They tell stories of the most shocking sort, week to week, and are both at their wits' end.

Moves can do this to you. One's perspective on whether Catholic liturgy is getting better or worse--whether it is time for panic or calm improvements--depends in large part, if not wholly, on one's local situation. People in good situations tend to have an exaggerated sense of the well being of American Catholic liturgy. People in awful situations ere in the other direction, assuming that there is no hope.

For this reason, we all work very hard to find liturgical environments that are suitable to our sensibilities and then feel a bit of comfort, only to have this completely upset when we move across the country into an unfamiliar place and encounter that horrible reality that Catholic liturgy in the United States really is in a relentless state of emergency. You can at this point make up a statistic, but I'm guessing that something like 85% of Catholic Masses in this country stand in complete violation to the letter and spirit of the Roman Rite.

I have no answers here to provide. But clearly despair is not an option. Neither is dropping out. Once you rule out those two options, you realize something important. Our generation has been called to work at the margins to do whatever we can, in our own time, wherever we happen to find ourselves.

I would counsel getting involved in the parish, even if it means singing bad music for a time or teaching CCD under a mixed-up DRE or otherwise making a contribution in the spirit of love and sacrifice. After a time, opportunities will present themselves for starting a chant schola, opening a new bookstore, recommending a new text, or starting a new group or ministry, or whatever. This are positive ways to turn a bad situation into a slightly better one. This way you can prepare a path for the future.

Another friend of mine five years ago found himself in a dreadful situation and didn't know what to do. But he stuck it out and kept working from within the parish in every way he could. Then one day a new pastor came, and he was seeking out people who could be leaders to take the parish in a new direction. Next month, that very parish will have a Tridentine Mass and he will assist. My friend's support was invaluable.

There are ways to make a difference where you are. Think of it as Providence at work: you are being called to assist the reform. There is nothing to be gained by regretting that you don't live in the 15th century or longing for the stability you have known in the past. You must look to a brighter future and work and pray as the means to make it happen.

A "Listing of contents" of the 1966 "Missale Ambrosianum"

Just in case anybody is interested in this kind of stuff, I've found out that a very patient scholar has put online a sort of listing of the contents of the propers of 1966 Missale Ambrosianum (which is the parallel of 1965 Missale Romanum).
Propers are identical to those in the 1954 Editio quinta post Typicam. Differences between the two Missals are only in the Ordinary and in the rubrics.

Liberality, the Basis of Culture

[The American Journal, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, has published a piece by the the Prior of St. Michael's Abbey in California, Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem, which touches into Pieperian and liturgical themes.]

by Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem

“Go day, come day. Lord, send Sunday.” My paternal grandmother could be counted on to say these words at least once per week. Whether burdened with some mundane task or confronted with the evidence of human frailty, the prospect of the day of worship and witness, of rest and reading, of visiting and victuals was a precious consolation to her. Sunday reigned sovereign over the other days of the week, and the breach of its observance, whether by absence from church or by skimping on dinner or by mowing the lawn, was proof not only of infidelity, but of incivility. When local authorities began to permit Sunday openings, she saw through their pretense and predicted dire effects. “They think that they can steal time from the Almighty and that He won’t notice. But He’s the One who said ‘Six days shalt thou labor, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God.’ Soon enough and they’ll begin to think that they’re almighty themselves, but He’ll show them who’s the King.”

My grandmother was surely not a philosopher and even less a theologian. (Her best effort at showing some little appreciation of her grandson’s Catholicity was when she said, “The Roman religion is just too deep for me.”) Even so, her approach to time and work and worship was in line with the deepest of insights, in particular with those of the great German Thomist Josef Pieper, who, in the summer of 1947, presented a paper in Bonn entitled “Musse und Kult” (“Leisure and Worship”), known in English as Leisure, the Basis of Culture. The American edition of this conference, with a splendid Introduction by T.S. Eliot—a fine piece in its own right—was first published in 1952. Ever since, it has set the standard for contemporary treatments of the meaning of culture as cult—that is, as founded in the celebration of divine worship.

Pieper’s study hinges on several telling etymologies from which are to be unpacked all the implications of his theory of the essential form of human society. One is the Greek schole, which means “leisure”; from this word is derived the Latin schola and, hence, the English school, as well as its equivalents in all the Romance and Germanic languages. Regarding the leisure necessary for contemplation, Pieper writes:

“We work in order to have leisure.” . . . That maxim is not . . . an illustration invented for the sake of clarifying this thesis: it is a quotation from Aristotle; and the fact that it expresses the view of a cool-headed workaday realist (as he is supposed to have been) gives it all the more weight. Literally, the Greek says “we are unleisurely in order to have leisure.” “To be unleisurely”—that is the word the Greeks used not only for the daily toil and moil of life, but for ordinary everyday work.

“Greek,” Pieper points out, “only has a negative”—a-scholia—“just as Latin has neg-otium.” Another word is cultus, to which is related cultura and, evidently, culture and all its equivalents in other European languages. In his Preface to the American translation, Pieper points out:

The word “cult” in English is used exclusively, or almost exclusively, in a derivative sense. But here it is used, along with worship, in its primary sense. It means something else than, and something more than, religion. It really means fulfilling the ritual of public sacrifice. That is a notion which contemporary “modern” man associates almost exclusively and unconsciously with uncivilized, primitive peoples and with classical antiquity. For that very reason it is of the first importance to see that the cultus, now as in the distant past, is the primary source of man’s freedom, independence and immunity within society. Suppress that last sphere of freedom, and freedom itself, and all our liberties, will in the end vanish into thin air.

This characterization of freedom and liberty as the fruits of right worship directs our attention to a third telling etymology, that of the artes liberales, the “liberal arts.” Pieper clarifies the notion for us with arguments from great authorities, ancient and modern:

What are the liberal arts? In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Aquinas gives this definition: “Only those are called liberal or free which are concerned with knowledge; those which are concerned with utilitarian ends that are attained through activity, however, are called servile.” “I know well,” Newman says, “that knowledge may resolve itself into an art, and seminate in a mechanical process and in tangible fruit; but it may also fall back upon that Reason, which informs it, and resolve itself into Philosophy. For in one case it is called Useful Knowledge, in the other Liberal.” The liberal arts, then, include all forms of human activity which are an end in themselves; the servile arts are those which have an end beyond themselves, and more precisely an end which consists in a utilitarian result attainable in practice, a practicable result.

This third consideration, of the meaning of liberal, will shortly lead us to some progress in thought even beyond Pieper’s little—klein aber fein—masterpiece, but wholly in line with it. First, however, let us sum up his teaching: A true human society, a genuine culture, is based on those activities that are ends in themselves, which do not serve any purpose other than knowledge and love. Among these contemplative activities of free men possessing leisure time, the highest place, the one most formally determining of culture, is common worship, the celebration of the cultus of the Divinity, the sacrifice of praise, surely the most self-sufficient of human and social activities. The preeminent cultural form is, thus, the feast, the holy day, the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, which, because of the Christian dispensation, in fact becomes every day, since on every day this worship is offered. Pieper sums up his high point:

The Christian cultus, unlike any other, is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament. Insofar as the Christian cultus is a sacrifice held in the midst of creation which is affirmed by the sacrifice of the God-man—every day is a feast day; and in fact the liturgy knows only feast days, even working days being feria . . . We hope . . . that in the performance of [Christian worship] man, “who is born to work” may be truly “transported” out of the weariness of daily labor into an unending holiday, carried away out of the straitness of the workaday world into the heart of the universe.

The grandeur of Pieper’s vision of human existence in society can hardly be overstated. He has pointed out the key to the sublimation of all our activities—not only of the necessarily servile arts that serve the others but of the sciences and philosophy—into an act of worship, which contains the praise of the whole creation under God. Even so, his vision can be transcended, for there is a more fundamental sense of the “liberal” of the utterly free and at ease, which underlies the whole, and goes beyond mere culture and even creaturely worship, by reaching the Source of all things whatsoever and indicating the attribute most characteristic, most proper to Him. In discussing whether God can be said to have the moral virtues that issue forth in action, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us in his Summa contra Gentiles I:xciii:

The ultimate end for which God wills all things in no way depends on the things that exist for the sake of that end, either in regard to being or to some particular perfection. Hence, He does not will to give someone His goodness so that thereby something may accrue to Himself, but because for Him to make such a gift befits Him as the fount of goodness. But to give something not for the sake of some benefit expected from the giving, but because of the goodness and appropriateness of the giving, is an act of liberality, as appears from the Philosopher in Ethics iv. God, therefore, is supremely liberal, and as Avicenna says, He alone can be properly called liberal, for every agent other than God acquires some good from his action, which is the intended end. Scripture sets forth the liberality of God, saying in a psalm “When thou openest thy hand, they shall all be filled with good” and in James “Who giveth to all men abundantly and upbraideth not.”

“God alone is supremely liberal . . . He alone can be properly, proprie, called liberal.” Quite simply, it is impossible for a creature to perform any good action, even the most lofty, without some kind of product—namely, the hitherto unattained end intended and gained by his action. Even if it is an end in itself, the action of one who—unlike God—is not identical with his own good brings about his own perfection and happiness, not to mention the merit that claims a reward in justice. But God acts without the least increase in His own perfection or happiness, gaining nothing, solely out of goodness, and so He alone is truly and properly, fully and perfectly free, liberal.

Aristotle already had a shadowy hint of an understanding of the ultimate sense of the service God’s intelligent creatures owe Him when, in the crowning considerations of his Metaphysics, he explains that the powers of heaven are drawn by the contemplation of the Supreme Good and Ultimate Final Cause of all things to the imitation of His causality, each having its own proper effect on the beings lower in the hierarchy of the cosmos. Aquinas, commenting on this passage, describes the purpose of their activity as one of assimilation, of becoming like the Good, by imitating His self-diffusive generosity ut assimilentur ei in causando. They become like Him by doing as He does, pouring out their inner riches of mind and will on those beneath them. In the Christian era, this office has not been left merely (what a bold “merely” that is!) to the angels, but has been extended through the Incarnation of God to men. They become “sharers in the divine nature” and form a nation of priests, prophets, and kings. Becoming images and likenesses of the divine liberality, the free and easy beneficence of God, then, is the end of those who contemplate in leisure the higher things and who, in worship, not only praise as creatures but pour out as priests the “good things to come.” There is a kind of paradox here, which, upon examination, is only a recapitulation on a higher level: The final perfection of contemplative leisure is an action, a work of generous liberality. Saint Paul reminds us of the words of Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Here is his meaning.

“It is better to give light than merely to burn.” This is Aquinas’ tag to introduce his rationale for the life of the apostle being higher in dignity than that of the mere contemplative, since the apostle not only gazes lovingly at the Good but bestows it on others. This is not the banal activism of the bored humanitarian; it is the intense, contemplative drive of one who has become like the One Whom he has contemplated in worship. As our Western world becomes more and more clearly the place of the sunset of all that is leisurely, free, and pious, it is this effect of the Christian cultus that must stand out more clearly: the love of neighbor as the visible sign of the love of God. We ourselves must give others the time, the liberty, and the sacred precinct to possess with us “the power to become the sons of God.” This is the needful liberality that must be the basis of culture. And all the more because it will only come about in those places where we ourselves undertake so great a work on so small a scale. The great workaday world is not going to do it for us. It will be for a time (please excuse the macaronic pun) the ultimate “home-schole”—and not only for children, but for our neighbors and friends; and not only for worship, but for everything human. Grandmother’s house on Sunday may be the very statio orbis for which we are looking.

There is a final caveat. Having contemplated the Good, and now returning to enlighten our fellow men, we may share the fate of the one who returned to the darkness of the Platonic cave to free those who know only shadows and who confuse words with realities. But then, did He not say, “and if I be lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto Myself”? And is this not why our Sunday is a feast?

Fr. Hugh is prior of St. Michael’s Abbey in Trabuco Canyon, California.

Source: Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Liberality, the Basis of Culture

Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock

When I was a boy, my grandmother took me on a walk through her small town. (Sorry for all the "walking" posts; I shall try to include some about driving or flying as well.;)) Along the way, we stopped at its most magnificent structure--the local parish church, known once upon a time by the nickname "cathedral of McSherrystown." The cornerstone was laid in 1900, and it is one of the most beautiful and impressive buildings in the whole Diocese of Harrisburg.

In we went, up to the altar rail, where we knelt, and my grandmother lit a votive candle. I had never seen such a custom before, nor had I ever been in such a wonderful building. On that day, I was introduced to a side of Catholicism that I, having attended the suburban spaceship church, had never seen before, and it was all thanks to the holiness of an elder.

One of the things that struck me on that day was that you could just walk into church to pray. Who had ever heard of such a thing? Didn't they lock the doors?

To be sure, this was in a different time and in a different place, but I sincerely regret that at 2:30pm in broad daylight there is not one church within a twenty minute walk of my apartment that I am aware of that is open for prayer. I do not mean to unjustly criticize pastors for doing what they think is prudent. There are, to be sure, grave situations to consider when deciding to keep a church open during the daytime, the most important of which is the protection of the Blessed Sacrament. This would seem to require the presence in the building of at least one trustworthy person at all times.

Permit me, however, to indulge in some wondering aloud: Have we allowed the pragmatic challenges to overshadow the possibilities of Divine grace? Would a greater accessibility to prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament serve as a source of life for our neighborhoods and our congregations? Scheduled times of prayer and adoration are a good thing, something for which I am grateful, but what about those times when the Holy Spirit taps you on the shoulder? That doesn't always conform to parish schedules. To be sure, our neighborhoods are not what they once were--not even in "middle America" where it is said that everyone knows everyone. The only way to bring peace, however, is through Christ, and that is hard to do when the church is shut tight.

Let's not forget, either, about the beauty of our churches and the ability of such splendor to convert souls. Fr. Jay Scott Newman once told the story of his conversion on EWTN. As a student at Princeton, he would go into the college chapel and admire the beauty and the architecture. One day Newman, then an atheist, caught himself saying, "I know You're not there." In the realization of the irony of this statement, Fr. Newman's conversion began.

Please know that I am not unaware of the potential troubles involved in keeping churches open throughout the day. I once worked at a metropolitan cathedral that was located in not exactly the most ideal place. Truly, I could tell you some colorful stories. But all that frustration was worth it, if only to allow Christ into one more heart each day through the open doors of the church.

Today, as I returned from a most frustrating search for an open church, I couldn't help but grumble to myself that Bl. John XXIII opened the windows, and we have locked the doors.

Rehearsal Night

Tonight is the first rehearsal of the Schola Gregoriana Philadelphia. Details can be found here.

The Bronze Serpent

In a recent post on the NLM, Matthew wrote:

Maybe it's not a major part of the Reform of the Reform, but I wouldn't mind adapting the arunda serpentina to make a splendid Paschal Candle stand, with all the resonances of the Biblical bronze serpent.

An old story tells that the famous Bronze Serpent was brought from Constantinople to Milan by Archbishop Arnulf II around 1000 A.D. as a wedding present for the solemn marriage between princess Stephania and Emperor Otto III, together with other precious things.

However, when the ship with the Archbishop and the bride docked in Italy, the Emperor was dead, and the wedding present remained in Arnulf's possession.

He decided to put the precious relic on the top of a Roman marble column inside the famous Basilica of St. Ambrose, in Milan, where it can still be seen.

A legend tells that, on the day of the Judgement, the snake will take life, and will announce the end of the time. Then it will slither back to Josafat valley where Moses once forged it, leading the whole Humankind to its final judgement.

Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture - Part I

Photos taken during my visit in July 2007.


Killearny Cathedral, Killarney, Co. Kerry. Exterior.


Killearny Cathedral, Killarney, Co. Kerry. Interior view to east end.


Dominican Church, Tralee.


Church of Ireland Chapel, Bunratty Folk Park.


Catholic Church, Adair.


Parish Church in the Kerry countryside.

"Extraordinary form" of the Ambrosian Rite? - third part

As a conclusion to my threefold post about the consequences of Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum" on the Ambrosian Rite, here follows a complete list of liturgical books of the Ambrosian Rite in the edition in force in 1962:

LITURGICAL BOOKS:

Missal :
Missale Ambrosianum juxta ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis. Editio quinta post typicam. Milano, 1954.

Breviary :
Breviarium Ambrosianum a Carolo archiepiscopo editum, Andreæ C. Card. Ferrari et denuo Joannis Baptistæ Montini archiepiscopi iussu impressum. Milano, 1957.

Liturgical Calendar:
Kalendarium Ambrosianum. Milano, 1957.

Ritual :
Rituale sacramentorum ad usum S. Mediolanensis Ecclesiæ olim a S. Carolo institutum nunc postremo Eminentissimi Domini Andræ Caroli Card. Ferrari archiepiscopi auctoritate editum. Milano, 1906.

Ceremonial :
Cæremoniale Ambrosianum iussu illustrissimi ac reverendissimi D. D. Federici card. Borromæi Mediolanenis Ecclesiæ Archiepiscopi nuper editum. Mediolani, 1619.

(Only the first of the five parts originally scheduled was actually published.
The fifth part “de prædictis officiis ac functionibus per singulos dies per anni circulum ” was probably completed, but never published: its text was semi-officially handcopied by order of several Archbishops and Archpriests of the Metropolitan Chapter. A complete copy can be found in the Library of the Metroplitan Chapter of Milan under cod. Cap. Metr. ii.F.2.15, dated 1819)

Office and Mass for the Dead:
Ordo et Missa pro defunctis cum exequiarum ordine. Milano, 1934.

Processionarium:
Litaniæ majores et triduanæ solemnes ritu ambrosiano, a S. Carolo... editæ. Nunc denuo recognitæ. Milano, 1846.

Pontifical Collectarium :
Pontificalia Mediolanensis Ecclesiæ Em.mi et Rev.mi D.D. Federici Card. Vicecomitis Archiepiscopi auctoritate recognita et collecta. Mediolani 1689.

(This is a sort of Collectarium -i.e. a collection of different liturgical text- for the use of the Archbishop in the Metropolitan Cathedral.It's considered a proper source of the Ambrosian Liturgical Law because it's the only book where the Benediction of the Oils for Maundy Thursday can be found.)

by Federico Card. Borromeo
Regole di alcuni capi necessari e più frequenti per la osservanza delle Sacre Cerimonie e del Canto fermo ambrosiano. Milano, reprinted 1896.

by Andrea Carlo Card. Ferrari
Piccolo cerimoniale per alcune funzioni nelle Chiese Parrocchiali della Diocesi. Milano, 1896.(This small Ceremonial book was published as an Ambrosian Parallel to the Roman Rite Memoriale Rituum)

by Carlo Card. Borromeo
Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiae

Furthermore:

Decrees of the Diocesan Congregation for the Ambrosian Rite.

Synodal Decrees.
Diocesan Orders given by the Capo-rito (i.e. the Archbishop).

OTHER AMBROSIAN LITURGICAL BOOKS (mostly a summary of other, above mentioned, complete liturgical books):

Horae Diurnae:
Diurnum Ambrosianum. Milano, 1907.

Sacerdotale Ambrosianum ex Rituali iussu A. C. Card. Ferrari edito excerptum. Milano, 1946.

Collectarium:
Collectarium Ambrosianum seu orationes et preces dicendæ pro diversis temporum opportunitatibus dum est impertienda solemnis benedictio cum Sanctissimo Sacramento. Milano, 1949.

by Giovanni Battista Germani
Ritus incensandi s.l. , s.d.
(A small chart with a drawing describing the correct way to incense in the Ambrosian Rite. Germani was one of the greatest Masters of Ceremonies of the Cathedral in the XIXth century)

CHANT BOOKS:

Antiphonale Missarum juxta ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis. Milano, 1935.

Liber vesperalis juxta ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis. Milano, 1939.

Præconium Paschale juxta ritum Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis. Milano, 1934.

Vexilla Regis: A Hymn for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

A few years ago, I was commissioned to write a motet for the Sleepy Hollow Schola Cantorum for Palm Sunday. What we ended up with can be found here and here. Those are the first and last verses, respectively, of an alternatim setting for male voices of the Vexilla Regis, a hymn not only for Passiontide but also for the upcoming Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I present it here for your consideration for use on that feast, should you be having a sung Mass that day.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. I have only posted the first and last verses. The other odd-numbered verses are set to the same music as the first verse; one need only fill in the words. (Confession: those middle verses have gone missing thanks to my right-brained style of "organization.")

2. When I set this, I unknowingly used an unusual setting of the text from the 1934 Antiphonale Monasticum, rather than the more standard text which appears in the Liber Usualis. As this piece is not a liturgical Proper (at least in the Mass), this is only a small consideration. But feel free to make changes in the text.

3. Someone has alerted me that the text is changed slightly for the September 14 Feast. "Joy" is inserted somewhere. I shall search after the exact nature of this and post an update. In the meantime, if someone knows without looking it up, please post a comment.

4. I understand that this setting makes quite the demand on the range of the choir, not only in the polyphony but in where the chant would then lie as well. This was originally written for a professional schola, hence my freedom to do that. Of course, in some situations an adjustment of the key could mitigate problems of range.

5. Remember that, in all things, I am a technological idiot. (I like it that way, too.) So, I was using rather a limited program to set this piece. Hence, the "Amen" at the end of the final verse should not be rendered as it appears, but rather in Gregorian chant rhythm. That is not actually a triplet. No mensuralist interpretations are allowed here;)

I hope you find this little piece to be somehow edifying. Feel free to copy, sing, or record this piece to your heart's content, if you find it worthy of such treatment. Just be sure to list the composer's name in the appropriate places:)

"Extraordinary form" of the Ambrosian Rite? - second part

Let's now consider the situation after "Summorum Pontificum".

Fr. Moneta Caglio, in the preface to the series of articles I mentioned in the first part of this post, wrote:

"This inconvenience [viz. the fact that the true liturgical law is pretty much unknown], which is even more strong for our Rite than for the Roman Rite, is due to the fact that many people get involved into liturgical matters regarding rubrics, without applying the most elementary juridical principles".

It is very important to remind that Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum" isn't -so to speak- a document fallen down on earth out from outer space: it is to be read in accordance with general canon law principles, in particular those pertaining to liturgy.

One cannot presume that the Motu Proprio doesn't apply to non-Roman Latin Rites just because they're not explicitly mentioned in the text of "Summorum Pontificum". It would be, on the contrary, quite odd, because the Holy Father, the supreme and universal legistator of the Catholic Church, always gives universal laws.

In short, according to the "most elementary" principles of Canon Law, the general law always prevails over particular law, unless otherwise is specified. (cfr. Can. 12 - § 1. Legibus universalibus tenentur ubique terrarum omnes pro quibus latae sunt. § 2. A legibus autem universalibus, quae in certo territorio non vigent, eximuntur omnes qui in eo territorio actu versantur. § 3. Legibus conditis pro peculiari territorio ii subiciuntur proquibus latae sunt, quique ibidem domicilium vel quasi-domicilium habent et simul actu commorantur, firmo praescripto can. 13.)

In casu, we can say that the Motu Proprio liberalizing the use of the liturgical books in force in 1962 (general law), is already in force also for other non-Roman rites (particular law).

It is also important to consider the mens -i.e. the intention- of the Holy Father, expressed by his own words in his Motu Proprio.

At the beginning of the Motu Proprio, the Sovereign Pontiff reminds to us a key rule, inspiring his Letter: "Since time immemorial it has been necessary - as it is also for the future - to maintain the principle according to which 'each particular Church must concur with the universal Church, not only as regards the doctrine of the faith and the sacramental signs, but also as regards the usages universally accepted by uninterrupted apostolic tradition, which must be observed not only to avoid errors but also to transmit the integrity of the faith, because the Church's law of prayer corresponds to her law of faith.' "

Among the "usages universally accepted" stand, of course, also non-Roman rites, which must "concur with the universal Church". So, we can say we already have an answer to our question: it is -and always was- the will of the Church, clearly reaffirmed by the Holy Father, that all usages universally accepted conform with the discipline of the Universal Church.

The intention of the Supreme Legislator is thus clearly to liberalize the celebration of the Mass and the administration of the Sacraments according to liturgical books previously in force, even for those Latin liturgical traditions other than the Roman one, or, to say it with Pope Becendict's own words "the Latin liturgy of the Church in its various forms, [that] in each century of the Christian era, has been a spur to the spiritual life of many saints, has reinforced many peoples in the virtue of religion and fecundated their piety."

A new discipline has been established by the Supreme Legislative authority of the Catholic Church, and it is natural, or better necessary, for other liturgical traditions than the Roman to conform to it.

In this case, this new discipline can be put into practice immediately.

A Liturgical Curiosity

This description of the Arundina Serpentina, or Serpent Candlestick, can be found in Archdale King's Liturgies of the Primatial Sees, p. 224. It was the equivalent in the Rite of Braga of the old pre-1955 tripartite candle used during the Easter fire and lighting of the Paschal candle. I have never much missed the tripartite candle, until I read about this:

...is of considerable interest, as it takes the traditional form of a bronze winged dragon on a pole, with the three candles issuing from the mouth of the dragon.

King notes below, on pp. 281-282:

The use of a dragon or serpent as a candlestick for the tripartite candle was very general in the middle ages.

The Regularis Concordia (c. 965-75) prescribed its use at the blessing of the new fire on the three days of the Triduum Sacrum: 'On Maundy Thursday, after none, a procession went down to the church door, bearing with it a staff which ended at the top in the shape of a serpent. There, fire, struck with a flint, was first hallowed, and then used for lighting a candle which came out of the serpent's mouth. From this all other candles were ighted; and the same ceremonial was repeated on Good Friday and Easter Eve. A serpent figured also in the ceremonies of the three days in the Abbey of St. Mary at York. Here the blessing of the fire took place in the chapter house, and on the Thursday the sacristan in an aparelled alb walked first cum hasta habente serpentem in sumitate tres cereos affixos candelabro in ore ejus non accensos. On Good Friday, the serpent was carried by the prior, and on Holy Saturday by the principal chaplain of the abbot.

A rubric in the Mozarbic Missale Mixtum says that in the procession to the font on Holy Saturday: Hic exeat subdiaconus cum cruce hoc ordine: Ceroferarii cum cereis pergant coram cruce; et cereus paschalis coram cereis, et serpens coram cereo, et sic procedant ad fontem ordinatem. The Liber Ordinarium makes no mention of a 'serpent,' and the device was almost certainly borrowed from the Roman-Toledan use existing in the primatial church in 1500. [...]

The ordinarium of the Church of Bayeux, compiled at the end of the 13th century, refers to the bearer of the tripartite candle as the draconifer: Draconifer in suppelliceo et capa serica, et habeat draco in ore candelas plures retortas.

Maybe it's not a major part of the Reform of the Reform, but I wouldn't mind adapting the arunda serpentina to make a splendid Paschal Candle stand, with all the resonances of the Biblical bronze serpent.

The Catholic Handel

I was having a rather silly argument with some friends over whether there is a qualitative difference in the Italian/Catholic music Handel wrote as versus his Protestant English music. Yes, I know, it's a matter of taste. But as an illustration of the Catholic Handel, I mentioned his fabulous "Dixit Dominus," and it just so happens that there is a recording here (the rock-hard consonants are a bit peculiar and the tempo slightly slow in this rendition). So you can decide for yourself. I find this to be creative and smashing in every way, even more so than his English anthems. De Gustibus etc.

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"Regole d'Alcuni Capi" for free download

Gallica, the "Bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque national de France" provides for free download a digitalized copy of one of the rarest liturgical books of the Ambrosian Rite: "Regole d'Alcuni Capi necessarii, E più frequenti per l'osservanza delle Sacre Cerimonie, e del Canto Fermo Ambrosiano".

This is another example of proper liturgical book "of diocesan right" (see my previous post).

In this case -which is quite an Ambrosian distinctiveness- the book is entitely written in vernacular, a beautiful later Renaissance Italian.

The "Regole d'Alcuni Capi" is a sort of brief ceremonial published by Federico Cardinal Borromeo in 1622 in order -as he explains in his introductory letter "Habbiamo più volte avvertito"- to put some order into the serious matter of sacred ceremonies according to the venerable Ambrosian Rite.

... And yes, this book is still in force for the extraordinary form of the Ambrosian Rite.

To download the full book, click on "Télécharger" link at the top of the page.

History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1946-1969 [The Pre-Conciliar Reforms - Part 2]

[Continuing Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.'s history of the recent Dominican liturgy.]

The medieval office of the Dominican Rite was very distinctive, with its own psalm arrangement and a simple elegant calendar that emphasized the ferial office and the weekly recitation of the whole psalter. The psalms of the "Little Hours" of Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline were invariable, which facilitated recitation from memory when travelling. The office was admittedly long, although actually shorter than many other medieval uses. The multiplication of saints' days had, by the early modern period, effectively erased the ferial. By 1900, outside of Lent, a Dominican could expect to celebrate the ferial office about three times a year. This did have the effect of shortening the office somewhat because, even with three nocturns, a saint's Matins was shorter than that of the ferial. Under the influence of Pius X's reform of the Roman Breviary, the Order had aleady scrapped its medieval office and introduced the new Roman psalter with different psalms for each little hour every day of the week. But very little was done at that time to reduce the number of saints' days. The Breviary of the Order in during this period was that published in 1947, which added new feasts and made minor stylistic changes.

This Office and its Calendar was badly in need of reform to restore its original balance, nevertheless, saints and other observances continued to be added: St. Margaret of Hungary (1947), St, Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1950), Bl. Joseph, Melchior, and Companions (1953), Patronage of the Virgin (1955). At the same time, petitions were received by the curia to lighten the choral obligation, in particular the community requirement to recite the daily Office of the Dead. This did not happen, and Fr. Abel Redigonda of the Lombard Province was asked to write an essay for the Analecta defending the practice as exemplifying the care of the dead typical of Dominican spirituality. When a new Breviary was published in 1949, it left the issue of the calendar and the burden unaddressed, doing no more than adapting the Roman practices of reciting Sunday Matins responsories during the week (in place of the medieval Dominican ferial set) and repeating the antiphon of the Benedictus and Magnificat before, as well as after, the canticle.

Perhaps the liturgists of the Order were too consumed with the reforms of Holy Week; the problem of the Breviary would not begin to be addressed until 1957. This began with an important permission, granted to the Order by the Congregation of Rites, so that Mass might always be celebrated after Terce, "even in Lent." It had been the ancient practice to celebrate Mass after None in penitential times, after Terce in festive and Paschal times, and after Sext otherwise. This originally had the effect of extending the Eucharistic fast till afternoon in Lent and till late morning during the year, while cutting it short at mid-morning on festivals. In fact, by the modern period, Mass was always celebrated in the morning. The effect was to require completion of all diurnal hours before the morning Mass during Lent. This odd practice was now finally dropped. Permission was also given to always celebrate Vespers after the noon meal, rather than before it, as was also the old Lenten discipline, reflecting the long daily fast.

Master General Browne soon moved to shorten the Office, in accord with changes also happening in the Roman Rite. On 2 February 1957, he announced the dropping of the Athanasian Creed from Prime on Sunday (except for Trinity), the omission of orationes imperatae (collects required for special intentions) when there were already three collects at Mass or Office, and the practice of moving an impeded Sunday Office and Mass to a free day later in the week. Admittedly, this did not substantially lighten the burden, but it was a start.

A more agressive shortening of the Office would come into effect on 1 January 1960, with approbation of the Congregation of Rites of changes requested earlier. These ended the silent recitation of the Our Father and Creed, which preceded and followed most of the hours, and dropped the devotional antiphons in honor of the Virgin (Salve Regina) and St. Dominic (Pie Pater) previously attached to every office. The recitation of the Salve Regina and the O Lumen (in honor of St. Dominic) were retained,however, at the end of Compline. The decree also removed the "Preces" from Prime and the memorial collects of the Cross and the Blessed Virgin from Lauds and Vespers. Certain other simplifications were also made, such as the abolition of the variable doxologies of the hymn for confessor saints, the Iste Confessor.

The effect of this pruning was almost entirely to remove devotional elements that, over the centuries, had gotten attached to the Office, rather than shortening the Office itself. That task would be taken up in the preparation of the new edition of the Breviary. It would happen in the context of a revision that would also remove dubious legends from the Matins of saints, a project already requested by the General Chapter of Rome in 1955. Initial corrections were made in the sixth lesson for Matins of the Translation of St. Dominic. And in 1959 permission was granted to replace the third lesson (the legend) in Feasts of Three Readings (the lowest rank of feast) with the readings in the Commons. Such feasts usually commemorated ancient martyrs whose legends were often historically dubious or filled with extravagant miracles.

More important than any of these changes, however, was the calendar reform, which affected both the Mass and the Office. By decree of the Congregation of Rites, a new calendar went into effect for the Order on January 1, 1960. This reform was comprehensive and far reaching, on a scale never before seen in the history of the rite. It affected the rubrics, the ranks of feasts, the temporal cycle, and the number of feasts. One goal of the reform was to restore the primacy of Sundays and the ferial office. To this end, all Sundays of Advent and those from Quinquagesima to Lent became, like the Sundays of Easter and Lent, "major," and so could not be overridden by a saint's day (nn. 7-11). Privileged Vigils, which included some of great antiquity, were abolished except for those of Christmas and Pentecost. The remaining vigils, (Ascension, Assumption, St. John the Baptist, Sts. Peter and Paul, and St. Lawrence) were all reduced to "common." All octaves, including the very ancient octave of Pentecost and the medieval octave of Ascension, were gone, leaving only those of Christmas and Easter (nn. 16-23). The suppression of Trinity Octave required a change in the name of the Sundays after Paschal time. Originally, as in the Sarum Rite, the Dominican called these Sundays "After Trinity" but they had been known as "After the Octave of Trinity" since the last major reform of the Dominican calendar in the 1600s. They were now to be known by the Roman title, "After Pentecost." Then, with one stroke, the "White Sundays" after Trinity, during the octaves of Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Sts. Peter and Paul, and St. John the Baptist ceased to exist and became ordinary AGreen Sundays.@

The weight of the sanctoral was greatly lessened. All simplex and semi-duplex feasts of saints became feasts of three readings. The votive Office of Our Lady on Saturday lost its first vespers. This change itself reflected a radical change in the understanding of the liturgical day. From ancient times, the day was understood to begin and end at dusk. So feasts with only one vespers (like the Virgin on Saturday) only had vespers on the evening before, while major feasts had a second vespers on the day of the feast. Now the liturgical day began with Matins (as it always had for Feasts of Three Readings--which had no vespers), and every day had Vespers and Compline of the day itself as its close. Major feasts, which now included all Sundays, kept their two Vespers. This change meant that some borrowing was necessary for the Magnificat antiphons of the new First Vespers of Sundays after Pentecost, and so provision was made for that.

The system of collects for Mass and Office was simplified, and the anomaly of differing sets of collects for Mass and for Office was gone. And the total number of collects used would now be limited to three. This especially affected the period after Christmas, when the overlapping octaves of the feasts of the last week of December could result in as many as six collects. After such drastic changes, one further one was added. The old system of ranking feasts (made much more complicated during the reforms of Pius X), with its Totum Duplex (first and second class), Duplex, Semiduplex, and Simplex feasts, was swept away. From now on, there were to be only three classes of feast: called simply First Class, Second Class, and Third Class.

Certain provisions that simplified rubrics went into force immediately. These included the end of the practice of multiple collects at Requiem Masses, a vast reduction in the use of the Creed (previously said on most feasts of saints), and the end of varying Last Gospels. Now the Prologue of John was to be universal (except for the third Mass of Christmas). Finally, provision was made for celebration of Mass from the Commons on days of saints celebrated in the Office merely as a "memoria" with an extra collect. This introduced variety into the pruned-down Mass repertoire by reducing the number of days when the weekday Mass merely repeated the chants and readings of the previous Sunday. Finally, by a separate decree, the number of times when the Leonine Prayers could be dropped was increased. These changes were provisional: a new calendar and set of rubrics were to be produced the next year. This would reduce the number of saint's days and reduce others in rank and make many other changes.

[Part 3 of this section will be forthcoming in the next few days.]

Previous Installments in Chronological Order:

Introduction

The Pre-Conciliar Reforms, Part 1

A Walk Through a Museum and a Walk Through the Park

Some weeks ago, I (finally) took advantage of the Philadelphia Art Museum's pay-what-you-wish policy on Sundays. So one sunny weekend, I strolled up the Ben Franklin Parkway and went right to the section that said "Europe 1850-1900." Impressionism. My favorite.

An hour or so later, when I was finished there, I made my way up the steps to the second level. On my right was "Europe 1500-1850"--perfect! On my left, "Europe 1100-1500." Even better. So, for the rest of the afternoon, I spent time with roods, altar panels, chant manuscripts, statues, etc. The set up at the art museum is breathtaking and inspiring.

The longer I stayed, however, and the more I thought about it, the scene began to depress me. I noticed that much of the collection there came from France. Were these treasures sold after the French Revolution? In any case, why are they here and not in a church? It should be said that it is a good and wonderful thing that the people of Philadelphia can walk down the street and relive Medieval Europe, but at what cultural price? One cannot help but wonder.

Fast forward a month or so to this past Saturday. After evening Mass at the cathedral, the cantor invited me to join her and her sister for dinner. We went to a restaurant near Rittenhouse Square, which happens to be one of my favorite parts of the city. Following dinner we strolled through the park.

It was really quiet.

Conversation soon revealed why (and this is old news; clearly I've been neglecting the local papers): Music is no longer allowed in the park. Now, in the warmer months of the year, Rittenhouse square is full of every manner of musician, and believe it or not, I loved to go there and hear the street musicians perform. This is real culture, real folk culture at that. It exists everywhere that has any artistic life to speak of. I remember fondly the musicians on the cobblestone streets in Vienna. Brass bands, accordion players--you name it. I have found that many street music performances are particularly re-vivifying, even if it's music that I wouldn't ordinarily listen to. More than once, such performances have broken the clouds of a grumpy mood.

In March, however, Philadelphia police arrested a man for performing in the park. Eventually, he was acquitted of the ridiculous charges. It remains unclear to me, however, what the enforcement of the law will be at this point. Many are charging that such ordinances violate the American Constitution (but that debate is beyond the purposes of this blog). Saturday's extreme quiet seems to suggest that, at the very least, musicians are afraid to set up shop in Rittenhouse Park.

What does all of this suggest? Are some in modern society determined to consign every last ounce of culture to sterile laboratories, where art cannot reach the majority of people and where artists will be tempted to go down aesthetic rabbit holes that would make their work incomprehensible? To be sure, this has already happened to a large extent, but putting the last nail in the coffin with local ordinances doesn't help matters, for every society needs culture. As I said a few days ago, beauty is necessary, and this quite certainly applies on our streets, where the humdrum of daily life often threatens to crush our spirits.

Now what in the world does any of this have to do with the liturgy? The answer is: Everything. The street musicians are much like our grandparents and great-grandparents, who had pianos in their houses, and most of the people therein could play them. It was natural for families to stand around at Christmas time, for instance, and sing the night away. Try that now; see how far you get. Over the years, one of my uncles would suggest from time to time that I lead the family in singing Christmas carols. That suggestion was usually met with stony glares that betrayed a discomfort somewhere between fear and annoyance. This is because the act of making music (or any other art) has practically vanished from normal, everyday life.

This cannot but affect the liturgies which we celebrate. The language of art in general is increasingly foreign to many. Others may scoff, but the progressives as they are called do have a point when they talk about relevance in worship. I do not agree with their proposed solutions, but their diagnosis is not unfounded. We are lacking an atmosphere of creativity. Most of the music that people hear, whether in church, in the car, or in concerts, is mass-produced. This mass production takes the place of genuine creativity which is so often missing from our modern world.

Am I suggesting that we should hire street musicians to sing the Mass? Should we commission the people that twist a bunch of metal and call it "sculpture" to do a new set of the Stations of the Cross? Of course not. Am I even saying that we should "dumb down" sacred music or sacred art? Not at all. All I'm saying is that we need an environment in which creativity and a love of the beautiful are cultivated. This environment must affect every aspect of life and every social class.

If we fail to do this, our work will already be doomed to the display cases of the 22nd century. And then many will wonder: Why are these masterpieces hidden away in a museum?

Haugen's "Agape"

A correspondent writes me as follows, and I can't answer because I don't know the piece: "I'm writing because I would like to know your thoughts an a piece of music written by Marty Haugen. The piece is called AGAPE, and it's actually an entire concert piece in the form of a mass, but with many other things added. The piece is being performed at my university. I am trying to explain to the director why I am uncomfortable singing in the performance, but I'm not sure exactly how to put my words (besides the fact that it's 'musical' content is completely lacking in beauty.) If you are familiar with this I would appreciate your comments."

Anyone know this piece and have an opinion?

"Extraordinary form" of the Ambrosian Rite? - first part

For my first post on The New Liturgical Movement weblog, I'd like to try and give some clarifications about an important question raised by a comment to a previous post: whether the recent Motu Proprio published by the Sovereign Pontiff created an "extraordinary form" of the Ambrosian Rite, or not.

First of all, a short historical and canonical preamble about the Liturgical Law of the Ambrosian Rite is in order.

Fr. E.T. Moneta Caglio, later appointed Major Canon of the Metropolitan Chapter of Milan, and one of the greatest scholars of Ambrosian Rite and Ambrosian Chant of the XXth century, made some very important remarks about the Liturgical Law of the Ambrosian Rite in a long series of articles published on the liturgical review "Ambrosius" in 1930. § 16 -17 dealt precisely with the problem of the power to publish or to change liturgical books by local Bishops.

He mentions that, after the Council of Trent, the Sovereign Pontiffs progressively reserved every right to give dispositions of any kind about Roman liturgical books to the Holy See: Bull Quod a Nobis (1568) for the Roman Breviary; Quo primum (1578) for the Roman Missal; Ex quo (1596) for the Pontificale; Apostolicae Sedis (1614) for the Rituale; Cum novissime (1600) for the Caeremoniale Episcoporum.

It is quite well known that the Sovereign Pontiffs explicitly excluded from their new dispositions all Rites and Uses older than two hundred years. Later on, many Uses, such as the so called "Rito Patriarchino", even though old enough to survive, fell into desuetude and were replaced with the Roman Rite. Of course, this wasn't the case for the Ambrosian Rite.

In fact, before 1859 the Archbishops of Milan never felt obliged to ask for a permission to modify Ambrosian liturgical books, or to publish new ones. Those books don't bear any public approval from the Sacred Congregation of the Rites, but only an introductory letter from the Archbishop to explain the reasons why a new edition -or a new litugical book altogether, as for the Caeremoniale Ambrosianum- was considered necessary, and thus published.

Those books are known as books of diocesan right, and some of them were in use until the post-conciliar reforms.

Things changed with the 1918 Code of Canon Law. In fact, can. 1257 read as follows: "Unius Apostolicae Sedis est tum sacram ordinare liturgiam, tum liturgicos approbare libros".

The new Code gives very similar directions under can. 838: "§1. Sacrae liturgiae moderatio ab Ecclesiae auctoritate unice pendet: quae quidem est penes Apostolicam Sedem et, ad normam iuris, penes Episcopum dioecesanum §2. Apostolicae Sedis est sacram liturgiam Ecclesiae universae ordinare, libros liturgicos edere eorumque versiones in linguas vernaculas recognoscere, necnon advigilare ut ordinationes liturgicas observentur".

In a word, while the Archbishop of Milan still keeps the title of "Capo-rito", since 1918 he can't publish or modify Ambrosian liturgical books without the approval -or recognitio- of the Holy See.

Very few outside of the Archdiocese know that the Congregation for Divine Worship is presently examining the new Lectionary presented by the Archbishop for the ordinary form of the Ambrosian Rite, and it is very likely that some parts of it won't be approved.

Refreshing bluntness

In one of the editions of the Collectio Rituum there is an "Exhortation to Follow Absolution of the Dead," written for funeral Masses by the Most Reverend William O'Brady, who served as Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1956 to 1961. Unfortunately, I have only the text of the Exhortation and not the entire Collectio in which it appears, so I do not know the particular version (publication year) of the Collectio. (The Collectio I have was published in 1964 and, regrettably, omits the Exhortation.) Anyway, here it is:

Beloved brethren:

Our burial prayers are as much for the comfort of the living as they are in supplication for God’s mercy upon our dead.

We do mourn for those who die. It is right that we should. We have known and loved them in life, and now death divides them from us and us from them. We mourn our dead since we know that they will need our remembrance and our prayers until they will have paid whatever debts they owe for the sins and imperfections of their lives. We beg eternal rest for all our dead, but we know that eternal happiness will not be theirs until, prepared by purification, they will be worthy to meet, face to face in glory, the God in Whom they have always believed, and find with Him the Heaven for which they have always hoped.

Death is the door to eternity. God has made it so. Beyond that door lies judgment, and, unless the dead be wholly lost in Hell or saints at once worthy of the sight of God, there is a waiting, a state distressing enough so that those who wait are called “Poor Souls.” They are poor because they cannot help themselves. They rejoice in our tears, not because tears are signs of grief but because they are promises of prayer.

What the dead have faced in accounting and in judgment still remains for us to meet. Our burial prayers, therefore, are reminders for the living that we are also mortal, that we are also weak, that one day the flesh will die and that upon that day we shall not escape the judgment.

While there is yet time, then, let every man review himself as God now sees him. Let every man understand that at some moment, still unknown and often unannounced, he must encounter either a day of wrath or a day of glad approval, or a day of needed purification. While there is yet time, let every man repent for whatever holds him back from God and let him earnestly pursue whatever will open the door of eternity to insure the peace and refreshment of heavenly reward.

May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace! May the souls of those who remain be lifted up towards God in all goodness and in holy expectation!

Compare that to the typical modern funeral homily (or what passes for a homily), which, as we know, is practically a decree of canonization. I post this Exhortation for the benefit of those priests who might appreciate having a brief, no-nonsense, unmistakably and unabashedly Catholic funeral sermon. It is especially useful when the priest did not know, or barely knew, the deceased; of course, it can be customized or personalized as the priest sees fit.

The Exhortation's only drawback, in my opinion, is the lack of reference to the Paschal mystery (not the term itself, but what the term signifies: the mystery of the redemption, the mystery of Christ and of Christians). It could be improved by adding mention of the Lord's triumph over death as the basis of our Christian faith and our hope in the resurrection to eternal life.

Gregorian Chant for Everyone

It is a common experience at papal liturgies: everyone in the world joins to sing a chant hymn such as “Regina Caeli” or “Ave Maria” - except Americans, who have sadly neglected the chant tradition for several decades. It was to rectify this problem that Cardinal Arnize came to St. Louis last year to urge Americans to take up chant again.

As important as specialized scholas are, it is also critical that every Catholic in the pew learn the chant again, to make it their own, and overcome the fear and intimidation factor that comes with singing unfamiliar music in Latin.

To address the issue in our own parish, the St. Cecilia Schola is starting Monday night chant class for men and women of all ages. We’ll teach the basic chant music of the Catholic faith. The classes are for everyone, even those who believe they cannot sing a note. Join us starting September 10th, 7:00-8:00pm, at St. Michael's Catholic Church, Auburn, Alabama. We’ll have lots of fun and learn to pray in a new way. And please bring your friends!

Here is the poster.

Le Barroux Ordinations

The Abbey of Le Barroux have available now photos from their recent August 11th ordinations to the priesthood by Msgr. Raymond Centène, Bishop of Vannes.

Select photos from RJC 2007

As promised, a few select photos courtesy of the webmasters of RJC - Rassemblement des Jeunes Catholiques from the 2007 conference held from late July into the first week of August.

Busy weekend

It's been a busy weekend primarily away from the computer, so hence the quiet. I sense that quietitude generally in the blogging world. No doubt many are taking advantage of the last summer weekends and weeks with holidays and outings!

NLM Ambrosian rite Expert

The NLM is pleased to welcome as a contributor Nicola De Grandi of Milan who has contributed so much in the way of Ambrosian rite expertise as a guest contributor. I asked Nicola if he would consider making this a more official arrangement and I am pleased to report he kindly agreed.

Nicola's contributions will likely only be of an occasional variety, but I think we can all agree that we all look forward to interest to his knowledge of things Ambrosian and otherwise.

RJC - Rassemblement des Jeunes Catholiques 2007 photos

The French Catholic classical use youth movement, Rassemblement des Jeunes Catholiques (RJC), now have their recent 2007 conference photos available for viewing.

There are quite a few photos and as they are under copyright, I am trying to get permission to post some here. Once I do, I will pull out some of the better one's, but for those who want to sift through (what must be over 100) photographs, click the link above.

It shows, yet again, some of the great vibrancy of the classical youth movement in Europe, as well as the movement generally.

EWTN to Televise Live Tridentine Mass Celebrated by the FSSP from EWTN's own Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

[This ia joyous event for certain, and demonsrates certainly the good will that few should doubt, from Mother Angelica and the religious associated with EWTN. - NLM]

DENTON, Nebraska - AUGUST 17, 2007 - For the first time in its 26 year history, Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) will be broadcasting a live Solemn High Mass at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama on September 14, 2007 at 8:00AM EST.

EWTN has asked for the assistance of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an international Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right, to help celebrate this "extraordinary" form.

This past July 7th, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the beauty and importance of the Tridentine Mass by issuing Summorum Pontificum, a papal document encouraging and confirming the right of all Latin Rite priests to use this more ancient use of the Mass starting September 14th. The Tridentine Mass was the normative liturgy experienced by Latin Rite Catholics prior to the Second Vatican Council.

"Most Catholics have not seen this heavenly celebration in over 40 years," said Father Calvin Goodwin, a professor at the Society's international English-speaking seminary located in Denton, Nebraska. "We are very excited to help EWTN and to support the Holy Father's call for a wider presence of this form of the Mass. This is a cause for great joy."

Priests and seminarians from Denton, Nebraska will travel to Alabama and provide the celebrant, deacon, subdeacon, preacher, master of ceremonies and altar servers.

A Guide to the Celebration of Low Mass

A Guide to the Celebration of Low Mass by Lee Bradshaw

Description:

A Guide to the Celebration of Low Mass, According to the Traditional Roman Rite is a reference and training aid for seminarians, priests and interested laypeople. The standard text of the Mass is set forth, with notes on the correct liturgical actions accompanying each part of the Rite, in accordance with the books of 1962. By using this book instead of a Missal when learning to say Mass, the reader will have a convenient source for both the spoken word and the ritual actions to be made, clearly indicating what the Celebrant of Mass should be doing at each point. It also collects together in one place the prayers that must be memorised by the celebrant, and also those that it is convenient that he should know by heart; and includes notes on the Pronunciation of Liturgical Latin. With a preface by Dr Alcuin Reid, editor of Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described. 65 pages.

$19.95 USD

The Library of St. Gall

An email list for people who can't get enough news about Gregorian chant just reminded me of one of those astonishing digital libraries that we all somehow take for granted but which, a century ago, would have been seen as an impossible and even miraculous thing: a vast amount of the rare manuscript library of St. Gall is online. The software used to create this online version is not clunky but rather very easy to navigate, even the best I've seen of this sort.

Dom Mocquereau of Solesmes, in the early period of photography, was wild with excitement about what it would mean that the world's rarest chant editions could be distributed to researchers throughout the world so that they could be involved in the great project of preservation and restoration without ever having to leave their own offices. Imagine what he would say about this!

Included here is the Cantatorium of St. Gallen, the earliest complete manuscript with notation (early neumes). It was produced in the 10th century. There is a 12th century Gradual, four versions of the Sequentiary, several of the Antiphonary, Breviaries, and so much more.

It's certainly worth a bookmark.

Below is a post-Guido 14th century manuscript rendered in B&W with some contrast play. The dawn of the modern world!

2007 Maria Vesperbild, Germany

A few days ago, by way of a German reader, we were told about the pilgrimage of Maria Vesperbild in Germany. Now, we have pictures from this week's pilgrimage, where 20,000 pilgrims arrived for the event:

(Mass ad orientem, outside)







This is the kind of influence that hopefully the greater presence of the classical Roman liturgy can have upon the modern Roman liturgy -- the latter being the context in which this event is taking place.

Surprised by Beauty: Reflections on the Assumption Mass in Camden

Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: because he hath done wonderful things. [1]

The wonderful things which the Lord has done are manifold and span all of time. These deeds are, in a word, Salvation History, the great drama of God's redeeming work which continues to this very day and eventually leads to the Heavenly Liturgy in the New Jerusalem. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the work of salvation takes place right before our very eyes, for the liturgy is the summary of Salvation History, an offering "in remembrance of the passion, resurrection, and ascension"[2] of our Lord, the event around which all of human existence revolves. When the drama of redemption is carried out in the Mass in dramatic fashion, the saving power of God is all the more efficaciously manifested.

Mater Ecclesiae's annual Solemn High Assumption Mass at Camden's handsome Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is a foremost example of this truth. Through its fine ars celebrandi and its unsurpassed sacred music,[3] this liturgy appeals to the five senses and brings the infinite into the finite.[4] This sacred drama unfolds in the form of processions, sacred dress, colorful banners, singing, and liturgical actions. The most vivid moment in all of this comes at the climax of the Mass, when after the people have lifted up their hearts, the choir shouts Sanctus, the torchbearers kneel down in the sanctuary, bells ring, incense is burned--and then silence. In this silence, the Lord comes into our midst in the Sacramentum Caritatis. Who would not be moved in such a moment? One cannot help but recall Elijah on Mt. Horeb.[5]

It might seem sensible to suppose that one can become accustomed to all of this splendor after repeated experience, that an extraordinary celebration like this one can lose some of its power for those who've been to such a mountaintop on so many occasions. This is not so. The beauty of this Mass continues to surprise us each year.

Why?

Perhaps it is because the beauty of the Mass is not simply aesthetic--although that is certainly an important aspect of it. The outward beauty of the Mass is the showing forth of Christ's love, who "loved us to the end,"to the Cross and to the Resurrection. The Mass also manifests the beauty of the saints, most especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is all beautiful, without stain of original sin.[6] Virtue is the essence of this splendor.[7] This beauty draws us to Christ and His Mother, and we fall in love with them, just as beauty draws men and women together. As we grow in love with Christ and His Mother, new aspects of their beauty become apparent, the love deepens, and so it goes, on and on. First beauty, then love, then more beauty and deeper love. How could such a wonder ever become old or lose any of its power to continually surprise us?

Through this beautiful liturgy, the hearts of the faithful are "inflamed with the fire of love,"[8] and they are inspired to imitate Mary, who loves Christ with Her Immaculate Heart. Anyone who has witnessed a Mass at Mater Ecclesiae knows very well the love and devotion with which the parishioners worship. It is truly a powerful witness. Sermons and instructions are good and necessary for both conversion and ongoing formation, but perhaps not as effective as a congregation completely absorbed in prayer, or singing a new song unto the Lord.[9]

Those who experience this know that the faith is true, for beauty is universal. It speaks to all. It calls us out of our spiritual slumber and urges us to awaken to the reality of Christ's love, which is the source of all beauty. The world needs this Beauty now just as much as ever, and one need not travel any measurable distance from Camden's cathedral to arrive in areas of two cities ridden with crime, violence and ugliness and in great need of beauty and love. Will our hearts be open to the power of Beauty to change us?

It is not difficult to understand even from this short rumination that beauty is not a luxury; it is a necessity, a vessel which carries the Good News. It is not the property of a few elite. Rather, it comes from and belongs to God, who has charged all of us with stewardship over it. May we accept our duty as Christians and, as "ambassadors for Christ," bring the beauty of Christ's love to everyone we meet, so that, as the sacred drama of Salvation History continues to unfold, more and more souls may be saved.

O Mary, our Mother, most beautiful Work of God's Creation, we offer to God the beauty of our worship. In our weakness and distress, we call out to thee. On this feast of your Assumption, may our lives be filled with a spiritual beauty, a beauty that reflects the splendor of this Solemn Mass. May the harmonious chords of a holy life bring us to the courts of our Eternal King. Amen.[10]

Notes:

[1] Psalm 97:1. Verse for the Introit for the Feast of the Assumption.
[2] From the Offertory Prayers of the Missale Romanum, 1962.
[3] Dr. Timothy McDonnell led a fourteen voice choir and ten piece orchestra.
[4] Robert C. Pasley, "Sacred Music and the Liturgy," notes in the 2007 Assumption Mass Booklet, p.8.
[5] I Kings, Chapter 19.
[6] Tota pulchra es Maria, et macula originalis non es in te. Psalm Antiphon for Lauds, Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
[7] Robert C. Pasley, Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 2005.
[8] Secret, Feast of the Assumption, Missale Romanum, 1962.
[9] For more on the theological ideas about the "new song," see Joseph Ratzinger, _The Spirit of the Liturgy_. Ignatius.
[10] Pasley, "Sacred Music and the Liturgy," p. 8.

For further reading:

Joseph Ratzinger, _On the Way to Jesus Christ_, esp. Chapter 2, "Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty," Ignatius.

Michael E. Lawrence can be reached at hocket [at] gmail [dot] com.

FSSP Offering Another 1962 Missal Training Session

FSSP Communiqué: Additional training workshops for the 'extraorindary form' of the Roman Rite scheduled at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in collaboration with Una Voce America will be offering another training workshop for priests interested in learning how to celebrate the “extraordinary form” of the Roman Rite. The workshop will take place the first week of September 2007 from the 3rd (Monday) through 7th (Friday) hosted by Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska. All the fundamentals involved in learning the Traditional Latin Mass will be covered. Priests will receive a complete explanation with hands-on practice of the rubrics of the 1962 Missale Romanum as well as an introduction to Latin, traditional liturgical principles, and Gregorian Chant. A comprehensive materials packet will also be provided.

The course will follow the same method used successfully in the workshops conducted this past June when the Fraternity trained diocesan and religious priests in the Older Use during three different sessions.

Further workshops are being planned for the late fall. Interested priests should contact Fr. Calvin Goodwin, FSSP at 402-797-7700.

Matano: If this is what it takes to fill our churches, so be it

Fr. Z has posted two news stories on the Traditional Mass celebrated last evening in Burlington, VT by Bishop Salvatore Matano, who said to a packed cathedral, "....if this is what it takes to fill our churches, so be it." Stories are here and here.

Notice in particular that the one news reporter gets ad orientem exactly right: the priest and people together face the same direction.

History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1946-1969 [The Pre-Conciliar Reforms - Part 1]

[Continuing on with Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.'s series on the Dominican liturgy...]

Part One: Pre-Conciliar Reforms, 1946-1962 [Part One]

Although it directly legislated little on Dominican liturgical life, the General Chapter of the Order that met at Washington D.C. in 1949 may be taken as having initiated the trajectory of liturgical development for the whole period considered, that is the lessening of emphasis on monastic elements in Dominican worship and the assimilation of the Order's rites to those common in Catholic parishes using the Roman liturgy. This general chapter, coming soon after the Second World War and during a period economic difficulty in Europe, was essentially paid for by the American province of St. Joseph, where it was held. At the request of the host provincial, Fr. T. S. McDermott, O.P, the acta of the chapter, for the first time in history, contained an extensive section on parochial ministry. This reflected the dominance of that kind of work in the United States, as distinct from Europe and other lands, where Dominicans generally did not run parishes. This, symbolically at least, declared parochial work, where active ministry took clear precedence over the monastic and contemplative life, to be fully compatible with Dominican spirituality, and the inclusion was so seen at that time. [2]

The first of the many liturgical changes that took place the last twenty-five years of the rite, the reform of the Dominican Eastern Vigil, may be taken to have begun in February 1951, when Pope Pius XII approved the experimental move of the Vigil from the morning of Holy Saturday to that evening, a permission allowed to the Order in time for Easter 1952. [3] This event occasioned the reprinting of the Dominican chants of the Passion. [4] The Dominican liturgy of the thirteenth-century had celebrated the vigil in the afternoon of Holy Saturday, but by the early modern period, celebration had shifted to the morning, as was also the case for Roman practice. The Dominican vigil of 1950 was a markedly monastic affair in that it had no blessing of water and virtually no remnants the patristic baptismal rites. [5] As medieval Dominican priories did not have pastoral cures, they also lacked baptismal fonts. The Dominican vigil was short. Unlike the Roman Rite, with its twelve readings, the Dominican followed the practice more typical of northern Europe in having only four. These were preceded by the blessing of the new fire (done before the altar) and the chanting of the Exultet. During that chant, a deacon inserted the grains of incense in the candle and lighted it at the words quam in honorem Dei rutilans ignis accendit. The four readings (Gen. 1-2; Ex. 14-15. Is. 4, and Is. 54-55) were then sung with their collects and, for the last three, their responsories.

It is interesting that when the twelve readings of the Roman liturgy were reduced to four, those chosen were the ones already in use in the Dominican Rite. The Litany of the saints came next, immediately followed by the Kyrie and Gloria, which introduced the Vigil Mass proper. The medieval Dominican rite included neither the Credo nor the remaking of baptismal vows. At communion time, a short Vespers service consisting of Psalm 116 [117] "Laudate" and the Magnificat, with their antiphons and the Postcommunion Collect ended the rite.

The evening Vigil (to be celebrated after 8:00 p.m.), which was approved for optional use in the order ad experimentum for a three year period, used the old Dominican texts wholesale, without even changing the Vespers service. The missing baptismal parts of the rite were to be taken from the Roman Ritual. [6] Still assuming the absence of a font, the permission provided that the Easter Water was to be blessed in a holy water bucket, which might be suitably decorated. The paschal candle was now to be decorated, not plain white. The people and friars present were also held lighted candles during the Exultet. Perhaps more important than these changes, which effectively turned the old monastic vigil into a parish affair, was provision that the ancient Pentecost Vigil might now be omitted. With this change, the last remains of the patristic practice of baptisms on Pentecost disappeared. It seems that, in some places, the old morning vigil continued to be performed in addition to the night vigil--the rescript provided that those attending both might receive communion twice on the same day.

Pius XII definitively promulgated the new rites of Holy Week in fall of 1955, in time for Easter of the following year. [7] For the Dominicans, however, the experimental period continued another year, during which the order's revised Holy Week Rites were prepared for publication. The Master General, Fr. Michael Browne, later a cardinal, directed that decrees concerning the changes from the Congregation of Rites be printed in the Analecta, the Order’s official publication, leaving local authorities to decide on how to implement the reforms in parallel to those in the Roman Holy Week rites. These reforms included, most importantly, the prohibition of anticipating Matins and Lauds ("Tenebrae") on the evening before during the last three days of Holy Week, and the removal of the priests obligation to recite quietly the readings chanted by the deacon, subdeacon, and lectors during the Vigil. [8] Even with this small simplification, the new Vigil was much more complex, and there were still no new books for it; some seem to have complained, and they were reminded that in churches without large clerical staffs they could "do as much as they could" and just omit the rest.

Finally, in time for Lent 1957, the drafts for the new Dominican Holy Week rites were approved by the Congregation of Rites. These incorporated, where they could, the older forms of the Order, added missing parts from the Roman Rite, and provided music from the Order's tradition where this was needed. [9] This draft included another important change, the moving of the Mass of Holy Thursday to the evening. As the provision of music was probably the most pressing need, a 35-page pamphlet was ready for printing in 1956. [10] It would take, however until 1960 for the order to produce a single altar book containing the reformed Holy Week Rites. [11] This book changed the communion-time Vespers service to one of Lauds by merely replacing the Magnificat with the Benedictus. Other than some fine-tuning, the reform of Holy Week was complete. [12] This rite would be later incorporated, virtually verbatim, into the Missal of 1965. [13] The only textual revision made for the 1960 publication was the removal of the word perfidis ("unbelieving") from the Good Friday prayer for the Jews and the introduction of kneeling for it (previously it was uniquely said standing). These changes complied with a 1959 directive of Pope John XXIII imposing them on the Roman Rite.

The reform, as a whole, certainly produced a liturgy that was more suitable to parochial worship, where vigil baptisms would eventually come to play an important role in the life of the faithful, but in it something of the order's monastic heritage was lost. The moving of the offices of Holy Week to their liturgically correct times was, on the whole, a less mixed blessing. In that case, not only did this make more sense for the sanctification of time, it restored the original rhythm of liturgy, long obscured by the late medieval practice of anticipation.

As the order moved to adopt the new Holy Week rituals, it also attempted to improve the execution of its worship musically, and to make adaptions for missionary areas. In practice, outside of the novitiates, houses of study, and some very large communities, the Divine Office was recited in a straight tone ("recto tono") and said "Low Mass," without chant, predominated over Sung Mass ("Missa cantata"). The full Solemn High Mass, with its deacon, subdeacon, and intricate choreography was rarely celebrated. Pastoral pressures could produce rushed performance, especially at the Office. In 1953, an essay drawing on the medieval Master of the Order Humbert of Romans' De Vita Regulari, addresses the problem of sloppy and rushed recto-tone Office. [14] Friars in choir were instructed to stay together, not to elide italicized syllables, to keep the pitch up (but not "nimis"), and to use organ to sustain it, if necessary. [15] Finally, the essay belabored the failure to observe the "morula" (a slight pause at the asterisk in the psalm verse traditionally lasting the time it takes to say the two words "Pater Noster"). Apparently the pressure to finish Office and get on with study or work had lead to rushing through the psalms without hardly a chance to take a breath.

This correction of bad singing seems part of a growing concern to improve music. The General Chapter of Rome had in 1955 ordered revision of the chant books, required preparation of musical materials for novice- and student-masters, and required houses of formation to hold choir practices at least every other week. [16] New editions of the Dominican music books were also to be prepared, the first of which, that for Compline, would came out in 1957. [17] This publication was contemporary with Pope Pius XII's sweeping decree on music, Musicae Sacrae Disciplina, as well as his encyclical on liturgy, Mediator Dei, both of which were included in the 1958 issue of the Order’s Analecta. [18]

By the mid-1950s, for some friars, especially those working alone in parishes, the idiosyncracies of the Dominican Rite, the people's lack of familiarity with its forms of music and rubrics, and the difficulty of procuring books for it, had already brought requests for permission to use the Roman Rite and its resources in parochial and missionary work. In reply, Master General Michael Browne wrote to the provinces, reaffirming the right of Dominicans to use their own rite and calendar, even in churches where they served as temporary administrators or in chaples and oratories directly under the local ordinary. Brown closed his letter with a monitum: "Imprimis, usus ritus proprii non est mere privilegium sed revera obligatio iuris communis." One senses that for some friars using the ancient rite was a nuisance and a chore, not a "privilege." Perhaps bowing to the inevitable, the Master General, in the same communication, did allow a dispensation to use the Roman Calendar in such situations. [19] Clearly there was pressure to conform liturgically with the general practice of the Church. Bowing to that need, one year later, on 8 February 1959, Browne requested permission from the Congregation of Rites for up to four friars in groups of Domninicans administering seminaries in mission lands to celebrate Mass for the seminarians in the Roman Rite. He admitted that switching back and forth between that liturgy and the Dominican Rite could be confusing, so he consented to those friars using the Roman Rite exclusively. He did hope, however, that these men might be convinced to go back to celebrating the liturgy proper to the Order on return to their provinces. But he did not seem very optimistic that this would happen. [20]

As the decade progressed, desires for accommodations to modern sensibilities and to Roman standards continued to surface. Petitions were received to use candles with less than 51% beeswax (denied); for the sisters to use cheaper artificial fabrics for their habits in place of wool (approved); for the use of the title "after Epiphany" rather than "After the Octave of Epiphany" for Sundays before Quinquagesima (approved), and to make the litany of the Blessed Virgin traditionally recited after Compline on Saturday optional (approved). [21] It seems that by 1958, in many places, the anticipation of liturgical change and reform had become so prevalent that communities and friars began to make them on their own, without authorization--an abuse reprobated by the General Chapter of Caleruega in that year. Bowing to the signs of the times, this chapter also established a liturgical commission to undertake reform of the calendar and the simplification of the rubrics for Mass and Office. [22]

Within a month of the chapter’s final session, Pope Pius XII was dead, and John XXIII was elected in his place on 28 October 1958. [23] Liturgical reforms would soon multiply and effect every part of Dominican worship.

[To be continued in the next installment in the series...]

Footnotes:

2. So recounted by Fr. Antoninus Wall, O.P. (ordained 1950), of the Western Dominican Province U.S.A., oral communication of 13 Aug. 2007. The section on parish work may be found in Acta Capituli Generalis Diffinitorum Sacri Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum Washingtonii: In Conventu Immaculatae Conceptionis a Die 18 ad Diem 25 Septembris 1949 (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1949), nn. 121-31, pp. 73-75.

3. Sacra Congregatio Rituum [hereafter SCR], "Decretum de Solemni Vigilia Paschali Instauranda" (9 Feb. 1951), ASOFP, 30 (1951-1952): 135-36. This experimental permission was renewed by the SRC on 11 Jan. 1952, also giving the order permission to adopt it: ibid., pp. 225-26

4. ASOFP, 30 (1951-1952): 438 (due out in 1953).

5. See the service in the Dominican Missal then in use: Missale S. Ordinis Praedicatorum (Rome: Hospitio Magistri Ordinis, 1933), pp. 179-90.

6. SCR, "De Factutativa Celebratione Instaurata Vigiliae Paschalis ad Triennuium" (5 Mar. 1952), ASOFP, 30 (1951-1952): 227-29.

7. SCR, "Decretum Generale Quo Liturgicus Hebdomadae Sanctae Ordo Instauratur" (16 Nov. 1955), ASOFP, 32 (1955-1956): 227. The Dominican experimental period was extended by an SCR decree of 15 Jan. 1955: ASOFP, 32 (1955-1956): 35.

8. SCR, "Decretum Generale Quo Liturgicus Hebdomadae Sanctae Ordo Instauratur" ("Maxima Redemptionis Nostrae"--16 Nov. 1955, to take effect on 25 Mar. 1956 (Palm Sunday), ASOFP, 32 (1955-1956): 227-36.

9. Letter of MG Michael Brown (1 Feb. 1957), ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 32. SCR Decretum (9 Apr. 1957) finally approving Dominican drafts: ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 143-50.

10. Cantus Gregoriani ad Ordinem Hebdomadae Sanctae iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum Instauratum (Rome: S. Sabina, 1959).

11. Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum Instaratus (Rome: S. Sabina, 1960). Promulgated by SRC on 4 Jun. 1959 (Prot. N. O. 152/959).

12. E.g., Use of tabernacles not bolted down for Holy Thursday reposition reprobated: ASOFP, 33 (1957-58); SCR permission spreading out the rites of baptism over Lent: ASOFP, 35 (1961-1962): 654-55.

13. Missale iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum (Rome: S. Sabina, 1965), pp. 140-65.

14. "De Ratione Psallendi Recto Tono," ASOFP, 31 (1953-1954): 49-58; cf. Humbert of Romans, Opera de Vita Regulari, ed. Joachim Joseph Berthier (Rome: A. Befani, 1888), 2: 100ff.

15. A SCR decree (13 Jul. 1949), ASOFP, 29 (1949-1950): 139, had already allowed use of electronic organs.

16. Acta Capituli Generalis Electivi S. Ordinis FF. Praedictorum, Romae (11-17 Apr. 1955) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1955), n. 84-87. The chapter was also concerned about adding saints to the Litany without permission; they forbad this: ibid., nn. 78-79.

17. Completorii Libellus iuxta Ritum S. Ordinis Praedicatorum (Rome: S. Sabina, 1957)

18. ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 480-92; and, continued, ibid., 34 (1959): 14-25

19. SCR decree (N. 6113-57), ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 83-84.

20. SCR. decree (prot. num. 6307-59--4 Feb. 1959), ASOFP, 34 (1959-1960): 29-30.

21. ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 292 (candles); ASOFP, 34 (1959-1960): 175 (habits): Acta Capituli Generalis Diffinitorum S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Calarogae (24-30 Sept. 1958) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1958) n. 116 (name of Sundays) and n. 143 (litany).

22. Acta Capituli Generalis Diffinitorum S. Ordinis FF. Praedicatorum, Calarogae (24-30 Sept. 1958) (Rome: Curia Generalitia, 1958), n. 141 (no unauthorized changes) and n. 145 (liturgical commission).

23. Events announced in ASOFP, 33 (1957-58): 441-51.


Previous Installments in Chronological Order:

Introduction

Martin Mosebach debates at Frankfurt Cathedral

Forum for Current Affairs discusses the Return of Latin Mass

Public debate on 20 August with Buechner prize winner Mosebach and philosopher Spaemann

FRANKFURT. - The return [literally: "re-admission"] of the Latin Mass according to the Tridentine rite this summer has attracted much media attention and some intense debate. In Germany, it was especially the Frankfurt author and Buechner prize winner Martin Mosebach who has argued for years for returning to the older form of the Catholic Mass, which was the only valid form until the reform of the liturgy in the sixties. On Monday 20 August, Mosebach will debate at the Forum for Current Affairs of the Frankfurter Domkreis Kirche und Wissenschaft at 7pm in the Haus am Dom, the cultural centre of the diocese of Limburg in Frankfurt, whether this re-admission is a "reconquering of the sacred".

Mosebach will be joined by the church historian from Muenster Prof. em. Arnold Angenendt, the liturgist from Bonn Prof. Albert Gerhards and the philosopher from Stutgart Prof. em. Robert Spaemann . The moderator will be the journalist Daniel Deckers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Source: Aktuelles Forum diskutiert Wiederzulassung der lateinischen Messe - Bezirk Frankfurt

Catholic and Protestant Sussex

I don’t like to assume too freely that providence is on my side, but the arrival of the St Catherine’s Trust Summer School in Sussex, south of London, two years ago goes beyond ordinary serendipity. Having managed to book a venue in Somerset thanks to a cancellation in 2005 for our first Summer School, we were back at the drawing board for 2006, since the first venue couldn’t accommodate us again. English Schools who let out space in the Summer holidays get booked year after year by the same clients, mostly language schools, so breaking in is not easy.

We ended up, by sheer chance, in a remarkable High Anglican establishment, with an enormous Chapel and breathtaking views, in Sussex. And as chance would have it, this place is a short drive from the diocesan Shrine, Our Lady of West Grinstead, the guardian of which, Fr David Goddard, a convert Anglican clergyman, is the father the FSSP seminarian, Matthew Goddard, who joined our staff that year. (Goddard father (centre) and son (left) are pictured, with our Chaplain Fr Andrew Southwell (right).) Now, how likely was that? Naturally, we have made a visit to this shrine an annual event.

Sussex was one of those English counties which until that year I simply did not know. It was the long-term home of Hillaire Belloc, where he fulfilled his desire to grow old:

A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?

I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald;
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.

Belloc is buried in the graveyard at West Grinstead (see picture), which was an important ‘safe house’ for Catholic priests in penal times, and became the first church in England to have a solemnly crowned statue of Our Lady, when the present fine church was built and it was established as a shrine. So in addition to the Shrine of ‘Our Lady of Consolation’, a title established in Turin, Fr Goddard looks after a ‘Secret Chapel’ (see picture), once concealed in a hay loft, and a number of relics of the English martyrs, including a letter written by Blessed Francis Bell, before his capture and execution in 1643.

The other famous, or infamous, fact about Sussex’s religious history, is that the town of Lewes keeps up the tradition of burning an effigy of the Pope on November 5th. Since Lewes is also a short distance from our Summer School, we made a visit there this year as well, and I thought I’d better read up about the place. The Lewes Pope-burners will tell you, with some pride, that Lewes was the scene of no fewer than seventeen executions of Protestants under Queen Mary Tudor. (Or rather, as they would say, ‘Bloody Mary’).

The reason so many were burnt there is not easy to reconstruct, but there does seem to have been greater enthusiasm for the religious changes under the previous reigns in the area, than in many parts of England. (Oxford, naturally, was staunchly opposed!) This in turn may have been related to a legal peculiarity: although Lewes is well inside the diocese of Chichester, a swathe of Sussex, including part of the outskirts of Lewes, had been given to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was known as the Archbishop’s ‘Peculiar’. So by crossing the bridge, in Lewes, it was possible to leave the jurisdiction of Chichester and enter that of Canterbury, a fact which may have made the place popular with Lollards trying to escape the authorities of either diocese in the fifteenth Century.

The enthusiasm of hard-core Protestants for the holy men of past centuries, like the enthusiasm of evangelicals for miracles, is an historically recent phenomenon. Alongside the Reformation polemic against ‘feigned miracles’, there was an attack on the cult of saints, especially non-Biblical saints. A Protestant worthy of the name may admire and imitate his predecessors, but he can’t ask them to pray for him, think that God will grant favours to those who keep alive their memory, or regard the place of their death—or any other place—as one to be especially honoured. But, somehow, the cult of the martyrs has crept into the Protestants of Lewes, the most extreme of whom have joined Ian Paisley’s form of Presbyterianism, and who remember the Protestants of Queen Mary’s time by burning Pope Paul IV in effigy.

This tradition does not date back to the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, or the ill-fated attempt by some hair-brained Catholic desperados (encouraged by some very sane Government agents) to blow up Parliament on 5th November 1605, but only to 1850. And although the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy in that year inflamed the passions of many Protestants, Catholics were still almost invisible in Lewes at that time. The greatest irritant to the ‘Bonfire Boys’ was High Anglicanism, exemplified by the very establishment which provides our Summer School venue, Ardingly College, which was founded in 1858. (See picture of the college chapel.)

A particular victim of their ire was the Anglican hymn-writer John Mason Neale. Neale’s daughter had joined a nearby Anglican order of nuns, and died young, and Neale and his remaining children organised an elaborate High Church funeral for her in Lewes. The enraged local populace not only brought proceedings to a halt and flung Neale into the gutter, but besieged the funeral party in a public house for more than an hour. Neale eventually escaped over a garden wall.

The more I read about the religious history of Lewes, in a fascinating book called ‘Burn Holy Fire’, the more it seems to be a series of persecutions, mostly of one form of Protestantism by another. After Queen Mary died, Lewes was in the grip of Calvinists so strict that the they routinely left out parts of the Book of Common Prayer, much to the distress of some of their flocks. Having rejected Romish vestments, ministers refused to wear even a surplice. Having rejected Romish ritual, they refused to make the sign of the cross, even once, at baptisms. Under James I and Charles I this got clergy and like-minded laity into trouble—a man was prosecuted for wearing a hat in church on Easter day; a woman for eating ‘the Sacrament’ with a piece of cheese. Communion tables in the naves were moved back to the East end wall, and altar rails were installed to keep dogs out of the sanctuary. In 1642, when the town passed into the hands of the Parliamentarians in the Civil War, the chief High Churchman of the place, Anthony Hugget, Rector of Cliffe, had to flee and hide under a bed, to escape the townsmen’s retribution. But Quakers continued to disrupt the services of any denomination so under the spell of Popery as to use what might be thought of as a consecrated church (‘spire houses’); and the local ‘Independents’ returned the favour by breaking up a Quaker meeting with pikes and guns.

Huggett’s church in Cliffe, Lewes, St Thomas a Beckett, is still a bastion of the High Anglican tradition, and the Cliffe Bonfire Society still carry on their annual celebrations, and Catholics still find succour at West Grinstead down the road, as has been the case for four centuries. Sussex is indeed a good place for a history lesson.

Visit of Martin Mosebach and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang to the United States

The Society [of St. Hugh of Cluny] has the great pleasure to announce the visit to the New York metropolitan area of Martin Mosebach and Father Uwe Michael Lang. Martin Mosebach is an eminent German novelist and essayist. In October of this year he will receive the Georg Buechner prize-the highest German literary award. Mr. Mosebach has written and spoken extensively on Catholic issues, particularly relating to the Traditional liturgy. His Heresy of Formlessness, on the liturgy, was published in English translation last year by Ignatius Press. Father Lang is a priest of the Brompton Oratory in London and the author of an influential study on the position of the celebrant in the Roman rite: Turning towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer. (Foreword by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) This year Fr. Lang has relocated to Rome to take up an appointment at the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church.

Fr. Lang and Mr. Mosebach will be speaking at three separate locations. Fr. Lang will introduce Mr. Mosebach and situate his work for us in the context of the post-Summorum Pontificum world. Mr. Mosebach will read from his Heresy of Formlessness. There will be time for questions at the end of the presentation.

The following events are scheduled in conjunction with the visit of Mr. Mosebach and Fr. Lang:

Friday, Sept. 7, New Haven, Connecticut
St. Mary Church Hall, 5 Hillhouse Avenue
7:30 PM: Presentation by Martin Mosebach and Fr. Lang.

Saturday, Sept. 8, New Canaan Connecticut
New Canaan Public Library, 151 Main Street
5:00 PM: Presentation by Martin Mosebach and Fr. Lang.

Sunday, Sept. 9, New York, New York
Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Avenue at 38th Street
5:00 PM: Solemn High Mass in the Traditional rite.
6:30PM: Presentation by Mr. Mosebach and Fr. Lang in the undercroft of the church.

Source: The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny: Visit of Martin Mosebach and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang to the United States

Fr. Z Reminisces about the 2006 Assumption Mass

Here. This includes a sound file of his sermon and also of the closing hymn, Hail Holy Queen in a fine arrangement by Tim McDonnell.

Be sure the volume on your speakers is sufficiently high to hear the stringed instruments.

Ordo Musicae in Assumptione B. Mariae Virginis

More about tonight's Assumption Mass in Camden, NJ will follow. For now, here is the list of music, for those who may be interested.

Dr. Timothy McDonnell, Director of Music (Princeps musicorum Philadelphiensis)
Mr. Nicholas Beck, Master of the Schola Cantorum
Chorus and Orchestra of area musicians


Propers of the Mass from the Graduale Romanum, 1961
Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Mass in B-flat (except for the Credo)

Prelude: Improvisation on Salve Regina Coelitum, by Christopher Garven, organist
Procession: O Sanctissima, arr. T. McDonnell

Credo III

Offertory Music:
Albinoni: Concerto in G minor, Op. 9, No. 8, 2nd movement--Adagio
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Ave Maria

Preface: tonus solemnior

Communion:
Valls: Tota pulchra es
Valls: Diffusa est gratia
Bach: Adagio from the Easter Oratorio
Bach: Quia respexit from Magnificat

Recessional Hymn: Hail! Holy Queen Enthroned Above, arr. T. McDonnell

Postlude: Marcel Dupre: Fugue in G minor

FSSP First Masses

The FSSP put up a series of pictures of some of their new priests first masses.

Here are a couple with a particularly edifying gothic vestment set.

A Hymn to Sing Today

More Exciting than Christmas!

Today has become one of my favorite feast days, thanks in no small part to a worthy celebration that takes place each year across the river in Camden. In a spirit of joy, I'd like to share some goodies with you.

1. A wonderful recording of Monteverdi's setting of the Ave Maris Stella, which is part of his Vespers of 1610. This particular recording was made by the Boston Baroque in 1997. I make this grand work part of all my Marian feast day rituals, i.e. listening to it. Maybe now that the motu proprio is out, we'll be able to make liturgical use of this masterful setting of the Divine Office at some point.

2. Some sermons on the Assumption by John of Damascus.

Happy feast day!

Beyond the Mass for the Dead

Many ordinary-use parishes are pleased to introduce the first set of sung ordinary chants, usually from what the Liber Usualis labels the "Mass for the Dead," or Mass XVIII, or what is included in the Jubilate Deo as the only Mass setting in the first edition (and don't you find it interesting that that is what modern missalettes call their "chant Mass"? the Mass for the Dead? get the hint?) but don't know where to go after that. Many settings seem too daunting in parishes where people are socialized to believe that they must always sing the Ordinary and it must be simple and easy to pick up right away.

So I thought I would share with readers the success we've had with the following Agnus Dei from the "additional chants" section of the Kyriale (page 162 of the Gregorian Missal). It is in the 6th mode, and is easy enough to sing after hearing one time but interesting enough to entice the ears and hold up over time. The melodic line repeats three times with no variation. Watch the half step between Fa and Mi after the incipit. It is a very beautiful and singable Agnus that would work in most parishes environments. It requires no accompaniment:

Chant Leaves the Ivory Tower

Here is a piece for Crisis by Arlene Oost-Zinner and some blogger guy. It's about the trials of dragging Gregorian chant from the exclusive domains of the recording studio and the classroom and into modern parish life. We take issue with the chant deconstructionists who believe that chant must be taken back to its unknown state prior to the year 1000. We further council attention to practical realities.

We could only go into a few of the difficulties. One we didn't really go into is the constant and near universal tension between scholas and pastors during the transition phase. It is traditional (dating back to as long as there are records) for the music directors and singers to believe that they know more about liturgy than their bosses, and this causes some deep friction. This is especially true in our times when pastors are working to shepherd people from the world of Gather and the like and into authentically sacred music. I would only counsel humility and a service ethic on the part of singers and directors. We should do what we can when we can, and not expect amazing things overnight. Above all, we need to learn to think and act obediently (hard!) and bury our own egos in the service of the liturgy.

In any case, our article appears in the last issue that will be printed of this magazine. Higher postal rates and falling demand for in-print mags took their toll. It's a new world in many ways.

Notre Dame seeks Professor of Medieval Sacred Music

Department of Music
University of Notre Dame

Rank Open
Medieval Sacred Music

The University of Notre Dame invites applications for a tenure-track position in Medieval Sacred Music. The rank is anticipated to be Assistant Professor, but appointments as Associate Professor or Professor may be considered for exceptional candidates. There will be a concurrent appointment in Notre Dame’s renowned Medieval Institute. Candidates must be committed to working in a liberal arts teaching environment, pursue an active research program leading to publications, have wide-ranging interests in music and the arts in general, and expect to influence and contribute to the diversity and character of the academic community.

The Medieval Institute, founded in 1946, coordinates the teaching and research of the largest contingent of medievalists of any North American university (see: http://www.nd.edu/~medinst/).

Responsibilities include teaching the normal university workload, which is two 3-credit courses or the equivalent in each 15-week semester, and performing departmental, university and professional service. One course per year may be a graduate seminar in the Medieval Institute. The faculty member also will be involved with the Master of Sacred Music degree, a graduate program taught jointly by the departments of Music and Theology (http://www.nd.edu/~msm/welcome.html). Courses taught will include introductory and advanced courses in sacred music and medieval music, chant, general music courses for majors and nonmajors and university service courses. Overseeing appropriate ensembles may also be considered as a service contribution. All areas of specialization will be considered, but scholars who work in the areas of chant and/or medieval sacred polyphony are encouraged to apply.

Applicants will have completed (or will have completed within one year of appointment) a Ph.D. in Musicology with a specialty in an early music area relevant to the position.


Source: Department of Music : University of Notre Dame

Vecchioni in the classical Ambrosian rite

A guest piece by resident Ambrosian rite expert Nicola de Grandi, who lives within the archdiocese of Milan

Comments to a recent NLM piece about Ambrosian Chant mentioned the "Vecchioni" as a proper feature of the Ambrosian Rite. Here follows some more information about them, and a couple of pictures as well.

The "Vecchioni" (singular "Vecchione" lit. "elderly man") and the "Vecchione" (singular "Vecchiona" lit. "elderly woman") - officially the "school of St. Ambrose" - were a feature peculiar to the Solemn High Masses in the Metropolitan Cathedral [of Milan].

In fact, they were two distinct corporations of ten older laymen and ten older laywomen who had the task to present offerings with a special offertorial procession during Solemn High Masses in the Cathedral, including the Pontifical masses. Thus, they are explicitly mentioned in the Rubricae Generales of the last typical edition of the Missale Ambrosianum (1902), still to be used for the extraordinary form (§ 37 Ritus proprii Ecclesiae Metropolitanae in Missarum Solemnium celebratione), and by the Caeremoniale Ambrosianum.

The vecchioni are first mentioned in the testament of Archbishop Ansperto (A.D. 879) and, after more than a thousand years of faithful service, were formally, juridically dissolved in the 1990's.

Below are two pictures of a Vecchione and a Vecchiona in their proper liturgical dress, holding the offering from the Mass in their hands.

"Vecchiona"


"Vecchione"

Usus Antiquior on Vatican Radio

"With the Latin Mass Society in the UK reporting new interest in the celebration of the Tridentine rite, many priests are wondering where to turn for help..."

Vatican Radio: OLD RITES, NEW NEEDS

(Click the link to listen to the story on Vatican Radio)

Here is the way to advance: one parish at a time

Ten years ago, there was one annual event in the U.S. focussed on Catholic liturgical music. About 30 or so people came. Today, there are dozens per year, and they are growing and attracting ever larger crowds and ever more experienced singers and musicians.

Take a look at these upcoming events:

• Introduction to Parish Chant, Salinas, California, September 14-15, 2007, led by Kathy Reinheimer, at Madonna del Sasso Parish, 320 E Laurel Dr, Salinas, CA 93906.
• Missa in Cantu: Priest Training in the Sung Mass, October 17-19, 2007, sponsored by the Church Music Association and St. John Cantius, Chicago, Illinois, held at the parish in Chicago.
• Sacred Music: A Workshop in Gregorian Chant, November 9-10, 2007, St. John Beloved Parish, McLean, Virginia, led by Scott Turkington
• Sacred Music Workshop, November 9-10, 2007, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Woodstock, Georgia, led by Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker
• Sacred Music Shreveport, November 30-December 1, 2007, Cathedral of St. John Berchmans, Shreveport, Louisiana, led by Kurt Poterack.
• Rocky Mountain Region Sacred Music Workshop, St. Mary’s Cathedral, January 18-19, 2008, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• Sacred Music Workshop, Sponsored by the St. Cecilia Schola and led by Wilko Brouwers, February 1-2, 2008, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Auburn, Alabama.
• Sacred Music Colloquium, Sponsored by the Church Music Association of America, June 15-21, 2008, Loyola University, Chicago.
• Chant Study Tour, Sponsored by Fr. Robert Skeris, July 21-August 1, 2008, Switzerland, Italy, Germany.

Variations on St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University

A charming sketch, from the drafting-boards of Howells and Stokes, of an abandoned alternative for St. Paul's Chapel on Columbia Campus, c. 1904-5, depicted with an enlarged dome and a strongly Italian Romanesque facade. While quite a successful design, the scale of the dome appears to suggest a building considerably larger than the actual chapel, whose lower dome seems more appropriate to its size.


Another abandoned variant from Howells and Stokes, who were filling out the basic campus partee laid out some years earlier by McKim, Mead and White, showing a campanile behind the church's east end and engaged with a stepped side-entrance into the campus.



The chapel as built, in a strongly classicized Romanesque manner, but still distinct enough in its archaeologically-inspired ecclesiastical character to distinguish it from the more canonically Greco-Roman campus buildings.



The interior, view of the dome. Excepting architectural elements, the principal ornament of the interior is its extensive patterned vaults of Gustavino tile, then an innovative and unusual material.



The apse. A dignified, if somewhat liturgically timid, Protestant design, with the altar at the end of a very deep chancel lined with elaborate choirstalls that threaten to overwhealm the actual sanctuary. The freestanding altar (with eastward facing footpace!) seems somewhat unusual to me, unless it was modified recently. It reminds me of Bertram Goodhue's somwhat "progressive" chancel at St. Bartholomew's, though I do not know much about the liturgical politics of the chapel's construction. That being said, with a stone top, six candlesticks, a hanging tester and a cross, it might make for a very fine Catholic altar.

History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1946-1969 [Introduction]

(A Dominican Rite Liturgy in Rome)

NLM Introduction

The NLM is pleased to introduce to its readers an important work of liturgical scholarship by Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. done in recent months. Fr. Thompson is Professor of Religious Studies and History in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. He received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. He is perhaps best known for a book published in 2005, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 -- a book which won the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Association for the best book on Italian history published in that same year.

Fr. Thompson recently set out to examine the development and transition that took place in the context of the Dominican rite between the period of 1950 (where Fr. William Bonniwell, in his authoritative and classic study, A History of the Dominican Liturgy, left off) up until 1969 when the Dominican Order determined to adopt the post-conciliar Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI. As such, this research can certainly be understood as a continuation and, by virtue of the effective abandonment of the rite in 1969, a completion of Bonniwell's own work.

While Father Thompson allows his audience draw their own conclusions from his research, there is a growing sense today that the general trend away from such legitimate liturgical diversity (a trend which found expression even around the time of Trent in the principle of Romanitas, repeated further in our own time in relation to the abandonment of so many particular rites in favour of the adoption of the post-concilar Roman Missal of Paul VI) was a lamentable impoverishment of the Latin rite.

There is visible, however, the prospect of a growing revival, manifested both in interest and in practice, as regards these other ancient and venerable Western rites. Indeed, with the ever-growing interest in the ancient Roman liturgy, the usus antiquior, particularly now in relation to the recent motu proprio of Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, this prospect seems more real than ever.

It is to be hoped that Fr. Thompson's contribution to this crucial period in the life of the Dominican rite, might help encourage further interest in it.

The entire work of Fr. Thompson is just over 60 pages in length, and I am pleased to inform readers of the NLM that it will be posted in its entirety here in manageablely sized excerpts, fit to this medium.

It is notable as well that this work is still in draft form and Fr. Thompson is quite interested in comments from those who have studied or lived through the events. So please make your comments as you see the pieces in the coming weeks and help Fr. Thompson finalize the form of this study.

Without further ado, we shall (briefly) start the series with Fr. Thompson's own introduction. More to come in future days.


History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1950-1969

by Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P., 2007

(Note: Not for re-publishing without approval of Fr. Augustine Thompson)


Fr. William Bonniwell's A History of the Dominican Liturgy chronicled the history of worship in the Order of Preachers from the early thirteenth century to the late 1940s.[1] He probably little expected that, within two decades, the rite he so lovingly described would undergo substantial changes and finally be all but abandoned by the Order. Those who would like a comprehensive description of the Order’s rites as they were in 1950 may consult this book. The purpose of this essay is to describe the changes and reforms affecting the rite during its last two decades, and so effectively to complete Fr. Bonniwell's history. This period may be suitably divided into three parts. The first extends from the 1950 to the 1962. During that period, the rites of the Easter Vigil were modified to reflect reforms in the Roman Rite under Pope Pius XII, and a major overhaul of the calendar and its rubrics were instituted on the model of the revised Roman Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII in 1962. It was in this same year that the last breviary for the rite was published, with its reforms paralleling the Roman version. The second period, which correlates with the Second Vatican Council, extends from 1962 to the publication of the last Dominican Rite Missal in 1965. This missal, long delayed, responded to the challenge of the conciliar constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium. This missal and the 1962 breviary underwent progressively more radical changes from the time of their publication until 1969, when the order requested and received permission to adopt the post-conciliar Roman liturgy.


Footnotes:

1. 2d. rev. ed. (New York: Wagner, 1945).

Signum Magnum

Just a reminder for those in the mid-Atlantic United States that Mater Ecclesiae's Assumption Mass is this Wednesday at 7pm at the Cathedral in Camden.

German pilgrimage

One of our German readers, knowing my interest in traditional pilgrimages in Europe, sent me some links to a pilgrimage that occurs in a reform of the reform context: Maria Vesperbild.

This pilgrimage takes place in the diocese of Augsburg, Bavaria and the present rector of the pilgrimage is Msgr. Imkamp, who I am told is a very traditional priest. His parish is one of those rare one's that has no "people's altar" (as they are called in that region; meaning an altar intended for versus populum sitting before the traditional high altar -- at least, that is how I understand its meaning). Instead, they continue to use the high altar, offering Mass ad orientem.

Apparently the good Monsignor has revived this pilgrimage on a formal level, drawing around 18,000 people on the Feast of the Assumption and around 500,000 people per year.

The pilgrimage also includes the presence of various prelates.

Here are some pictures of a pilgrimage done in the past couple of years.

A Different Kind of Traditional Mass

The California Catholic has a wonderful article about Catholics who make use of the Ge'ez Rite from Ethiopia. A recent gathering took place in the Diocese of Oakland with the support of Bishop Allen Vigneron.

This particular rite is said in Ge'ez, a Semitic language that has fallen out of daily use. There are fourteen anaphoras, and the rhythm of the liturgical chanting is kept with cymbals, drums, and rattles.

Here is liturgical richness in all its glory; someone needs to mention that to the first person who left a comment over at California Catholic.

Catholic World News : Anglo-Catholic movement has ended, former Episcopal bishop says

Dallas, Aug. 10, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The "Catholic movement" among Anglicans has come to an end, a former Episcopalian bishop has told an Episcopalian news service.

Former Bishop Clarence Pope, who recently announced his return to the Roman Catholic Church, told the newsletter The Living Church that "political correctness" had triumphed over tradition within the Anglican communion.

"Without the stable center provided by the Holy See of Peter," Bishop Pope told The Living Church, "the Catholic movement within the church will ultimately die away." Even today, he said that Anglo-Catholic impulses were not producing more than "lots of 'catholic' vestments" in Episcopal circles.

Bishop Pope revealed that he had experienced regrets after entering the Catholic Church in 1995, then leaving to return temporarily to his Texas Episcopal diocese. He said that he had "drifted back" to the Episcopal fold in part because of severe depression brought on by treatment he was receiving for cancer at that time.

Source: Catholic World News : Anglo-Catholic movement has ended, former Episcopal bishop says

Play it in B Major

I just got to thinking about my favorite Marian hymn, Hail Holy Queen, since we are gearing up for the Assumption, and remembered a little trick I've used that might be of interest to some organists out there.

This particular hymn has a very wide range--low at the beginning and high at the end. In older books it tends to be written in C Major; in newer ones, B-flat. This latter key, however, is too low in my opinion, particularly when the beginning of the verse is factored in. So here's the quick and easy solution: change the key signature to five sharps and simply read the notes on the page; they are right where they need to be. Only the accidentals need to be adjusted.

Now, generally, I find the trend of lowering hymn keys to be an unfortunate one, a consequence of a lack of truly beneficial musical education--which would instruct in the art of singing well, rather than simply putting children on stage to scream their way through Christmas carols in a manner more similar to Sprechstimme than anything else--in most places. (Before you pounce: There are many schools teaching music well, but many of them, if they're high schools, have to work miracles, since no real foundation is laid in the earlier years. But I digress.) However, some hymns are simply quite difficult to sing, and this may be one of them. The key of B Major seems to offer a compromise so that all voice parts are reasonably happy.

The Tragic Flaw of Tolkien's 'Denethor' in Diocesan Liturgical Life: The Difference Between Stewardship and Kingship

Fr. Rob Johansen of Thrown Back has a story up, A Bit of Episcopal Over-Reaching?, and Fr. Zuhlsdorf provides his own commentary as well.

Effectively, the Bishop of a particular Michigan diocese is mandating the use of English for all liturgies, unless express approval is gained from himself, by submitting an application form to that effect.

As Fr. Johansen aptly observed, this is isn't likely intending to curb Spanish, Polish, Portugese, other such languages, but more likely finding Latin as its intended target -- particularly given the timing. (However, any which way you look at it, it is highly problematic.)

Certainly it has no bearing on the usus antiquior which is officially only in Latin (but for the readings) and the bishop has no authority to trump the papal motu proprio with his own 'initiative'. It's difficult to say what the bishop intends in this regard, if anything.

Yet as well, no permission is required for any Catholic priest in the Roman rite to use the modern liturgical books, and in Latin, either fully or partially, as that is the typical edition. It is hard to see this as anything but over-extension of the bishop's authority, and certainly problematic in regards to the Church and the Council in this regard.

This incident, likely to be repeated elsewhere as well and certainly nothing new generally speaking, puts me in mind of the timely reminder found in the explanatory note to the bishops upon the release of Summorum Pontificum. There the Pope touched upon the nature of the bishop's role as "chief liturgist in his diocese" which makes it clear that his role is as a caretaker of the liturgy, which re-emphasizes that they are not masters over it, able to impose their own will. Bishops have indeed been given discretionary power over certain matters, but others they have not and are beyond their own mandate and authority (except as enforcing the rule of law).

To refer back to a bit of Tolkienesque imagery, this reminds me of the character "Denethor" ("Steward of Gondor" and father of "Boromir" and "Faramir") whose tragic flaw was to forget his role was that of steward rather than King, attempting to stand in the way of "Aragorn", heir to the throne of Gondor. In attempting to bar that Kingship and take on something greater for himself, he almost stood in the way of the good.

We need our bishops, priests, diocesan liturgists and liturgical committees to understand their proper role.

Can Basilicas Be Closed?

One such closure can be found here. HT to the Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

New liturgical journal

In the current (August/September) issue of First Things, Father Richard John Neuhaus writes ("While We're At It," pg. 72):

Back in 1974, the Murphy Center was looking for a name for a new publication dealing with liturgy. They tried out this and that and finally settled on Hucusque, which means "up to this point." It seems that Hucusque is the first word of the preface to the Carolingian Supplement to the sacramentary sent in 791 by Pope Hadrian at the request of Charlemagne. An abbot named Benedict supplemented the pope's book with adjustments to the devotional practices of the people of Charlemagne's empire. "Up to this point (hucusque) we have reproduced the pope's Mass book as it came to us from Rome. What is printed from this point on is not Roman, but represents those areas which are necessary to celebrate the liturgy in this part of the world." The Murphy Center is now the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, and the folks there have revived Hucusque under the more transparent title of Assembly: A Journal of Liturgical Theology. It is a sprightly and informative publication aimed at renewal through the reappropriation of tradition. [My remark: "renewal through the reappropriation of tradition" is Fr. Neuhaus's elsewhere-used description of 'ressourcement'.] And we really have had enough of liturgical innovations that treat the received tradition as being normative only hucusque. (To subscribe to the new journal, write Liturgy Training Publications, 1800 North Hermitage Ave., Chicago IL 60622. $15 per year.)

Are any of our readers familiar with this new publication? If so, would you kindly share your impressions of it?

Passing on the Faith

The annual St Catherine’s Trust Summer School has just concluded, and now I have some photographs, I thought readers might be interested in what we’ve been up to.

As far as I know this is the only Catholic Summer School in Europe to use the usus antiqior, the Traditional Mass. Are there any others in the English-speaking world? I’d be most interested to know. In fact, it is one of only a very few Catholic Summer Schools: I know of one other in England, the ‘International Summer School’, which is more than just a weekend, and has actual classes, rather than conference-style plenary talks (like the ‘Faith Summer Session’). If there are more, they are well hidden.

This is our third Summer School; this year forty-two students and seventeen staff occupied part of the site of a large boarding school in Sussex. Our Chaplain was Fr Andrew Southwell, well known both to members of the Latin Mass Society and to the Parish of St Bede’s in Southwark, where he lives, for his indefatigable commitment to the Traditional liturgy. As well as serving many Indult Mass slots around the country over the years, he has established a weekly Sunday morning Sung Mass at St Bede’s, which is still the only weekly Sung Mass in the country.

Fr Southwell’s commitment to liturgical music is reflected in the fact that the Summer School enjoys a Missa Cantata every day, and Sung Compline (1962, using the excellent St Austin Press booklets) every evening (as well as the Rosary in the mornings). During the week a group comprising about half of the students and several staff practiced Arcadelt’s Ave Maria for the final Mass on Sunday, which was attended by many parents. Similarly, we had a group of students practicing the propers for that Mass; the rest of the week the propers were sung by a small liturgical schola (so small, in fact, that I comprised a full third of it!).

Experience has taught me the importance of practice, practice, practice, if Mass is to be accompanied by an appropriate standard of singing. It is hard work keeping up with daily Sung Mass, but I like to think that our liturgical schola gave the students an indication of what Gregorian Chant can and should sound like. Most of the students aren’t required to sing at home, but by the end of the week they were pretty confident with Compline and Mass IV, and the Sunday Ave Maria and propers were first rate.

Apart from the liturgy, Fr Andrew gave catechesis, and there were classes on Art History, Philosophy, History, Literature, and Latin, as well as Chant and Sacred Polyphony, and training of Servers for Sung Mass and Benediction, plus games and a couple of outings (on the last of which I intend to write another post). Our teaching staff range from experienced professional teachers to current or recent undergraduates, plus a Fraternity of St Peter seminarian, Marek Grabowski. They are given free rein to teach whatever their own interests dictate, such as has a Catholic interest: almost always, of course, this will be something not taught at all, or not taught from a Catholic point of view, in even nominally Catholic schools.

Our staff are all unpaid volunteers, and thanks so our generous benefactors (including the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and the Columba Trust) we don’t charge a formal fee to the students. We encourage parents or guardians to make a donation, but the actual cost—around £300 per student—would be prohibitive for most of them. As it is, it is heartening to see a complete social mix at the Summer School, with home-schooled children, children from the great ‘Public Schools’ (ie, fee-paying schools), and children from good, bad, or absolutely appalling London comprehensives. This works well at the social level, and the students are eager each year to come back to rejoin the friends they made the year before. For while we come from every corner of England, Wales and Scotland, and from every kind of educational background, we are united in the Faith.

(Anyone wanting to know more, to recommend the Summer School to others, or even to make a donation, should see the St Catherine’s Trust site; we also do a ‘Family Retreat’ in the Spring. A Newsletter will be available from that site just as soon as I’ve written it!)

Pontifical Liturgy: Rite of Lyons

In my 'travels' this evening, I found reference to something which I think some of you would be interested in. While in the French language, it is an explanation of the ceremonies attached to the Pontifical Mass according to the rite of Lyons.

If you don't speak French, or don't want to wade through a google translation of it, you might be interested in the drawings.

Classical Use to have prominent place at August 15th French "National Pilgrimage" in Lourdes

In France, some good news has come forward about the continuing de-marginalization of the classical use of the Roman rite.

The classical use will now be fully celebrated in the main sanctuaries of Lourdes on the most important French pilgrimage, "The National Pilgrimage" on the 15th of August:

“In full agreement with Msgr. Perrier, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes and with Msgr. Zambelli, rector, masses according to the “extraordinary form” of the Roman Missal, the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, will be celebrated each day in the sanctuaries of Lourdes by chaplains and priests of Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter..." (From a statement by Fr. Pozzetto)

There are a few different Mass times and locations listed, including a sung mass in the higher basilica of the Immaculate Conception by Fr. Pozzetto, a low Mass in the same location by a priest of the FSSP, as well as a sung Mass in the crypt.

Anyone who think they will attend and can help by singing or serving at the Mass, do contact:

Abbé François Pozzetto
f.pozzetto@libertysurf.fr

Prof. Laszlo Dobszay on Four Words of the Roman Canon: Fides Cognita, Nota Devotio

[It is worth noting that English is not Prof. Dobszay's first language. Therefore if something seems unclear, it may well be lost in the translation. So, please, ask Prof. Dobszay for clarification on a point if you need it. - NLM]

"Fides cognita, nota devotio"

A Guest Contribution to the NLM by Prof. Laszlo Dobszay (author of, The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform)

When an expression of the Roman Canon seems too difficult, we may expect to find there something important, something which requires research to understand it and to bring its deep liturgical meaning to light. Such an expression is: "quorum tibi fides cognia est et nota devotio”. I have never seen a translation in any language, which attempted to translated the full meaning of this key-expression. In Hungary the late László Mezey, the outstanding professor of philology, history and theology spent long time in query of an accurate interpretation of the Roman Canon. In the following explanation I reference his work.

"...whose faith and devotion are known to you” – says the ICEL-proposal. What is shocking first is that the "cognita” and "nota” (placed in the Latin in a nice rhetorical figure called a ’chiasmus’) is contracted in one word: "known”. In the two verbs, however, the root of these words mean something different. Making a distinction, the two nouns (fides, devotio) become clearer.

The meaning of the verb cognoscere is not identical with noscere. "Cognoscit”, if meant literally, is critical cognition. It is a process of examination that reveals whether something is found good or bad, true or false. Such a cognition is the basis of a transfer to the field of jurisprudence: cognoscere is the process of inquiry; as a result of it, the matter becomes causa cognita and as such can place under the right judgement. "Causa cognita... judicium dabo” – says Ulpianus. "Proconsul cognita pronuntiavit..., contra cognita praetor pronuntiasse” (Dig. 40). The Canon places the true faith of those present (circumstantes) under the examination by God and regards it as examined, tested by the Lord.

Why would this distinction be so important? ’Fides’ is interpreted by some as ’fidelitas’ (fidelity’) or ’confidentia’ (confidence) towards God. The Canon, however, speaks of something different. The rite of almost all sacraments starts with the confession of the true faith, or, at least, with a statement about the cardinal doctrines. The sacrament cannot be 'true' if the faith is spotted. The community and individuals who are present should believe in the creed of the One Church, the fullness of its doctrine – and not only give testimony of fidelity or confidence in general. It comes to light whether the faith of the local church is orthodox or not. (It is similar to the previous paragraph: the local church prays for the Pope and Bishop not only for their blessing, but also as an expression of attachment to t