Sing to the Lord - Authority?
  • JaredOstermann
    Posts: 488
    Can anyone tell me if the recent USCCB document Sing to the Lord has any binding force - is any pastor obliged to pay attention to it? It isn't perfect, but it is moving in the right direction on a lot of things. I find myself quoting it as an authority. Then my pastor or the diocesan liturgy office says it's nonbinding trash and pay no attention to it. I'm in the unusual position of trying to get my pastor to listen to a USCCB document on liturgy - especially on things like singing the gloria during the sprinkling rite and using more latin and sung liturgy. Should I just forget about this document?
  • G
    Posts: 1,400
    SttL is basically good, but non-binding because it was not submitted to Rome for recognition, advice.

    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    My understanding is that it is no more or less binding that the document it replace, Music in Catholic Worship. Anyone who is resisting SttL is probably attached to MiCW
  • Paul F. Ford
    Posts: 864
    It is binding when it quotes other documents to the level of binding force of the original document. (As Robert Bolt's Sir Thomas More said, "I trust I have made myself obscure.")
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,206
    There is good information in it, and it's better written than its predecessors (Music in Catholic Worship and Liturgical Music Today). With respect to Dr. Ford's comment, it is interesting to note that there are very few, if any, quotations from any of the official documents from the Holy See. Most of the quote other USCCB documents, making the whole thing rather self-referent.

    However, as I (and others both here and at other sites including the formidable Helen Hull Hitchcock over at Adoremus Bulletin) have pointed out, apart from being advisory in nature only, owing to the lack of recognitio of the Holy See which was an intentional move on the part of the USCCB, it is also plainly obvious that it was written by two different people: one who knows and understands the implications of the "season of silliness" visited upon the Church in the last 40 years, and another who wishes to keep the controlling interest of GIA et. al., and the rest of the "liturgical/industrial complex" intact.

    In any event, it must be read with great care, and one should be very familiar and well-read in the documents of the Holy See, most especially Musicam Sacram.
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    I have to beg to differ with those who say SttL is better-written than MCW.

    The content of SttL is improved over that of MCW, I will grant, but the actual quality of writing, organization, and consistency doesn’t seem to be as much there. It seems, to me, to bear the trappings of a document that was pieced together from disparate, separately written parts....almost as if they had Ruff write this part, Foley do that part, etc.

    I think it carries a stronger endorsement/recognition than MCW by virtue of its having been approved by the entire body of bishops.
  • Pes
    Posts: 623
    It's an absolute dog's breakfast of writing. So is MCW. I've seen better work from first-year college students, and these days, that's saying something.
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    Actually, it's not so much GIA that had a piece of the action. OCP and the NPM played a huge role in this watered down paper tiger.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,816
    I use the "authentic" parts to align Catholics with a true understanding of the liturgy. As for "Authority"? That's a tough one.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    SttL: two authors, one with knowledge and a vision of progress, the other stuck in the 70s. That sounds about right. in a strange way, it is a reflection of the current environment.
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    www.vatican.va
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    2004-apr-23 Redemptionis Sacramentum
    http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html

    [28.] All liturgical norms that a Conference of Bishops will have established for its territory in accordance with the law are to be submitted to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for the recognitio, without which they lack any binding force.[65]

    footnote65:
    Cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 838 § 3; S. Congregation of Rites, Instruction Inter Oecumenici, 26 September 1964, n. 31: AAS 56 (1964) p. 883; Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction Liturgiam authenticam, nn. 79-80: AAS 93 (2001) pp. 711-713.
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