Cantor vs. Choir, active participation & "the liturgical movement"

Chris_McAvoy

Blessed feast of St John to all,

The fascinating thing I discovered is that the "Liturgical Movement" in the end of the 19th and earlth 20th centuries started out promoting Gregorian chant as a method to achieve "active participation" in the liturgy. Active participation , meaning specifically to encourage congregational participation in singing prayers/music at the mass, as well as general attention to the what occurs at the mass.

Now what is strange for me here is that the early Liturgists and their associates attempted to promote gregorian chant primarily through "large choirs" and entire congregations singing it, especially the ordinary of the mass. They had 7000 people sing them together in an auditorium in new jersey around 1950, in addition to a number of other events. Primarily they were usually school children who learned the basic chants throughout the year in an official curriculum.

In the early 1950's the Liturgists started to gradually become discouraged at not encountering the degree of active participation they had intended to achieve with Gregorian chant. They than generally lost interest in it and began looking for absolutely "ANY" music that was simple, easy, familiar enough (often happening to be secular enough too) to achieve their goals of "active visual/vocal participation" at the mass.

Now the question here is this:

Why has there been throughout the 20th century and up to the year 2012 a prevailing "politically correct" yet theologically incorrect view that either a congregation or a choir must participate in singing a large amount of music at mass?

Why did the Liturgical Movement not instead rely on individual cantors or small duos or trios of them?

One of the prevaling trends in Every Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and "High" anglican/anglican use Church I've ever been to has been this:

The majority of the music at an "average parish" of these churches is always sung by either only 1 cantor or a small team of them. This was also the case in medieval latin christendom, as books and pictures illustrate. These are people who spend their entire lives studying music in one way or another, either through direct apprenticeship from an older cantor or by degrees in musiuc theory or combination of both. They have never been surgeons and plumbers who spend 5 minutes a week practicing music and the rest of the week with their family, chores and other work, as make up typical latin church choirs today.

If the majority or %50 of Gregorian chant (any other authentic ecclesiatical music for that matter) is not even intended for congregations or large choirs to sing, why in the world is this considered the goal of so many throughout the Latin/western christian world of today?

What has gone wrong?

If a single virtuoso cantor, such as Stelios Kontakiotis is enough to satisfy a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, why can not a Latin Catholic Cathedral maintain similar satisfaction?

Why is it all the importance placed on the choir and the congregation?
I am completely baffled.

Please explain how this impossible utopian vision of the perfect singing "active participation" church came to exist.

The irony is this: it is through the dominance of a good cantor (precentor) that a choir and congregation is formed to participate with them better in the less difficult, less changing, pieces of music.

Today in the modern Latin west the people who control the power of music in the church want an egg to lay a chicken instead of the chicken lay the egg. All this contributes is to scar the church liturgically year after year, needlessly, through ignorance.

It is time for this ignorance to end.

A renaissance and beauty in the liturgy will only be able to exist if it is led primarily by cantors as individuals.
The choir is secondary. The cantor is primary. Their are canons from ancient councils that require certain propers to be sung by a cantor, not a choir.

Projects like the simple english propers are in that context ultimately...pointless. Even if they are well intended and producing good results, they are but a temporary compromise soon to be forgotten in a few decades. They may pave the road for better music to come, but they miss the original intent. They skip the gradual, alleluia and tract, the primary pieces ment for solo cantors. They represent an attempt to conform to the "brutally practical ideals" held by misguided liturgists of the 20th century who stifle people like us, who waged war against the musicians over the last 60 years (the very musicians who founded this associations message board) and want "EVERYONE" to sing anything, regardless of content, no matter what takes to achieve it.

MarkThompson

Why did the Liturgical Movement not instead rely on individual cantors or small duos or trios of them?

. . .

Why is it all the importance placed on the choir and the congregation?
I am completely baffled.

I think history shows that people simply don't like to listen to cantors that much. People, by and large, like to either (a) sing and participate, or (b) hear a concert of good, sacred art music. Listening to some cantor croon is obviously inconsistent with (a), and as to (b) ... well, what's the best-selling recording of a cantor that you can think of? Maybe in some Eastern traditions people really get a kick out of listening to a "virtuoso cantor" for an hour or two, but not in the West.

The cantor is dead. Long live the choir.

Charles in CenCA

Chris and Mark,
I have the utmost respect for both your platforms and your intensities of concern. Chris, though your historical points are well spoken and certainly valid, they omit a huge amount of evidence not only justifying but demanding and exempifying the liturgical office of the schola cantorum, the monastery choirs and their descendants to the present age. That, too, is indisputable. The recent and large tomes by Anthony Ruff and Christopher West attest to that reality exhaustively.
What I hear underlying your plea for consideration is an extremely revolutionary notion that it might prove more expeditious and efficient to cultivate the formal office of Cantor, in the classical Hebrew or Orthodox sense of the term, than to cultivate equally proficient choral and congregational singing. In theory that, like all conceptions, has merit. But my own direct experience with a post colloquium encounter with some sort of NPM for Jewish cantors in Chicago three summers ago at a Westin hotel informs me that the very hallowed tradition of the Conservative and Orthodox Hebrew Cantor has been diminished in much the same fashion as all sacred music practices have suffered in the last half century.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the documents (like 'em or lump 'em) speak of ideals that are open-ended and rather all-encompassing. We can see evidence of that in the Midnight Mass just broadcast from St. Peter's, with notable improvements both to form and function of the liturgical music praxis there (ie. improved Capella Sixtina, the Gradual chanted beautifully, etc.) But in terms of redressing Church-wide musical woes via "The Cantor," I believe that such an effort, not much different than the group-think solutions post Pius X that waned, won't achieve any more success, because the root of the problem is not a liturgical problem, but an ecclesial problem from bottom to top, top to bottom.
You see microcosmic evidence for both the problem and solution by pointing out the nearest St. Hootenanny's in relation to the nearest "St. John Cantius."
Thought provoking though, as always.
C

francis

The notion that 'active participation' means everyone singing as much as possible is one of the most misunderstood and abused aspects of the "new theological" liturgical praxis of our time.

Turning the priest around to face the people did a psychological whammie on the liturgy. The priest all of a sudden turned his back on the tabernacle. We felt uncomfortable about that, (and rightly so), so we MOVED the tabernacle (and the King himself) off his throne and consigned him to the back "living room" replete with cushioned chairs, dim lights and... atmosphere!???. Then we realized that 'hey... we are here on the altar all by ourselves now... Jesus is resting in his private cave, so lets throw our own celebration..'. Of course, we then felt that we have to entertain each other and SMILE and 'be nice'. The Sacrficial Lamb got the boot and it was time to sit down and have dinner together!

Hey people!... Jesus is dying here! Let's get back to the proper orientation and frame of mind.

When we rediscover the proper roles of priest, deacon, cantor, (cantorum), choir, soloist, organist, instrumentalist and congregant, and how they are COMPLIMENTARY and not COMPETITIVE, put the King back on the throne, (front and center) and face him again like we are supposed to, then beautiful and sincere sacred music will emerge in our liturgies because we will have the focus of authentic worship back in our churches. We all have to stop the silly 'I have the right to the rite' mentality and get on with being the whole body of Christ, each taking his own part. We have to get rid of our egos and stop making the altar a stage. We have to stop thinking 'my part, my part, my part'.

Once that happens, the rest will fall into place most naturally.

CHGiffen

Well put, francis. The complementary nature of each and all of the participants in the liturgy has been on of the least well understood aspects of the problems we have had; indeed, we don't compete with each other in the liturgy, but instead we complete the liturgy by doing what we are called to do.

Charles in CenCA

When we rediscover the proper roles of priest, deacon, cantor, (cantorum), choir, soloist, organist, instrumentalist and congregant, and how they are COMPLIMENTARY and not COMPETITIVE, put the King back on the throne, (front and center) and face him again like we are supposed to, then beautiful and sincere sacred music will emerge in our liturgies because we will have the focus of authentic worship back in our churches. We all have to stop the silly 'I have the right to the rite' mentality and get on with being the whole body of Christ, each taking his own part. We have to get rid of our egos and stop making the altar a stage. We have to stop thinking 'my part, my part, my part'.
Once that happens, the rest will fall into place most naturally.

And thanks, Chuck, for seconding Francis' very humanistic point of "complimentary" to the essence of the worshipful dialogue.
Francis, I hope and trust that you know down to your bones how much my clinical analysis of "liturgical v. ecclesial" diagnosis you fleshed out in that lovely post captures my sentiments profoundly.

Chris_McAvoy

Though I presume and support the ad orientem position as normative and profoundly important I do not think that in and of itself is an explanation or solution to the circumstances regarding the emphasis on larger amateur choir compared to solo or quartets of lifelong skilled singers. The "liturgical movement " and it's problems came into existance long before "Ad orientem" had ceased to be commonplace.

Surely there is a deeper explanation. Even in churches which regularly have the traditional latin mass I have seen a reluctance to encourage solos, duos or trios for certain pieces of music.

Here are two quotes:

"by the 11th century, priests were being encouraged to teach clerks to help them with their liturgical duties. Although this activity never became compulsory and was probably never universal, a good many parish clergy, rectors, vicars, curates or chantry priests - taight one or more boys alongside their other duties, withou ever becoming full-time schoolmasters."

"Not only did twenty three of the twenty four aldermen attend the mass, together with 'many reputable Commoners of the City," but it was also decided that a solemn mass of the Holy Spirit should always in future be celebrated in the Guildhall chapel on the feast of St. Edward, that is on the day of the annual election of the mayor. So Woodcock's innovation continued until the Reformation when the mass was replaced by a solemn sermon.
It is significant that Woodcock specified that the mass was to be celebrated "with solemn music." At this time it was becoming fashionable for services in collegiate and parish churches to be accompanied by polyphonic music. This was expensive because it required the presence of a number of singers, and in particular, boys to provide the treble parts. By his will drawn up in 1442 the common clerk John Carpenter provided an endowment for the mayor and the commonalty that was to fund the feeding, clothing, and education of four London boys to be known as "Carpenter's Children." In return the boys were to assist at divine service in the choir of Guildhall chapel on festival days. Moreover the parish clerks of London were, by this date, professional lay singing men who had formed a fraternity dedicated to St. Nicholas based in Guildhall chapel. The clerks provided a chaplain to serve the St. Nicholas altar in the chapel and, in this way, the liturgical requirements of the city's rulers were suppled by the fraternity of clerks. On. the eve of the Reformation, Guildhall college and chapel were served by a warden, two (or possibly more) priests, one tutor, four boys and two singing clerks. Moreover in 1525 the city had decided to employ William Lewes, who had recently been a verher at St. Paul's, as the choirmaster and to play the organ. In requiring that the civic mass of the Holy Spirit should be celebrated in solemn music, Woodcock was keeping with current liturgical practices that were elaborating the music that accompanied the mass.

The term schola cantorum and all larger choirs existed primarily in cathedrals and larger more established/wealthier places.
A small rural village used whatever was available, whether 1 person or 4 people.

It is clear that in the past, the importance placed on congregational singing was less. How this evolved to be different than this is the question which no one is answering. The elephant in the room is not being addressed. Perhaps no visiting here yet one knows the answer. In time we may come to a clearer understanding of this question.

Perhaps the answer is in fact that protestant culture has inadvertently invaded the Church. Perhaps this is what the liturgical movement truly was in reality evolving into learning and adapting ideas from more than anyone else. Here we see what happened to these clerks and chanters after the reformation, resembles circumstances of the years 1965-1966 in key areas.

"The Reformation left them in possession of their chaplainries but barred from carrying out their former duties. Here as elsewhere it resulted in the purging of Catholic forms of worship, including ornate music and the use of organs. At Elgin the three ‘childer sangstaris in the quier’ continued to receive
their stipends, but the salary of the master of the song school appears to have been diverted to the master of the grammar school.35 Most song
schools did not survive the Reformation. The abandonment of ornate choral music meant that there was no need for choirs and still less for
song schools in which to train their choristers.36 This, no doubt, was why the ‘Inverness fragments’ came to be discarded as waste paper and
survived through being re-used by a bookbinder."

Between the years 1965-1966 is was not uncommon to witness the discarding of "ornate catholic forms" of music books in the USA.

Andris Amolins

No need to play cantor, choir, and congregation off against each other. The divine services have parts that might be sung by the congregation (responses, simple kyriale, Tantum ergo), those sung by choir (chant or polyphony), as well as those sung cantor. A well balanced model for this is offered, for example, in the Introduction to the Vatican Gradual (1908).

But finally it all rests on money. As we read in the previous post, the church music was based on chantries, benefices, stipends. They, in turn, were based on tithing agricultural production entities. Nowadays in the developed world agriculture is largely subsidized, and industry tied up with ever-changing financial markets. Most parishes, and even cathedrals (pace Rome and Westminster) pay a part-time organist who has to organize choir using amateurs he or she can get hands on. So may be instead of "Occupy Wall Street" we should have a movement "Tithe Wall Street"?

francis

Chris

While I do understand your point, the deeper issue is exactly what I am addressing. The fact that the priest was turned around is evidence that those in the heirarchy do not understand what it means to worship in Spirit and in truth.

The problem is rooted in each individual heart; loss of devotion, loss of respect for God and his church, loss of formation (spiritually and intelectually) within the clergy, loss of respect for the patrimony of the church and learning what it means to carry forward the traditions of our ancestors. Potestantism has had a huge impact on the outward reflection of the liturgy. I know situations where the entire clergy and staff do not embrace Catholic sentiments and agree NOT to do so. Many times they are converts who were never truly formed in the practices of faith AND tradition. These attitudes ebb and flow from generation to generation. Lack of formation allows for straying into experimentation and protestant practices are more or less allowed into the rite making it muddy.

Then there is the confusion and lack of understanding about what sacred music truly is among those who are "employed" by the church. An internal battle is constantly being waged against authentic sacred music by those who have the aspiration (and worse, the ego) to want to fill these positions. The majority of musicians I have known who are in Catholic church positions don't have a clue about what it means to worship in sacred music, and probably goes for a majority of the clergy too. They are in there because they know someone, want the money or the platform, are talented on the piano, are opera singers or want to be a rock star.

All of this contributes to the misunderstanding that we should turn the priest around so we can celebrate ourselves. Hence, what I am saying is that the attitude under the actions and disposition of the Church are in a bad way more than ever. This is the single most obvious reason why the Church is in rapid decline. Numbers mean nothing and authentic faith and practice mean everything. Recognition of sin and conversion of heart are what is MOST needed to see a true reform.

dad29

@Chris McAvoy....

A most interesting comment!!

Was the "Liturgical Movement" overly idealistic in its pushing of congregational "participation" by utilization of one-part singing (i.e, Chant)? Did they persuade Pius X that this was do-able on a large scale?

Did Pius XII, in his "three degrees" attempt a resolution which included the choir, the schola, and the congregation, thus pointing to a compromise which made the professional musicians AND the Lit Movement folk happy?

Or is "participation" really 'conforming one's will to Christ' in the Mass regardless of the number of notes sung?

The late, wonderful, Mgr. Schuler took pains to observe that the choir is 'representative' of the people when the choir sang the Ordinary (etc.), AND that the choir is also 'representative' of the choirs of angels.

Some interesting mind-wrestling there, indeed.

Charles in CenCA

The late, wonderful, Mgr. Schuler took pains to observe that the choir is 'representative' of the people when the choir sang the Ordinary (etc.), AND that the choir is also 'representative' of the choirs of angels.

Dad, the former association, choir as "faithful," is both literally and figuratively true, and is oft-repeated for everyone's benefit most notably by Prof. Mahrt virtually within every essay and event he's addressed I've shared in.
But the mind-wrestling part of the latter is even more compelling for my own tastes, which I rather align with Dr. Hahn's "Mass of the Lamb" eschatological and mystagogical implications. That, for me, has at its nexus, again both the literal and figurative, enjoining of earthly and heavenly choirs at the Sanctus moment within the EP at Mass. And that also is why I have a particular "jones" about what factors ought to be elemental for that particular ordinary movement. The worst possible moment to have a utilitarian, gebrauchsmusick, banal Kraftwerk rather than Kunstwerk is the taking up the Sanctus. And among the thousands of those "Holies" are a relative handful of monophonic chants and polyphonic settings that fulfill "my" criteria (my darned dog, Ego!)
To illustrate that notion, I've often cited Faure's setting of that from REQUIEM. If I had to take a leap of faith akin to what I'd choose if marooned on the proverbial desert island, I'd sooner choose the Faure to a thousand "Creations" or "Communities" even though millions of souls have sung those settings. And I also advance this Schuler/Marht/Hahn notion as a solid defense for the necessity of choirs at liturgy.

francis

touche Charles!

i will join you on the island if you ever get stranded and i will bring a priest and a good choir to your rescue.

CHGiffen

Charles - you may rhapsodize and have your leap of faith with the Sanctus of the Faure Requiem, and I can understand that, because it is a charming French romantic work, composed (even originally) for mixed choir, soloist, harp, tympani, organ and strings - and was (according to Faure himself) "composed for nothing ... for fun, if I may be permitted to say so."

For my part, I'm much more drawn to the Durufle Requiem, which is full of Gregorian themes, set originally for mixed choir, optional soloists, and organ - and was composed in memory of his father.

Both of these works are from the "French school" - and omit the Gradual, the Tract, and the sequence "Dies irae" - yet the treatment and effect is rather different. While I love Faure's work, I'm brought to my knees by the Durufle.

francis

CHG

After I pick up Charles we will come to your Island too. MH will be left to his own island with all his admirers.

David Sullivan

Francis, your initial post on this thread could have been a verbatim transcription of my college experience circa 1975. The only difference was instead of moving the tabernacle, they moved the students' evening Mass right out of the church to the parish hall. The potluck kitchen smells and sounds wafted through the hall all during Mass.

As for my part, I stayed far away from the 'student' Masses, but stuck to the parish morning Mass, and in the afternoons, ambled a few blocks across town for Episcopal evensong and my first introduction to sacred music. Those years gave me an introduction to Worship II (or maybe Worship I?) and the 1940 Hymnal.

Charles in CenCA

Dr. Chuck,
The Faure merely was intended to illustrate the deeper point Dad was asserting about "representation." I briefly thought that something along the lines of origin or taste might detract from that point. I have sung both many times and find them yet and still worthy by comparison. To me it is of little consequence that Faure may have said it was a "little nothing' or trifle, it works in my cosmology nonetheless, whereas a perfunctory work, no matter how well taken up by a cantor/choir/congregation? Not so much. YMMV, always.
Afterthought P.S.
At the risk of overselling my point, I'd take the opposite view if someone asserted that the Samuel Barber "Adagio," adapted to set the Agnus Dei would exemplify the choral representation of "angelic choirs" if used within liturgy. I'll just leave it at that and your analysis and imagination.

CHGiffen

Sorry, Charles. No offense intended, and I didn't mean to muddy the waters on the point you were making.

Charles in CenCA

No offense taken, Chuck, really. I think the great thing about hanging out here is that we will always defer to the higher ideal, something that will always hold some mystery and attraction we cannot explain away thoroughly.
As Francis has most eloquently pointed out, if we had the temerity to presume we could comprehend "why we go to Mass and worship" thoroughly, then the best consequence of that would be to NOT go to Mass as there'd be no need.
All the clever constructs of "art" and "intellect" that don't inconvenience us at all are not worth a pot to....well, you know, when it comes to being in the aweful presence of "AM." Tremble, tremble, tremble then is no longer some cliched mantra that is customarily trouped out on Passion Sunday and Good Friday....

Jeffrey Coggins

Samuel Barber's "Adagio" set to Agnus Dei

CHGiffen

Interestingly, Barber rejected arrangements of his Adagio (by others) for organ (or including an organ part) and refused to make his own organ arrangment (saying he didn't know enough about the organ). And it was some 30 years after the original composition (as a movement of his string quartet and subsequent string orchestra arrangement as a separate piece) until he arranged the Adagio as an "Agnus Dei" for 8-part a cappella chorus.

Charles in CenCA

This is great! (except for maybe Chris' thread objective) I've heard Shaw's recorded performance among others, and a great HS choir (Mt. Eden, Hayward CA) sing the Barber in Grace Cathedral to perfection. That being said, not having the musicological inclinations, cred and sheepskin of CHG, MOC, Frank LR and DougS et al, once I'd encountered the choral adagio, it was so obvious it was a retrofit, not because of any deficiency in the setting, but because of a gut surety about the original I'd fallen in love with as an undergrad around 72, in either quartet or str.orch. arrangements. A composition, of any form, I believe speaks for itself and that axiomatic difference I spoke of above, "clever" or "inspired." Just for spits and giggles, you have to know there just might be some whack job out in the hinterlands who thinks it'd be a great idea to set Psalm 22/23 (The Lord is my shepherd) to Ive's "Central Park in the Dark." Or a "Kyrie" to his "Unanswered Question!" (No wait, Paul Winter did THAT in Missa Gaia, oops.)*

Happy New Year all.

*I may be the sole RC who actually regards Missa Gaia with deep respect; tho' it ain't sacred music, it theatre. But there was lotsa genius and inspiration from that crew, especially Paul Halley, a very under the radar composer IMHO.

dad29

While Sanctus-ing about, the Mozart 'Coronation' Sanctus ain't bad, either. A little more resource-hogging...but as I tell my choirs, that one is the Big Bad Cherubim representation, contrast to the Little Fat Cherub representation of the Faure (or Durufle).

I think what we see in the various documents from the Vat is a tug-of-war between the high-end Musician crowd and the more low-end (not quite gebrauchtmusik) bunch. GKChesterton's "wildly reeling, but still erect" Church.

Chant fits in the middle. It is not gebrauchtmusik, really, because it needs some sophistication to execute it well. But it certainly is not 4- or 8-part w/orchestra.

dad29

edit above: ".....Big Bad Seraphim" (v. little fat cherubim).

Charles in CenCA

O Dad-io, nowheres did I assign any chant ordinary to Hindemith relegation! Even the Sanctus of the Dead!
Just a clarification.

francis

I created an exacting arr of the adagio for organ. it uses double pedals and i even managed to heel a note while controlling the swell shoe with the toe. you can hear it on youtube.

dad29

Maybe I should have been clearer? SOME Chant is very easy to sing for congregations. Other Chant is not-so-easy to sing for congregations.

mahrt

To the original point, history (and continuing rubrics) provides an example of the role of the cantor in the verses of the gradual and alleluia. It is likely that at least the gradual was in its earliest form was a cantorial chant. There is also the role of the schola: in many monasteries, the Mass propers are sung by the schola, while the entire community sings the ordinary. In some, even the verses of the gradual are sung by the entire community, and the effect is not edifying.

Chris_McAvoy

Here is the finish for this thread.

I found myself agreeing with Arturo Vasquez comments, except for the last part about "Only the kookiest of traditionalists believe that irreverent liturgies offend God" (It is interesting to consider some people would Dr. view me this way.)

These are the types of comments I was hoping someone here would have the insight or courage to come up with:

"All of this is not to say that I don’t sympathize with (Geoffrey) Hull’s arguments on some level. He is very keen to draw out how the emergence of 19th century ultramontanism ultimately paved the way for Vatican II. However, he paints some features of the picture, but never quite gets to a real portrait. While increasing centralization of church discipline is ironically at fault for the “chaos” that the Catholic Church is experiencing in terms of daily practice, such centralization betrays a rather more profound transformation of humanity in the face of the modern world, and the old structure of the Catholic religion itself.

The reason no one cared (or cares) about liturgy is because Catholicism is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon. It is the “tribe at prayer”; historically, it was the body of rituals, moral rules, and hierarchies that held together the fabric of society. All of these pieties, liturgical or private, were the exclusive domain of the clergy, in the sense that that the laity were the ones who were supposed to pay and obey (and occasionally pray), while the clergy offered up the “real prayers” for them. It is the collapse of the Catholic feudal order that led to the collapse of this division of labor, and the Catholic hierarchy has ever since had to try to devise ways to make the laity into “intentional disciples”.

One could also say that such a transformation also brought about a change in the nature of God, even for the average Catholic. The old liturgical order assumed that God was in the sky angry at humanity, and needed to be placated through the re-representation of the sacrifice of his own son on the cross. That is not a popular opinion any more, and even when it occasionally emerges, it does so in an entirely different environment. In this frame of mind, it is manifestly unimportant if the people participate in or understand the liturgy. The liturgy works, it does its job, and the clergy exist in order to keep the blessings of an all-powerful God from leaving his people. Today, an entirely different idea of God is in existence, and that is why, for example, the Church has nuanced its position on such doctrines and practices as ecumenism, Limbo, religious liberty, lay ministries, and Eucharistic reception. St. Therese of the Child Jesus’ absolute trust in a kind God is very iconic in this sense, as is the current practice of vesting in white for funerals. Such things would have been unthinkable prior to, say, the French Revolution, just as it would have been unthinkable for “orthodox” theologians to entertain the hope that all will go to Heaven in the end.

That is my theory as to why the liturgy changed: the prior theology of the Catholic Church became “unpreachable”. The legalistic religion that existed prior to the emergence of secular society can no longer exist in our environment, and neither can the accoutrements that accompanied it. Catholic opinion now, even in the most conservative framework, is that God doesn’t care about liturgy, as long as people’s hearts (and heads) are in the “right place”. Only the kookiest of traditionalists believe that irreverent liturgies offend God, and even then, they are often only revealing their own neuroses in the face of a shifting ideological superstructure. To those who would consider themselves believers in spite of historical change, the new order is nothing to fear. In reality, what is going on now is the Church changing in order to stay the same. In this process, there is nothing to grab onto, no vision of the pristine ancient Church where everyone sang Gregorian chant after fasting for three days in church. The only real stability is that nothing is stable. We are used to that in other realms of our lives, we might as well get used to it in the religious realm as well.

God save us if this is true.
As for me I really will become a hermit priest with my own chapel and cell on the mountain top if that's what it takes to be immune from this sort of pessimism. While I may agree with much of what he says, I believe most of all in the matins lessons by the church fathers that I read.

"By reason of a certain proness and tendency to sin, our frail human minds and bodies are nemeshed in wrongoding, and so by the eighth day of
circumcision, the future cleansing of all our sins at the time of the Resurrection is prefigured. Here is the meaning of, Every male that openeth the wromb shall be called holy to the Lord: by these words from the law, the Child-bearing of the Virgin was promised. And truly he who opened her womb was holy, for he was spotless - St Ambrose of Milan (for the circumcision)Bk 2. on Luke Ch. 2.

MaryAnn Carr Wilson

The guy you quote is so wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. His logic and history are full of holes supported by swaths of bitter assumption spouted by the most ignorant anti-Catholics.
Courage? No. How about a clanging gong sounding unbelief?

His view of the importance of liturgy in the lives of the faithful is deeply offensive. Granted, one can come to Christ when no sacraments are available. But to say that no one cared or cares about the immense gift of Jesus in the Eucharist denies the lives of martyrs- many of them lay faithful- who died defending their Lord. Consider the formative value of the sacred liturgy in the lives of the faithful. Consider what we as His body are going through right now as translations for one of our languages are corrected so the faithful can better ingest theology and ecclesiology of the wider Church.

If the ideas above writer puts forward cause any turbulence for you, allow me to point out a
a very basic aim of his diatribe. The writer attempts, through gross historical overreaching, to widen an imaginary gap between clergy and laity. This is nothing short of dividing the body of Christ. This 'divide and conquer' tactic is
most often utilized in the hope of turning faithful to non-Catholic ideas the antangonist supports. It is a ploy for your loyalty to further their ideas. It happens with every election, every revolution, every schism, every heresy. Appeal to the people against their clergy. Nothing new.
A partial antidote to this? Get to know a few priests and religious. Reach out and remember they are part of Christs body as you are.

I wish I had more time to write, and I only responded because the writers ideas got my Irish up. Now off to work homeschooling my children and preparing chants for Epiphany.

From the excerpt you post above, Chris, I wouldn't give the author any credence. His ideas are not brave, or pessimistic, just unreflective of the Church worldwide. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

CHGiffen

+1+1+1 MaryAnn

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