Abp Cordileone’s Review of Dr Michael Foley’s Lost in Translation

We are very honored to share this review by His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco, of our contributor Dr Michael Foley’s book Lost in Translation; the essays which form the largest part of the book were originally published here on NLM. A shorter version of this review was published on Sunday at The Catholic Thing.

Rooted in the conviction that the Sacred Liturgy, as “an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ,” is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” and “the font from which all her power flows,” the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council asserted the supremacy of liturgical prayer in the life of the Church and called for the entire people of God – clergy, religious and laity alike – to form themselves in a spiritual life centered on the Church’s Liturgy. In so doing, they gave voice in authoritative manner to the Liturgical Movement that had been blossoming in the Church for some 100 years, the central aim of that Liturgical Movement being the reawakening of the Christian faithful to a liturgically-centered spiritual life.

Among the contemporary Catholic writers answering this call of Vatican II and the Liturgical Movement, Michael P. Foley has distinguished himself both in a popular key with his best-selling Drinking with the Saints (and related volumes) and in the academic world with his well-researched and learned explorations of “liturgical recapitulation” and of “Ordinary Time” in the Church’s liturgical calendar. Now, however, Foley has produced a hybrid of the popular and the scholarly in Lost in Translation: Meditating on the Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite (Angelico Press, 2023), a work of spiritually rich theological reflection composed in approachable prose.

The purpose of Lost in Translation is at once simple and profound: to meditate fruitfully on the liturgical prayers – principally, the Collect, Secret and Postcommunion – of the classical texts of the Roman Rite by paying careful attention to the various shades of meaning and context in the poetry and rhetoric of the Latin prayers themselves. An expert Latinist as well as a liturgical scholar, Foley demonstrates throughout his work that the meaning of the liturgical prayers can sometimes be “lost in translation” because of the various subtleties and nuances in the original text of the prayers. To help the reader pray the Liturgy, then, Foley provides accurate English translations of the orations, and in so doing, he shows how the prayers of the Roman Liturgy are a sort of “eructation” (literally, a belching!) of the Sacred Scriptures, chewed over diligently by Mother Church, who brings forth her Scriptural treasures in order to form us as her children in her “school of love.”

Lost in Translation begins with a brief and lucid introduction to the essential elements in the composition of the orations of the Roman Rite, with the author providing a kind of roadmap for understanding the content of these prayers of the Roman Church. Armed with this initiation, the reader is equipped with adequate understanding to meditate on the liturgical prayers of the Church year. The rest of Foley’s volume is divided into nine parts, the first seven of which take the reader through the “temporal cycle” of the liturgical year – the commemoration of the mysteries of Christ, renewed in the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through the seven traditional liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Pre-Lent, Lent, Easter, and Time after Pentecost. The eighth part of the book includes the major celebrations of what is known as the “sanctoral cycle” of the liturgical year – the various feast days of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints, assigned to certain dates and days on the calendar. Finally, the ninth part provides a theological analysis of the structure of the orations themselves, particularly focusing on their “adjuration” or ending. In total, then, Lost in Translation unpacks the theological and spiritual meaning of the orations of 77 distinct liturgical celebrations. Two appendices even provide bonus material, analyzing the sequences sung on the feasts of Easter and Pentecost.

The brilliance of Foley’s achievement is evident in manifold ways throughout his work, even beyond that of which he speaks explicitly. For example, one can read into his writing a certain beautiful coherence with the liturgical teaching of Dom Prosper Guéranger, the founder of the Abbey of Solesmes and the man who, according to Pope St. Paul VI, inaugurated the Liturgical Movement in the life of the Church. Dom Guéranger taught that the liturgical year, as a true school of spiritual growth, was structured in such a way as to bring the Christian through the three ages of the interior life – the purgative, illuminative and unitive. I would like to reflect on that coherence here.

Advent, for Guéranger, is the season of the purgative life, and Foley’s meditations for Advent help us understand how the Christian is always in need of deeper purgation even as he lives the liturgical year fruitfully again and again. Indeed, the often-vexing question of the shape of the liturgical year itself is elucidated brilliantly in Foley’s analysis of the Collects for the First, Second and Fourth Sundays of Advent, all of which ask God to “stir up” His People or His power. Foley notes that the Collect for the Last Sunday after Pentecost also contains this “stir up” petition to God, and Foley takes this as a linguistic cue that the Roman Church intends us to understand that the end and beginning of the liturgical year overlap, especially when one considers that the gospel readings for the last and first Sundays both focus on the Second Coming of the Lord. Thus, these “stir up” Sundays, occurring at the year’s end and beginning, function, in Foley’s words, “as two interlocking clasps that connect the dazzling necklace of the year’s feasts and seasons.” Such an insight provides a satisfying sense of unity and wholeness to the liturgical year itself. It also allows us to see that the circularity of the liturgical year functions more like a spiral, pushing us ever higher towards Heaven. Thus, the purgative life of Advent, renewed each year, is not redundant but “stirs up” in us an ever-greater detachment from affection for sin and the things of this world.

The illuminative life commences, says Dom Guéranger, at the feast of Christmas, and Foley’s analysis of the Collect for the Vigil Mass of Christmas Eve deepens our understanding of this illumination afforded by the Sacred Liturgy. On Christmas Eve, the Roman Church prays in her Collect that “we who now joyfully receive” Jesus “as our Redeemer, may also confidently behold Him coming as our judge.” Here is, as Foley explains by connecting the traditional “three Comings” of Christ for which Advent prepares us, the key to Christmas peace and joy: to be in such a state of union with Christ in His Coming to us by the grace He pours into our souls (the “intermediate” or “middle” Coming, corresponding to the illuminative life) that we will receive His Final Coming at the end of time with the same gladness with which we greet His First Coming in the stable of Bethlehem. Such an interpretation of the liturgical year harmonizes beautifully with Dom Guéranger’s connection of the progress of the liturgical year with the progress of the soul in the spiritual life: the peace of the Christ Child’s illumination of our souls – casting away from us all serious sin, which is what, practically speaking, it means to be in the illuminative way; indeed, it brings us the ability to expect His Last Day with tranquil hearts.

For Dom Guéranger, the seasons of Pre-Lent and Lent are invitations to deeper purgation within the illuminative life of Christ’s mysteries, moving us from the joyful sweetness of Christmas and Epiphany to the awesome glory of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension. Thus, Foley notes that the Collect for Ash Wednesday (which inaugurates our Lenten fast of forty days) speaks of our Lenten penance as the “solemnities of fasting which should be venerated.” In this way, far from grumpiness over the deprivations that come with a strict diet, the Liturgy forms in us an illuminated love for the precious sobriety of Christ’s Fasting, Passion and Death, to which we are conformed in the commemoration of Christ’s sorrowful mysteries.

Our more deeply purifying conformation to Christ’s mysteries leads us then, according to Dom Guéranger, to the fullest brightness of the illuminative life, with the arrival of Easter Sunday and Ascension Thursday. In harmony with this movement of the liturgical year, Foley notes that the Collect for Easter Sunday forms our hearts to relish that Christ “has conquered death and opened for us the gate of eternity.” Perfecting our paschal joy, the Collect for Ascension Thursday, Foley teaches us, elevates us even now through that gate of eternity, as the Church prays that we the faithful “may ourselves dwell in mind amidst heavenly things.”

Noting that the mysteries of Easter time bring us to the climax of the illuminative life, Dom Guéranger connects the Easter-consummating feast of Pentecost and the Time after Pentecost with the “unitive way” of spiritual progress, and Foley’s meditation on the Collect for the feast of Pentecost highlights the mystery of this unitive life even as it reveals the need for a book like Lost in Translation. Indeed, precious gems can very much get lost in translation if we are not careful to appreciate the Latin of the orations, and our author explains that the “recta sapere” of the Collect for Pentecost can be translated in no fewer than five different ways! Foley rightly privileges the intellectual meaning of sapere, and so renders the phrase as “to understand what is right,” but he explains that the verb can also mean “to taste”, “to savor”, “to resemble”, or “to be well acquainted with the value of.” All of these alternate renderings shed light on the dynamism of the unitive life of the Christian who lives predominantly under the influence of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: here the Christian experiences a practical connaturality with the Spirit, even in the sense of a kind of tasting and experiencing of the Spirit Himself.

Foley’s linguistic work here, then, unpacks for the reader multiple levels of rich material for meditation, bringing the light and heat of the fire of Pentecost down into the everyday life of the reader in the pursuit of real progress in the spiritual life.

The unitive life enjoyed by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit during the Time after Pentecost comes to its fruition in the context of the Feast of All Saints on November 1. Foley points out that the Collect for that feast boldly claims that “God…hast given” us the celebration of the whole heavenly court. This insistence on the primary causality of God in the giving of the feast day highlights the divine mode of Christian life in the unitive way, as the soul lives primarily under the direct action of God, according to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Doubling down on the soul’s rejoicing in the Celestial City, the Heavenward focus of the unitive life in the Time after Pentecost is reinforced also in the Collect for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (always reserved for the last Sunday of the liturgical year), in which the Church states as a matter of fact that, as Foley highlights, God has given her “to rejoice in divine participation,” an apt description of the unitive life. Thus, in Lost in Translation, we witness the achievement of a truly liturgical spirituality.

In addition to providing these (and many more) multi-faceted insights fit for Liturgy- centered personal prayer, Foley’s analysis of the content of the orations of the traditional Roman Missal allows him to provide the reader with an initiation into the spirit of the liturgical year, an endeavor valuable in itself. Foley manages then to capture the joy of liturgical living, even as he provides serious content for the reader’s meditation. In so doing, he continues the legacy of Dom Guéranger, and many others after him, who have re-introduced the Catholic faithful to the transforming power of the Sacred Liturgy. In terms of how the book should be used, Foley’s reflections are versatile in that they provide what could be a ten-minute period of spiritual reading in preparation for Holy Mass or a more extended time of mental prayer centered on the liturgical texts. Beneath the erudite analysis of the Latin, however, what is offered in this work is quite remarkable: the reader, week after week, feast after feast, whether using the text for spiritual reading or mental prayer, will learn to pray with the actual text of the Sacred Liturgy. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council envisioned exactly such a spiritual exercise as the soul of the Catholic spiritual life.

Recent Priestly Ordinations for the North American Province of the FSSP

On Friday, May 26, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone ordained three members of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to the sacred priesthood at a Pontifical Mass in Lincoln, Nebraska. There were so many highlights to the liturgy—I always feel like my head is going to explode at one of these pontificals, they are just so overwhelming: a pageantry of symbols of the richest meaning, with moments of piercing spiritual insight sparked by inexhaustible prayer texts bequeathed to us from centuries of faith.

The little detail that struck me most this time around was caused by the unusual way the ordination ceremony breaks up the alleluias. In Paschaltide (and Ascensiontide is no different) there are two Alleluias (instead of a Gradual/Alleluia or a Gradual/Tract). The first Alleluia is sung through, and the second is begun—but then, before the verse is sung, the entire very long ordination ceremony takes place. Talk about a delayed cadence, postponed period, interrupted utterance! And after all that is done, the schola resumes with the verse of the second alleluia, followed by the Gospel.

That day was the feast of St. Philip Neri. Here are his alleluias:

Alleluia, alleluia. De excélso misit ignem in óssibus meis, et erudívit me. (From above He hath sent a fire into my bones, and hath instructed me.)

Alleluia. [ —> Ordinations <— ] Concáluit cor meum intra me: et in meditatióne mea exardéscet ignis. Alleluia. (My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall flame out.)

“He hath sent a fire into my bones and hath instructed me.” The vocation sent by God, in the form of a desire to be a priest... the long years of study... the spiritual struggles... the moment when this immense gift is finally bestowed at the hands of the bishop and one knows, in his bones, that he is a priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedek...

“My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall flame out.” The fire is now ignited within these men by the indelible inscription of Christ's sacrificial priesthood in their souls—a change in BEING. Agere sequitur esse: action flows from being. From this character shall flame out the fire of priestly prayer, sacramental grace, and the preaching of the Word.

St Philip Neri—what a patron to have on one’s ordination day! What a pair of Alleluias to remember and ponder!

The following are a selection of photos that display many major moments of this magnificent ceremony. There is a whole catechesis embedded in this sequence. I will not attempt to be thorough (that would take a book) but I'll at least try to identify what is going on in the ceremony at each point.

1. A deacon looks at the cloth (the maniturgium) that will bind his hands after they have been anointed with chrism. This same cloth is customarily given to the priest’s mother to be buried with her as a sign that she gave a priest to the Church. 

2. Putting on the maniple, sign of laboring in the Lord’s vineyard.
 

3. Holding the chasuble and ready to process.
 

4. On the way...
 

5. The bishop and his attendants enter the church.
 

6. Prayers at the foot of the altar.
 

 

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Mass: Essence & Foundation of Western Civilization - A Talk by Abp Cordileone on March 19th

The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California is proud to present the second lecture in its inaugural Public Lecture and Concert Series — an important perspective on a timely topic.

The Mass: The Essence and Foundation of Western Civilization

A Lecture by His Excellency Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco

Sunday, March 19th
5:00 p.m. PDT (8:00 p.m. EDT)
Sancta Maria Hall at St. Patrick’s Seminary
320 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Park

Reserve a spot online or in-person. 

The in-person event will be followed by a reception. Ample guest parking is available on-site. Live-streaming and archived viewing of the event are also available. An RSVP is appreciated, but not required. This free event is open to the public.

“My Vocation Was Inspired by Beauty”: An Exclusive Interview with Abp Cordileone

Archbishop Cordileone with composer Frank LaRocca

NLM is pleased to offer readers this exclusive interview with Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, in advance of this Saturday’s Lenten prayer service that will feature great music by past masters as well as three newly-commissioned works. Charlotte Allen is literary editor of CatholicArtsToday.com, which is published by the BenedictInstitute.org.

Charlotte Allen: You and Pope Benedict shared a love of music, and you both were amateur performers: Benedict on the piano and you on the alto saxophone playing jazz. Yet your academic background, according to biographies of you, is in canon law, and you served as a tribunal judge during the late 1980s and much of the 1990s. How did you segue from canon law to music and the arts?

Archbishop Cordileone: Actually, it was the other way around. I had two competing aspirations in life during my childhood and teen years as I was growing up: a career officer in the Navy and a professional jazz musician. Those are two very different career paths! I suppose it speaks to a knack I’ve always had for being able to hold together disparate and even seemingly contradictory interests, pursuits and mentalities. I grew up in San Diego, very much a Navy town and I spent a lot of time at the port with my father who was a commercial fisherman, so the idea of a life of service to my country and the adventure of seeing the world got into my imagination.

But you also rightly point out my love of jazz – I was instinctively attracted to this music at a very young age. The public high school I attended had a very strong music program, and some of its graduates went on to very illustrious careers as professional musicians. I knew I wasn’t in that category, so I looked more to a military career, and since I was good at math and enjoyed it, I thought to major in that discipline. Math and music, of course, are very much inter-related in the way the brain functions.

At the end of the day, our Lord had other plans, and so I entered the seminary and was eventually ordained a priest. The study of canon law was not my own choosing; I was asked to study as a young priest by my bishop at the time, and in retrospect I see that it was very fitting for me. Law has its own logic, just like math and music theory, as does the study of language, especially Latin, which is essential for the study of canon law. And I’ve always appreciated the importance of law: The alternative to the rule of law is chaos, conformity, favoritism. So canon law matters, and I see in hindsight that it was a logical discipline for me to specialize in.

At the same time, the wannabe creative musician in me never died. I remember the first time our composer-in-residence, Frank La Rocca, sat down at the piano rather late at night after dinner to play for me excerpts from his Mass of the Americas. “This is the other life I dreamed for myself as a kid,” I told him. “Staying up all night creating music.”  

Archbishop celebrating a Rorate Mass

Charlotte Allen: You obviously share Pope Benedict’s strong beliefs about the power of the arts in evangelization. “The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart,” he famously said in a speech in 2002, three years before he became pope How did you come to be interested in and even adopt his views?

Archbishop Cordileone: My vocation to the priesthood was inspired to a large extent by beauty. I was inspired by the majesty of the Church’s worship, by the sacredness of the music and the sense of hushed prayer, the ceremony and the vestments, the cycle of the liturgical year. And I was blessed to grow up in a parish with a very beautiful church, neo-Gothic in its architectural style. So my growing-up years already put me on a path in line with what I later learned was Pope Benedict’s vision and teaching. My experience over four decades as a priest, and half of them as a bishop, has only confirmed my initial instinct of the power of the Church’s artistic patrimony for her mission of evangelization.

Catholicism has always been a predominating creative force in the arts–painting, sculpture, architecture, music–until perhaps 50 years ago. Our patrimony is deep and awe-inspiring and is recognized as significant by the most secular parts of the world of classical music and the arts. It touches souls in ways that get around disputes over dogma, and reveals the presence of God in this world to many. The Church has always understood that evangelization is accomplished through all three transcendentals: truth, beauty, and goodness. These reveal the face of God and are doorways that open up to the encounter with Him. In our age especially the Church needs to operate on all three.

Charlotte Allen: You and the Benedict XVI Institute have sponsored a revival of Gregorian chant and other centuries-old Catholic music—but you have also specifically commissioned a number of sung Masses that are not only brand-new but touch on very contemporary issues: the Mass of the Americas in 2019 honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Immaculate Conception, a Requiem Mass for the Homeless in 2021 that premiered within walking distance of San Francisco’s saddest encampment; and, most recently a Mass for Life celebrated as nationwide pro-life marches were taking place this January. Given the Catholic Church’s huge, underperformed treasure-trove of traditional music, why are contemporary compositions touching on contemporary themes so important for the life of the Church?

Archbishop Cordileone: As Pope Benedict taught, what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us moderns, too. This is in accord with the principle enunciated by Pope St. Pius X in his landmark Instruction on Sacred Music, Tra le sollecitudini, namely, that true sacred music has a quality of universality to it: It is holy and beautiful in every age and in every culture.

So we should continue to sing this repertoire of classical sacred music in our churches, but this does not exclude new compositions of this musical genre. This is how it happens in the world of secular classical music. The great orchestras of the world continue to play the great symphonies of the great composers throughout history: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and so forth. But they also play new compositions in the genre of classical music. Sacred classical music is a living tradition: New compositions that reflect themes and musical elements of our time within the timeless genre of sacred classical music contribute to the tradition, keep it alive and move it forward. It is an aspect of legitimate inculturation, lifting the concerns and tastes of our own time into the high sacred music tradition of the Church.

We cannot afford to demote beauty into something that is merely a frill or a luxury item, as if, once we have the really necessary business of the Church taken care of, we can now pay attention to the arts. Beauty is how we reveal the hidden fact of God to the world, and how we show our love and reverence for Him. This is what makes us more truly human, which is to say, holy. Music allows us to experience all this together in a powerful way.

Charlotte Allen: I attended the Requiem Mass for the Homeless in 2021, and the huge crowd it drew probably included a large number of non-Catholics and fallen-away Catholics, including city officials, drawn to the Mass by their empathy with the homeless. Everyone in the congregation was clearly moved by Frank La Rocca’s beautiful music (Someone said, “You could have heard a pin drop” in the dead silence after his “O vos omnes”). But were any San Franciscan attitudes toward the Church itself changed—say, after you barred Rep. Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion a few months later?

Archbishop Cordileone: The idea that the measure of the power of art is determined by its immediate political effects is a fundamental error widespread today. I am moved and humbled by how many people have communicated to me, and to the Benedict XVI Institute’s executive director Maggie Gallagher and Frank LaRocca himself, what a powerful impact this new sacred music has had on their faith and on their lives. No one event or action is going to automatically change deep-seated and longstanding biases against the Catholic Church. With the grace of God, that change can happen only with patient, persevering, steady and consistent effort on our part to build upon the Church’s historical legacy and do what we do best. The success of the Mass of the Americas affirms that the yearning for beauty is prevalent even in a culture embedded with so much ugliness. This is a need the Catholic Church has always fulfilled and, unlike just about any secular arts institution, the Church makes it available to the poor and rich alike, as none other than Dorothy Day once pointed out at a conference on helping the poor held in the event center of our own St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco.

Charlotte Allen: Both Pope Benedict and, recently, Pope Francis have decried the banality and seeming lack of God-centeredness that afflicts Sunday Masses in many parishes. Part of the problem seems to be the mediocre contemporary hymns chosen for congregational singing. But not all contemporary hymns are bad, and some have lovely melodies and are certainly theologically orthodox: “I Am the Bread of Life,” “One Bread, One Body.” Would there still be a place for such hymns in your ideal Catholic liturgical world? For jazz Masses? (You love jazz, but is it too secular a form for church?) For hymns and spirituals that reflect Protestant and evangelical traditions? Or should the Church develop non-liturgical prayer services that would accommodate tastes for hymns that might not be appropriate for Mass?

Preaching at a Confirmation

Archbishop Cordileone: That is a very good question, and the answer depends on how one interprets the principle enunciated in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Article 16 of Sacrosanctum Concilium, after affirming Gregorian chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy, goes on to add: “But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action.”

One of the key principles to interpretation of texts is context. The Council here mentions polyphony as an example of “other kinds of sacred music [which] accord with the spirit of the liturgical action.” That would seem to exclude much of what we call “contemporary music” nowadays. And certainly certain genres of music are, by their very nature, unsuited. As a life-long lover and aficionado of jazz music, I can say, without any sense of denigrating it, that jazz is one such example. I do believe it is a very elevated and sophisticated genre of music. In its own way it is reflective of the nature of God, insofar as it is always the same and always new: that is, jazz relies heavily on improvisation, where a given melody with a chord pattern is played and repeated, and then each musician improvises a solo based on that chord pattern. Thus, every time the same tune is played it is also new. But because jazz especially highlights the virtuosity of the individual soloist, it runs in the opposite direction of sacred music in which the individual musician disappears in order to direct all to the glory of God. On the other hand, this is not to say that certain elements characteristic of jazz, e.g., complex chord patterns and syncopation, cannot be incorporated into the sacred music genre. This is what Frank LaRocca accomplished in the Mass of the Americas, incorporating the sounds and melodies of the popular hymns the Mexican people sing to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe into the context of contemporary polyphony.

The question of singing hymns at Mass involves a whole other set of considerations. In the Church’s liturgical tradition, hymns are integral to the Divine Office but not the Mass. The liturgical texts at those points where hymns are normally sung at many parish Masses already have, proper to each Mass, an Entrance Antiphon (Introit) and a Communion Antiphon (the pre-Conciliar form of the Mass also had an Offertory Antiphon, but that was dropped in the revision of the Roman Missal). Before the Council, Pope Pius XII had allowed hymns to be sung in the vernacular at Low Mass (a Mass that was not sung) as a way to promote the active participation of the faithful while not altering the form of the Mass itself. Congregational singing of hymns at Mass is still authorized in today’s Roman Missal, but as one of four options (the others being the singing of the antiphons proper to each Mass and other approved antiphons and chants). That is because hymns, no matter how reverent and beautiful, are actually extraneous to the Mass.

That being said, since singing hymns at Mass has become so common, it is important that hymns be chosen that are theologically sound, musically worthy, and in accordance with the liturgical season or feast day being celebrated. The ones you mentioned are a good example of that: The texts are taken from Scripture itself, and they are musically worthy. Traditional hymnody also fills this bill. Congregational hymns can also be incorporated in a way that respects the structure of the Mass, bearing in mind that the Mass begins with the Entrance Antiphon and ends with the Dismissal. For example, an entrance hymn can be sung while the procession is moving toward the altar (thus still outside of the context of Mass), and then the proper Introit can be sung once it arrives there. A hymn can be sung during the rite of the preparation of the altar, since no antiphon is given at that point. After the singing of the Communion Antiphon, a hymn can be sung as Communion is being distributed, and, finally, as is already the prevailing practice, a hymn can be sung as the liturgical procession leaves the altar (the Mass has already ended at the point).

As for using hymns that might not be appropriate for Mass in non-liturgical prayer settings, this is something with which I very much agree. What is commonly referred to as “praise music” has its place; its place is not Mass, but in other contexts it can be very appropriate. We must remember, too, that in the liturgical context, music serves as an aid to worship, not as a main course. As I mentioned earlier, the musicians (including the composer, as Frank La Rocca is quick to point out) subordinate their gifts to this great purpose of worship. Sacred music for the liturgy should be timeless, not of the latest fashion. Part of the genius of Frank La Rocca, or Sir James MacMillan or Arvo Pärt, is that they each write music that is both embedded in tradition and informed by contemporary classical music.

Charlotte Allen: What is next up in terms of the new Renaissance in Catholic sacred music with the Benedict XVI Institute?

Archbishop Cordileone: On March 11, at 11 a.m. Pacific at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco, I will be leading a Lenten Prayer Service featuring the works of the masters (Palestrina, Victoria, di Lasso) with new works setting the same text by four living Catholic artists (Frank La Rocca, Daniel Knaggs, Mark Nowakowski and Jeffrey Quick). The service includes three world premieres commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship. Dr. Alfred Calabrese is bringing in his 20-voice choir Band of Voices for his West Coast debut. This celebration was delayed three years because of Covid and I’m looking forward very much to experiencing this sacred music as an act of worship together.

Note: Readers may register to attend in person or to receive the EWTN viewing link at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/miserere-a-lenten-service-with-abp-cordileone-new-works-of-sacred-music-tickets-491821690917

A Lenten Prayer Service with Archbishop Cordileone, March 11

Miserere: A Lenten Prayer Service with Archbishop Cordileone, March 11, 11 a.m. at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco. Register to attend in person or to receive the EWTN link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/miserere-a-lenten-service-with-abp-cordileone-new-works-of-sacred-music-tickets-491821690917

Dr. Alfred Calabrese will conduct the 20-voice Band of Voices Choir in a worship service featuring works of Palestrina, Victoria, and Di Lasso paired with works by living Catholic composers, including three World Premieres commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute: Popule meus by Daniel Knaggs, Ad te levavi oculos meos by Mark Nowakowski and Timor et tremor by Jeffrey Quick, as well as a performance of Frank La Rocca’s Miserere.

In Lent, we walk with Christ towards Calvary in order to rise with him on Easter. If you are or can be at the beautiful and historic Mission Dolores Basilica on March 11 in San Francisco, do not miss this event. Registering today helps plan for the hospitality afterward. (Pizza from Mozzerela di Buffala: bring the kids). If you can’t come, please register to join us virtually via EWTN, which will also live broadcast the service.

The March 11 Lenten prayer service features sung prayers, with great works by Victoria, di Lasso and the works of gifted living Catholic composers Frank La Rocca, Daniel Knaggs, Jeffrey Quick, and Mark Nowakowski, including three world-premieres.

Program

1. Confitemini Domino (Psalm 136 (135) chanted in Latin)

2. Popule Meus, Tomas Luis de Victoria, c.1548-1611 (edited by Daniel Knaggs)

3. Popule Meus, Daniel Knaggs, b.1983 (Commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute, world premiere).

4. Timor et tremor, Orlando di Lasso, c.1532-94

5. Timor et tremor, Jeffrey Quick, b. 1956 (commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute, World Premiere)

6. Ad te levavi oculos meos, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, c.1525-94

7. Ad te levavi oculos meos, Mark Nowakowski, b. 1978 (commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute, World Premiere)

8. Miserere mei, Orlando di Lasso

9. Miserere, Frank La Rocca, b. 1951

Meet the Living Composers

Daniel Knaggs is an internationally recognized Houston-based composer. In 2022 alone his works were performed in Singapore, Australia, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, Italy, England, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Portugal, the Czech Republic and throughout the United States. He loves evoking vivid imagery in his music, and focusing his efforts into ongoing projects such as his 50-year Ave Maria Project (2005-2054) and his “After” Motets Project. Among his many awards are the 2019 Noël Minet Prize (Germany) and the 2012 David Maria Turoldo Composer Competition (Italy). In addition to composing, Daniel Knaggs is the Artistic Director of the new Poland-based choir, Ensemble Invocatio, which he founded in 2022. He can be reached at https://danieljknaggs.com/Knaggs

Frank La Rocca is the composer-in-residence at the Benedict XVI Institute. His recent work Mass of the Americas was hailed as “Perhaps the most significant Catholic composition of our lifetimes.“ (Michael Olbash). In September 2022, the recording of the Mass of the Americas with the Benedict XVI Choir (Richard Sparks, conducting) debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts in in traditional classical music. Frank La Rocca’s other commissions for the Benedict XVI Institute include the Missa Sancti Juniperi Serra, the Requiem Mass for the Homeless, and the Messe des Malades: Honoring Our Lady of Lourdes. His work can be found at FrankLaRocca.com.

Mark Nowakowski’s works represent a modern merger of bold expression and mystical contemplation, Slavic pathos and American individualism. His work has been commissioned and performed internationally including the Kronos Quartet, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Silesian Quartet, Orkiestra Camerata Stargard, Stowarzyszenia Mozart, Vox Musics of Sacrement, the choirs of St. John Cantius, and of the Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C and the Cracow Brass Quartet. Gramophone Magazine called “Blood, Forgotten” Mark Nowakowski’s debut album on Naxos “at once fierce, haunting and mystical.” He currently serves as composer-in-residence for His Majesty’s Men and directs the Vos Omnes Virtual Choir. He wrote the film score for “Mass of the Ages” and “Discovering Tolkien.” Mark Nowakowski can be reached at: http://current.marknowakowski.com/

Jeffrey Quick’s music is print-published by Lorenz and CanticaNOVA; his sacred works are available at cpdl.org, while secular works can be purchased at newmusicshelf.com He retired as assistant music librarian at Case Western Reserve University in 2020, and directs the schola cantorum of St. Sebastian Church in Akron Ohio. His first premiere by the Benedict XVI Institute was Versa est in luctum performed by the Archbishop’s Schola in San Francisco on March 5, 2022. More information is available at jeffreyquick.com

An Interview with Abp Cordileone: The William P. Mahrt Sacred Music Chair (Part 2)

Last week, we published a guest article by Roseanne T. Sullivan about the recent establishment of the William P. Mahrt Chair in Sacred Music at St Patrick’s Seminary in the archdiocese of San Francisco. We follow up with her interview with His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, the archbishop of San Francisco, about the new chair, and what he hopes to achieve by instituting it. Our thanks once again to Mrs Sullivan for sharing this with NLM.

Roseanne T. Sullivan: Your Excellency, what can you tell about how this new chair came about?

Salvatore Cordileone: I have had this in mind for a long time. The seminary already has a course in church aesthetics and history of the liturgy, which covers the principles of sacred music, architecture, and art.

(Note from Father Mark Doherty, Rector of St. Patrick’s: The course in Church aesthetics has been taught by Father Samuel Weber since he arrived at the seminary about a decade ago. The course is mandatory, situated at the front-end of formation, in pre-theology, precisely because the course content is so central to a man’s overall formation for the priesthood.)

SC: Out of those three, music is highest in the order of priority, because priests will be dealing all the time with music in parish life, at least on a weekly basis, to ensure the music for the Sunday Masses is suitable.

The other two are also important: architecture, because priests may at some point need to build a new church or renovate or restore a parish church they’ve inherited. So they need to know the basic principles of church architecture and have good taste and good judgment in that area.

And they’ll also be furnishing their churches and other spaces with art. So they also need to have knowledge of art.

But most especially music—because it’s such an important part of worship, because music has such a strong effect on people’s experience of worship, and priests will be dealing with music all the time.

It’s reasonable that the priest should have an understanding of our tradition of sacred music, that they know about the principles of Gregorian Chant, its origins and how to sing it, and that they have an understanding of polyphony and that whole tradition.

Now, granted, almost all parishes use contemporary music, but I think this kind of a formation deep within the tradition of the church’s musical heritage will help them to have better judgment about what is, on the musical side, worthy of worship.

And just by the aesthetics of it, the music of it, their theological formation will also give them good judgment about what words are appropriate for worshiping and not. So they need both aspects to get that with their theology courses, but they also need to have the musical formation to make those judgments.

St Patrick’s Seminary

RTS: What made you decide to name the chair after Professor William Mahrt?

SC: Professor Mahrt is a revered world class scholar in sacred music. He teaches at Stanford University only a few miles away from our seminary. He’s contributed so much to the Church’s musical life, no one would be more appropriate to honor in naming this chair.

For decades at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, also nearby in Palo Alto, the St. Ann choir Professor Mahrt directs has been singing beautiful sacred music at Novus Ordo Masses, according to the current edition of the Roman Missal. He demonstrates how this kind of music is not something that the Church left behind when changing the form of the Mass, but it is actually in keeping with what the Vatican II taught. It’s something to be treasured and used so that people can experience its beauty. So he’s realized that vision there and has been doing so for ages.

RTS: How was Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka selected for this position?

SC: I first met her in 2015 at the Sacra Liturgia Conference in New York, which she organized. And so I became aware of her tremendous gifts and her ability to teach. She was teaching at the seminary at Dunwoodie in New York. She had great experience in educating Church musicians, principally seminarians but lay people and priests too for that matter. When I first met her back seven years ago, I would have loved the idea of her teaching at my seminary. To be honest, I didn’t think it would be possible. And now it’s happening.

I’m very grateful for some large bequests we received for Catholic education, which are helping us to get this chair established.

RTS: What should people realize about the significance of there being a chair in sacred music at a diocesan seminary?

SC: Music and the arts in general are not sort of a luxury, an optional add-on after we take care of everything else. They are essential, central to evangelization.

I refer a lot to the three transcendentals: truth, beauty, and goodness. We need all three to evangelize this culture that’s getting further and further away from God.

We need the Church’s witness of care for the poor, the Church’s ability to transmit the truth and help people understand the truth and how that sets us free. But also, again, the area of beauty. And again, the area of music is paramount when it comes to people’s everyday experience in the pews. So we need beauty. As I also like to say, goodness feeds the body, truth feeds the mind, and beauty feeds the soul. People need their souls fed as well.

Beauty has this power to elevate the soul and to unite people and touch upon the transcendental in a way that we can’t with truth, because, in this age of relativism, you know, we argue, “You have your truth, I have my truth.” But when something’s truly beautiful, it cannot be denied. Beauty circumvents that whole denial process. It touches us in a different way. And I think it kind helps to prepare the soil for the seeds of truth to be planted, so people become more receptive to the truth.

To produce seminarians better formed in this whole area of the Church’s musical heritage will add a lot to enhancing the experience of beauty and reverence at liturgies.

There’s been a lot of talk about this lately, since Pope Francis has been focusing a lot on liturgy in these last couple of years. The arguments about the Traditional Latin Mass aside, he is decrying liturgical abuses, encouraging more reverent and beautiful celebrations of the Mass. And this will certainly help us to do that.

The William P. Mahrt Sacred Music Chair (Part 1): Guest Article by Roseanne T. Sullivan

We are very grateful to guest contributor Roseanne T Sullivan for this article about a new chair in Sacred Music, named for our publisher, and long-time president of the Church Music Association of America, Dr William P. Mahrt. The chair has been established by His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, at the archdiocesan seminary and university of St Patrick in Menlo Park, and its first holder is our contributor Dr Jennifer Donelson-Novicka. This post will be followed by a second part with an interview with Archbishop Cordileone.

His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco has created an endowed chair in Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary and University, which forms clergy for the San Francisco archdiocese and for other dioceses throughout the West and the Pacific Rim. With the establishment of this new William P. Mahrt Chair in Sacred Music, many courses in the history and practice of the Church’s sacred music will be available to seminarians and to others who are interested.

St Patrick’s Seminary

The overall quality of music at the seminary liturgies will be enhanced by the musical direction and example of the new holder of the chair, Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka. In her new role as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Sacred Music at the seminary, she will also serve as the director of sacred music, overseeing all the musical activities in the seminary chapel, and accompanying liturgies at the organ, while both developing and directing a schola cantorum, which will sing Gregorian chant (in Latin), chant in English and Spanish, and sacred polyphony.

Here are some quotations from her paper “Emotion, Intellect, and Will: The Fruits of Sacred Music in the Spiritual Life”, which was given on June 29 at the Sacra Liturgia 2022 Conference in San Francisco.

“The Church has long been the greatest patron of beauty, feeding Christ’s sheep. Beauty is food for the soul. The world needs the material charity of the Church, but also Her spiritual charity.”

“It is possible to get to heaven without understanding much of anything about music, thanks be to God. But to willfully cling to ignorance or even an anti-knowledge which prizes ugliness or mediocrity is to choose to be deaf to one mode through which God makes known His glory.”

“Mediocre music, banal music is not spiritually neutral. It has a numbing effect on the soul, feeding the senses with the mere shadow of the glory of God’s love, but never really piquing our interest or helping us see God clearly. ... Bad music is a sort of spiritual junk food—food that looks like food, but makes us fat and lethargic. Musical junk food has no place in the sacred liturgy.”

Prof. Donelson-Novicka speaking at the Sacra Liturgia conference this past June; to her right are His Eminence Robert Card. Sarah, Archbishop Cordileone, and Fr Mark Doherty, the rector of St Patrick’s Seminary.

Professor Donelson-Nowicka wrote this to me in an email: “The chair is named after Dr. Mahrt in honor of his decades of devoted service to the cause of sacred music, not only in the Bay Area through his work at Stanford University and with the St. Ann Choir, but also nationally and internationally through his leadership as president of the Church Music Association of America (CMAA), and editorship of the CMAA’s journal Sacred Music.

“His scholarly work highlights, for example, how the Church’s Gregorian chant not only fittingly conveys the texts it adorns, but serves an integral role in the Church’s worship by expressing the nature of the liturgy itself. An Introit is an integral component of the liturgical action, moving the hearts of worshippers to the altar, and the procession to the sanctuary, sounding in a music that likewise moves. The Alleluia, in its profusion of notes on a short text, affords the opportunity for contemplation and meditation which, as the Church points out for example in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, is a dominant characteristic of the Liturgy of the Word. The Church’s polyphony, too, expresses a particular splendor, reminiscent of the glory of God in His creation.

“All these are insights that Dr. Mahrt has patiently developed in his own work and in the hearts of his listeners and readers. They are the thoughts of a man who takes seriously the worship of God as the center of his life, and who devotes his intellectual energies towards the probing of the gifts the Church gives her children to ‘worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.’

“Inspired by Dr. Mahrt’s work, the mission of the chair is likewise to bring together prayer, worship, theology, beauty, and academic and technical excellence in sacred music.”

Professor Donelson-Nowicka is also organizing an international sacred music conference to be held at St. Patrick’s seminary in November of 2023 celebrating the work of Dr. Mahrt.

The choice of Professor Mahrt is particularly exciting to me because I have been writing for years about his achievement of keeping chant and polyphony alive while it was out of favor. [1] I sang with the St. Ann Choir that he directs at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Palo Alto for a few years beginning in 2005, and was very impressed when I learned that he had persisted in directing that choir in the singing of Gregorian chant and motets at Sunday Masses, and polyphonic Masses on feast days, in liturgies where that kind of music belongs, even during the long decades when that kind of music was virtually banned in the Church after Vatican II.

Dr. Mahrt directing the St Ann Choir... 

and here, showing a large decorated folio with the introit of the choir’s patronal feast. 

Music at the Heart of the Archbishop’s B16 Institute

This exciting innovation is tightly aligned with the goals of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Liturgy, which Archbishop Cordileone founded in 2013.

I’ve also written several articles on Archbishop Cordileone’s initiatives to promote more-reverent liturgies through the Benedict XVI Institute. On January 5, 2014, I was present when Archbishop Cordileone along with Father Samuel Weber, O.S.B., the original director, announced the founding of the new institute. During its “opening night,” the archbishop announced, “The heart of the institute is music.” Among other related goals, he said that he wanted “to reclaim the sacred music that is so much at the heart of our celebration of the Mass.”

To do this, he continued, the institute would promote “what the Church has been asking us to do for a really long time, beginning at the Second Vatican Council” and continuing with “so many documents since, including the current General Instruction on the Roman Missal: Gregorian chant is to have first place in music at Mass.”

Archbishop Cordileone speaking at the Sacred Liturgia conference.

After the archbishop’s introduction, Fr. Weber demonstrated that it is easier than generally imagined to train people to sing chant well without much instruction on how to read the chant notation. Rehearsing with a program he had prepared with English chants of his own composition, Fr. Weber prepared the 200 or so people who attended to sing hymns and psalms at Benediction and Vespers of the Epiphany. As one commenter on Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s blog noted, “Vespers was fantastic, presided over by Abp Cordileone, and cantored by Fr. Weber, chanted in its entirety. Before we went into the Church for vespers, Fr. Weber did a quick tutorial/run-through of the chants for vespers, and unsurprisingly, everyone picked them up quite easily.”

The scope of the activities of the Benedict XVI Institute has widened in the ensuing years. On July 26, 2017, Catholic San Francisco announced that the institute’s name had changed a little, replacing “Liturgy” with “Worship” and that it was expanding its focus from sacred music to include also Catholic art, architecture, and literature under the new executive director, Maggie Gallagher.

Part of the expanded focus is to promote the creation of new works of art and literature and to build community and recognition between Catholic creatives, potential patrons, and other lovers of Catholic sacred arts.

The importance of music to the institute is evidenced by Archbishop Cordileone having named Frank La Rocca to be the institute’s composer in residence. The institute has commissioned several Mass settings so far from La Rocca: the Mass of the Americas, the Requiem for the Homeless, and Missa Sancti Juniperi Serra (in honor of St. Junipero Serra). La Rocca's new Messe Des Malades: Honoring Our Lady Of Lourdes, will premiere in February 2023.

The first Mass setting La Rocca composed for the institute, Mass of the Americas, continues to be performed in more and more cathedrals and churches long after it first premiered December 8, 2018.

Another great indicator that the results of the institute’s initiatives are also spreading into mainstream culture is a new album with a studio recording of the Mass of the Americas by Grammy-winning producer Blanton Alspaugh. After the album was recently released, it quickly rose to the top of the Billboard charts.

The institute also frequently sponsors events where other music, also art, and poetry from talented living creative Catholics is performed. “Our artists need to know we value their work, including a creative genius like Frank La Rocca, but also young artists,” Archbishop Cordileone has said.

The creation of the new Sacred Music chair that is the main topic of this article emphasizes the vital importance of priestly formation in survival of the Church’s heritage of sacred music. It seems to me to be an exciting step forward in achieving the goals of the institute, perfectly in line with the archbishop’s plan from the beginning to foster reverent liturgies.

The ripple effects of this new program may continue to be seen in many places in years to come. The Vatican Council II document Sacrosanctum concilium states, “The treasury of sacred music is to be preserved and cultivated with great care.” Those who benefit from training and the example of music skillfully performed at St. Patrick’s by an expert in expounding and performing the treasury of the Church’s sacred music will in their turn go out to spread the good news to many more places.

[1] See my articles “Gregorian Champ,” (National Catholic Register, 18 November 2007) and “Palo Alto’s secret gift to the Church,” (California Catholic Daily, 20 December 2017.)

Defining “Pastoral”, Secular Music at Mass, and Sundry

The fourth season of Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast has been published, and the upcoming weeks promise many excellent interviews. Check out the three episodes so far from this season, and look for several episodes per week over the upcoming weeks. The podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, and other platforms.

Pontifical Mass of Bl. Karl of Austria in California, Oct. 21

On October 21st, His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, will celebrate a Pontifical Mass in the traditional rite for the feast of Blessed Karl, Emperor of Austria, at the church of St Mary in Vacaville, California. The Mass will begin at 6pm, followed by a reception; the church is located at 350 Stinson Avenue. (Courtesy of Rorate Caeli.)

Announcing Sacra Liturgia San Francisco: June 28 - July 1, 2022

After postponements caused by the global pandemic, Sacra Liturgia is delighted to announce its fifth international conference on the Sacred Liturgy to be held, at the invitation of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in San Francisco, California, USA, from June 28 – July 1, 2022.

His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah will give the keynote presentation and shall be joined by a number of internationally renowned speakers and liturgical scholars including Bishop Steven Lopes, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, Father Michael Lang, Dom Alcuin Reid, Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka and Professor Duncan Stroik in addressing a variety of liturgical questions pertinent to the life of the Church in our day. In line with previous international conferences in Rome, New York, London and Milan, Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will include daily exemplary solemn liturgical celebrations of Mass or Vespers, concluding with a Pontifical Mass of St Junipero Serra, the Apostle of California, on his feast day, July 1st.

Further details of speakers and topics will be announced in October. Registration prices and facilities, including affordable accommodation options, will be made available in January 2022.

The full conference programme will be published after Easter.

Sacra Liturgia is profoundly grateful to Archbishop Cordileone for his invitation to come to San Francisco and for the opportunity to reconvene there. We look forward, in line with our previous conferences, to an informative event that will form its participants in the spirit and power of the Sacred Liturgy and its authentic renewal in the Church of the twenty-first century.

PS. At the time of writing the dates of the seventh international English speaking Saca Liturgia Summer School, to be held in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, in the summer of 2022 are being decided. They will be published through the usual Sacra Liturgia media in due course.

MESSAGE OF BISHOP DOMINIQUE REY

I am delighted that the fifth international Sacra Liturgia Conference will be held in San Francisco in the United States of America from 28 June - 1 July 2022. Since 2013 in Rome, New York, London and Milan, clergy, religious and laity concerned for the worthy and integral celebration of the Sacred Liturgy have come together to further their own learning and formation in the Sacred Liturgy, to pray the liturgy together, and to renew and build friendships amongst those active in what Cardinal Ratzinger once described as “the new liturgical movement.”

Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will continue this work, emphasising the essential nature of authentic liturgical formation and of the true and beautiful celebration of the Sacred Liturgy in the life and mission of the whole Church in the 21st century.

I am profoundly grateful to His Excellency, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, at whose personal initiative Sacra Liturgia will come to his Archdiocese. So too I am delighted that His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah, will be present as a keynote speaker: all those who heard his powerful addresses to Sacra Liturgia in London and in Milan will look forward to his contribution next year. I thank him and all the speakers in advance for their willingness to contribute.

The success of previous Sacra Liturgia conferences has been predicated on the generosity of local organisers, benefactors and sponsors. Without them we could not operate or provide admission at reasonable rates, particularly for students, seminarians and religious. I thank in advance all those who will help us to do this again for Sacra Liturgia San Francisco. Almighty God will not fail to reward your kindness!

I pray that Sacra Liturgia 2022 will bring many blessings to San Francisco, the United States and to the Universal Church!

+Dominique Rey

Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, France

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council taught that “Zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy is rightly held to be a sign of the providential dispositions of God in our time, as a movement of the Holy Spirit in His Church. It is today a distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action” (SC, n. 43).

The Sacra Liturgia international conferences on the Sacred Liturgy have been promoting the Council’s vision of zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy for the past eight years. We are honoured and delighted to welcome Sacra Liturgia here to San Francisco for its fifth such international conference, to be held from June 28 – July 1, 2022 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah, will give the keynote presentation. The conference will also feature a number of other internationally renowned speakers and liturgical scholars, including Bishop Steven Lopes, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, Father Michael Lang, Dom Alcuin Reid, Professor Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka and Professor Duncan Stroik who will address a variety of liturgical questions pertinent to the life of the Church in our day. In line with previous international conferences, Sacra Liturgia San Francisco 2022 will include daily exemplary solemn liturgical celebrations of Mass or Vespers, concluding with a Pontifical Mass of St. Júnipero Serra on his feast day, July 1st. The Mass will be held in the Basilica of Mission Dolores (founded directly by St. Serra) and will be the premier of the newly-composed Mass in Honor of St. Júnipero Serra by the composer in residence of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, Frank LaRocca.

Further details of speakers and topics will be announced in October. Registration prices and facilities, including affordable accommodation options, will be made available in January 2022. The full conference program will be published after Easter.

We look forward to an informative event that will, with the grace of God, further the “movement of the Holy Spirit in His Church” and affirm the restoration of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy as the “distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, [and] indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action.”

The Sunday Asperges: Holy Water in a Time of Drought

“…My flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is…”

It is not difficult to understand why it has been thought best to remove holy water from the stoups in our churches. Having lots of people dip their fingers into a common bowl at a time when germs are a bigger problem than usual is not a great idea. The same line of reasoning should also have led to a suspension of giving Communion from hand to hand, but logical consistency has never been a strength of the postconciliar Church. I cannot refrain from adding that those who maintain that if we just have “enough faith” (however this is to be measured), no amount of germs can ever get us sick, need a crash course on the concept of superstition in St. Thomas. Our baptism equipped us with marvelous supernatural powers, not Marvel superpowers.

All the same, the flip side is true: holy water has been and should be such an important sacramental in Catholic life that its removal ought to strike us as extremely regrettable, and steps should be taken to remedy its absence from churches. I’ve seen almost no indications that this is a feeling shared by most pastors and people, and I’m afraid that the explanation is obvious: holy water just ain’t what it used to be. Or to put it more simply, the only way you can get holy water is to use the old rite of blessing it, which really blesses it; the new rite doesn’t, as we learned at the last Sacred Liturgy Conference in a challenging talk given by Archbishop Cordileone, contrasting the old and new rites for the blessing of water (text; video). Fr. Zuhlsdorf presents the two rites side by side, where the difference becomes painfully, even scandalously, evident. (Here's a more recent article that does the same.)

Excerpts from the old prayer of exorcising and blessing holy water:

O water, creature of God, I exorcise you in the name of God the Father + Almighty, and in the name of Jesus + Christ His Son, our Lord, and in the power of the Holy + Spirit. I exorcise you so that you may put to flight all the power of the enemy, and be able to root out and supplant that enemy with his apostate angels, through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire…. May this, your creature, become an agent of divine grace in the service of your mysteries, to drive away evil spirits and dispel sickness… May the wiles of the lurking enemy prove of no avail. Let whatever might menace the safety and peace of those who live here be put to flight by the sprinkling of this water, so that the health obtained by calling upon your holy name, may be made secure against all attack…. Humbly and fearfully do we pray to you, O Lord, and we ask you to look with favor on this salt and water which you created. Shine on it with the light of your kindness. Sanctify it by the dew of your love, so that, through the invocation of your holy name, wherever this water and salt is sprinkled, it may turn aside every attack of the unclean spirit, and dispel the terrors of the poisonous serpent.

Now that’s how the Catholic Church used to pray — and still does, where the Faith survives.

The new rite reads like this:

Blessed are you, Lord, all-powerful God, who in Christ, the living water of salvation, blessed and transformed us. Grant that, when we are sprinkled with this water or make use of it, we will be refreshed inwardly by the power of the Holy Spirit… (etc.)

But nowhere an actual blessing of the water. Consequently, most Catholic churches for the past fifty years have had the equivalent of birdbaths, which has not allowed the demon-dispelling and passion-quelling power of this potent sacramental to impress itself on us. The replacement of this water with sand during Lent or with nothing at the present moment is not likely to cause a furor.

Have a squirt!

However, there is still a deep association for many between going to church and taking holy water. We want to do something when we enter a church to show that we are preparing ourselves for our purpose there. The water does remind us of our baptism and, if it is actually blessed water, it is an occasion of grace and the remission of venial sins, as St. Thomas argues. It seems most fitting that we make the sign of the Cross with water that is reminiscent of the water flowing, with blood, from the side of Christ. If our spirits are troubled from within or vexed from without, real holy water puts demons to flight, as St Teresa of Jesus says in her Autobiography: “From long experience I have learned that there is nothing like holy water to put devils to flight and prevent them from coming back again. They also flee from the Cross, but return; so holy water must have great virtue.” The language of the old prayer cited above perfectly explains why it has such power.

There are, then, multiple causes of regret. First, that the blessing of holy water was effectively abandoned. Second, that holy water is so readily and unobjectionably removed from churches. Third, that the habit of using holy water has diminished among Catholics to such an extent that most would not think of keeping a bottle of it on hand at home to sprinkle regularly in the home and on one another. Fourth, that the glorious ceremony of the Asperges, a regular feature before Sunday High Mass in the usus antiquior, has become a rarely-used and much-altered feature of the Novus Ordo Missae (bizarrely enough supplanting its penitential rite, because, after all, one can never pray too little for mercy).

Now is a good time to reverse all this.

• Ghostly fathers, use the real rite of blessing of holy water from the Rituale Romanum. Fr. Jerabek has conveniently formatted it on a single sheet of paper. You are allowed to do so by Summorum Pontificum; indeed, you are allowed to do so because what was sacred in ages past is and remains sacred and great for us and can never be considered harmful or be prohibited. 
• Put the Book of Blessings in a safe place, where no one will ever find it again.
• Use the Asperges with the High Mass whenever you can, and give the people a good dousing, with the follow-through of a tennis arm.
• Teach about the value of holy water and make small containers of it available at the back of the church for free.
• Fathers of families, get hold of real holy water and sprinkle it before bedtime, perhaps right after the evening rosary, on your wife and children. Or before the rosary, if it looks like some are too sleepy!

The faster we got rid of our distinctively Catholic items and practices during Covidtide, the more obvious it is that we no longer believe in their efficacy (this holds as much for sacraments as for sacramentals); the sooner we take them up again, or find ways to keep using them, the more evident it is that we are profiting from the trials willed by Divine Providence.

Huh?

“...until the Eschaton, Parousia, or whatever the government decides.”

This, at least, is better: the faithful are offered alternative access