First of all, it's pretty easy to get the impression that the Wake Up! CD had clear papal approval when you see the Vatican Radio website gjve his rock n'roll CD a warm endorsement. The official Vatican news website announced its release here.

Other big-name publications such as The Guardian (which gave it a withering review, The NY Times, Boston Globe and Rolling Stones all claim in their headlines: Pope Francis to release album.

Most Catholics, myself included, have long been conditioned to expect things coming from the Vatican and clearly marked with the papal "brand" to be good, praiseworthy and of high quality. I even have Pope St. John Paul II's Abbe, Pater CD in my collection, and it's not in the same league as Wake Up! which was, by all accounts, judging by the reaction of the reviewers-----unprecedented and revolutionary.

As The Guardian reviewer points out, previous papal albums have all been "recognisably holy music."

So, please, you have to excuse my tardiness in not throwing bouquets for the Pope's other CD just yet; I was still reeling from the first one and simply could not process it yet. Of course, anything with the Deutsche Grammophone label ought to be excellent, and I applaud the efforts. However, I don't feel the least moral scruple for complaining publicly about "Wake Up!" since I believe it's important to register my negative reaction to what appears to be the papally approved degradation of Gregorian chant.

On the other hand, you're correct, Chonak, that one ought to praise the Vatican and the Pope for promoting beautiful sacred music, and I am only too happy to comply. As I've pointed out in this thread all along, I was very appreciative of the papal Masses in the U.S. this week.

I imagine in good time I will become even more adept at responding to the mixed offerings of the Vatican: Prog-rock one day; baroque the next. Hey, no problem. I've got this. I'm chill.

One Catholic writer reacted on Facebook with one contemptuous word: "Sick."

Actually, that was a compliment. Young folks say something is sick when they mean it is cool, great, and awesome. Go figure! I would use the term in its original sense.

So, please, you have to excuse my tardiness in not throwing bouquets for the Pope's other CD just yet

No excuse or apology needed as no one should pay mind to The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking.

Looking for a bridge to buy?

http://www.f84cloit.eficom2.info/img/nivoslider/avignon-coeur-historique/03.jpg

I think the city officials in Obregón, Sonora, should be contacted. They'd already have a great theme song for the bridge available to them.

But, as the photo shows, this is a bridge to nowhere, as is this thread.

Here's the chant melody which the vocalist on "Wake Up" followed (with slight modifications):


It's an antiphon sung at funerals; one can find it in the Liber Usualis.

Here's the recording: https://soundcloud.com/believedigitalitaly/wake-up-go-go-forward/s-DONtr (the chant melody starts at about 3:55 into the recording).

If singing the chant melody with a pop-rock accompaniment seems like a "corruption", well, that's an opinion about the music, and anyone is entitled to have their own opinion. But to accuse the singer of a "flagrant and deliberate corruption" may be a case of rash judgment.

To be fair to JulieColl about another point: I'll grant that the Vatican Radio piece about the record was a "plug", an act of promotion. We just differed in how we interpreted the message: as a perfunctory plug or an enthusiastic one.

Mellow Charles

I am happy to hear the Sistine boys do not sound like the boys of Kings. That would have been a mistake had it happened.

Yes, in a saner world, one might rest assured that no one will want to sing chant with rock accompaniment in the liturgy, but who can count on the good sense of the clergy and the musicians nowadays?

There are too few who will raise the colors for fear of being mocked or even shot down.

Let's be a bit more realistic. Raising colors and truth can get you marginalized and unemployed. Being too pure, but out the door, means you can't accomplish squat. it goes without saying that you have to know your priests and congregation well.

Francis, thanks for your kind words. I'm not much of a Crusader; I'm more like a mouse in real life. I'm really only a keyboard warrior which is a different thing altogether and doesn't require much fortitude at all, but it is easier for me to say things than others since being a church musician is not my full-time career.

I'm all for thinking long term, Charles, as long as the future is not going to be a repeat of the last fifty years. Hopefully, at some point soon there will finally be an effort made to follow the mandates of Tra le Sollecitudini, De Musica Sacra, and Sacrosanctum Concilium to teach the people to sing and say in :Latin those parts of the Mass that pertain to them.

If the Church's liturgical mandates had been followed all along---if Catholics had even the most basic Catholic cultural literacy--- this prog-rock/Gregorian chant atrocity would never have seen the light of day.

Some may say, "But, Julie, teaching the people the chants of the Mass is an ideological fantasy, a pie-in-the-sky liturgical utopian dream. It's too much to expect from the people. It just can't be done."

Well, to them I say, let's take a trip down memory lane and look at what was going on in
Dakar, Senegal (yes, in West Africa) in the late '50's and '60's. In the biography of Arbp. Marcel Lefebrve written by Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, we read that at a funeral ceremony circa 1960 for the victims of an AirFrance crash, "The whole government was there . When the Nuncio intoned the "Libera me", all the Catholics joined in singing heartily."

We also read that for the Dakar Pan-African Congress, the presidents of Senegal, Madagascar, Dahomey, and the Upper Volta "came to the cathedral for High Mass and sang loudly together all the Latin chants, including the Graduale," i.e., the Propers.

We also read that "the faithful knew all of the chants perfectly (i.e., Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc.) and understood that the Latin language is a sign of the unity of the Faith."

It must also be noted that in 1962, Cardinal Agagianian stated that if the Bishops' Conferences were given the right to legislate in matters regarding the liturgy, 'Art and Gregorian music will fall into ruin . . . We run the risk of creating anarchy."

It is precisely this state of ruin and decay, what Cardinal Ratzinger referred to as "the collapse of the liturgy", that has given rise to the bastardization of chant found on the new papal CD, which very few have the will to protest, precisely because Gregorian chant is no longer a relevant part of Catholic culture.

Just to reiterate: the lay faithful of the preconciliar Church in Africa were singing not only the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin perfectly, but some were also singing the Graduale as well. What's to stop us from following their example?

What a hoot and a holler!

If the Church's liturgical mandates had been followed all along---if Catholics had even the most basic Catholic cultural literacy--- this prog-rock/Gregorian chant atrocity would never have seen the light of day.

Why, why, why is the leadership and education so lacking in the area of Catholic music? I will never understand it. It's not like we don't have a whole system of our own schools, for heaven's sake.

Why, why, why is the leadership and education so lacking in the area of Catholic music? I will never understand it. It's not like we don't have a whole system of our own schools, for heaven's sake.

Do Catholic parishes operate schools in Italy? That's where this happened.

Did Pope Paul VI make the correct decision? Like the saying goes, you make the call.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I understand your reservations, Francis, about the process of "mutual enrichment" which appears to have been the path chosen by Pope Benedict to roll back the Bugnini reforms. Of course, you and I would no doubt desire a much quicker and more efficient method, but I suspect Pope Benedict did not wish to reform the liturgy in a sudden, abrupt fashion that might seem arbitrary and capricious on his part but was attempting to foster the more gradual and incremental process of organic development of the liturgy.

As he said as then-Cardinal Ratzinger in his introduction to Dom Alcuin Reid's book, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, quoting the CCC: "even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the Liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the Liturgy."

I may be mistaken in this, but even though the Bugnini reforms were created in an "on-the-spot", fabricated, artificial way---as "liturgy-by-committee", it would seem that Cardinal Ratzinger was advocating that liturgical renewal be conducted in a different way, a way that remains open to development but also maintains a substantial continuity with Tradition.

In other words, and this is my own interpretation, it seems that, confronted with the "collapse of the liturgy"---a mess he did not create but wanted to clean up---Pope Benedict XVI desired a return to a traditional liturgical expression in a gentle, harmonious, seamless fashion and not by imposing his will in an autocratic, dictatorial fashion:

From the same introduction by then-Cardinal Ratzinger:

It seems to me most important that the Catechism, in mentioning the limitation of the powers of the supreme authority in the Church with regard to reform, recalls to mind what is the essence of the primacy as outlined by the First and Second Vatican Councils: The pope is not an absolute monarch whose will is law, but is the guardian of the authentic Tradition, and thereby the premier guarantor of obedience. He cannot do as he likes, and is thereby able to oppose those people who for their part want to do what has come into their head. His rule is not that of arbitrary power, but that of obedience in faith. That is why, with respect to the Liturgy, he has the task of a gardener, not that of a technician who builds new machines and throws the old ones on the junk-pile. (my emphasis)

Yes, I agree. I think it was characteristic of Pope Benedict that he was a gentle reformer and did not rush head-long into anything. In other words, he was not like the huge white semi truck, beside which I was rolling down the highway this morning. As we approached a red light at a large intersection, I slowed down . . . but he kept rolling right along. I watched in horrified fascination as he plunged through the intersection, cars honking, people screaming and brakes squealing. Miraculously, he made it through without a pile-up or fatality, but my hands are still shaking after seeing that.

Alas, Charles, alas.

However, on the bright side, we are very blessed to have Robert Cardinal Sarah at the helm of the CDW. I'm in the middle of his book, God or Nothing, a most illuminating and inspiring read.

A connection I had not made before: Cardinal Sarah was baptized and instructed by the White Fathers, the Holy Ghost Fathers, in his hometown in French Guinea and taught by them in seminary. The Holy Ghost Fathers at that time were under the leadership of Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve who was the District Superior of all French-speaking Africa.

So . . . the accounts I gave before of the amazing Catholic cultural literacy of African Catholics before the Council---where, in Archbishop Lefebrve's biography, stories are told of congregations of Catholics singing the parts of the Mass with ease and even singing the Gregorian propers with ease---were no doubt formative influences on Cardinal Sarah as well. He, from what I can tell, unless I'm mistaken somehow, was a product of the original preconciliar Liturgical Movement as lived and carried out by Archbishop Lefebrve's missionary priests in Africa before the Second Vatican Council.

I'll probably know more about that when I finish his book.

Yes, I know and understand what you are saying, JulieColl... I just think that it will be a vain effort to try to put Latin in the NO, even as I am very involved in doing just that... it creates a schizophrenic parish.

Proposed "Wake Up!" Improvement