Thank you, Chris! The rosary is a beautiful idea, but I'll have to run it by my liturgist...Huge parish, lots of red-tape. Please pray for the success of this!

Thank you, Mark! Certainly something to think about, I really appreciate your perspective and agree with the rosary or some other spoken prayer would defeat the purpose of trying to attain silence ahead of the solemness of the Liturgy.

My experience in trying to use music to silence a chatty congregation is that it does not work. In fact, quite the opposite. People will only chat louder so they can be heard above the organ.

I understand Mark's point about the Stations, and find it a valid criticism of the position. Nevertheless, since organ music is (or should be) forbidden, putting it in is (clearly) not the right solution. Recorded music is equally verboten -- as another thread has asserted. No more appropriate would be a showing of scenes from The Passion of the Christ on the east wall of the church beforehand. A meditation on the 7 last words would work. (Don't invent your own, for goodness sake, but use Abp Sheen's!)

Remember always that where the parishioners are, as a whole, is not where they should be, and you can't get them where they belong by taking them in the opposite direction.

Another idea: a public reading of a chapter (or selections) from Cardinal Sarah's book on silence.

If people are of sufficient ignorance to chat loudly prior to Good Friday, then no amount of "soft" organ music will stop them either.

My parish is doing something different this Lent at the Saturday evening Mass: Vespers 30 minutes before Mass begins, Missal chants a capella, soft organ accompaniment on hymns, and no recessional (except for Laetare Sunday); everyone leaves in silence. There has been noticeably less chit-chat. But IMO the thing that really encourages this quieter atmosphere is that the group of very reverent young people who have been singing at this Mass stand in silence as the priest, deacon, and altar servers exit, then they immediately kneel and pray.

TrentonJConn,

I didn't mean it to be passive-aggressive, but I can see how it would come over that way. One could also initiate a study group in Lent on the value of silence.

I once saw a sign over a church door that said, "if you must talk, whisper a prayer."

I was once at a church in which the pastor had a sign which said "Respect for the Blessed Sacrament includes silence in the church." If he caught people chatting in the church, he let them know about it. Last time I was there, the signs were gone, but nobody talks in the church, so I guess they did their job. More churches need to do that.

What would I do? I’m not employed by the church, so I would go into St. Rose of Lima mode and confront them about what is going on right now and to show some respect for our Lord.

Where is the pastor in all of this? This is a case of lack of knowledge of what the Triduum is. The Church is in mourning. There isn’t supposed to be ANY instrumentation, especially organ. Even the bells are silent and we use the crotalus at the Sanctus and consecration instead of the bells, which really has an emotional impact on me, I find. We don’t even use the organ to intone for the priest.

The priest needs to tell people the church is in mourning and now isn’t the time for visiting. Save it for Easter. You should not have any instruments, especially organ.

I think it’s time to restore the Church ministry of the person with the hooked stick who used to hit people with it if they stepped out of line. Not the most politically correct thing to do, but it might actually get results.

This would have to come from the pastor, but

1) Catechesis in the Holy Thursday homily at the latest about Th/Fr/Sat forming one giant liturgy, in that there’s no dismissal Thursday and no greeting Fri or Sat, and that this is an invitation from the liturgy to truly live in the moment of the Triduum, recalling Christ’s Passion: to watch at the tabernacle on Thursday night and spend all of Friday in deep recollection on the Crucifixion. If he would point out the truly strange beginning of Good Friday, when words fail and even the Happy Presider falls down before God, sunken in grief, then you might have better behavior.

2) Lights lowered toward the end of Holy Thursday, for the procession to the altar of repose, and kept down after Pange Lingua is finished.

3) Lights off for Good Friday, raised minimally after the Collect to permit the readings to occur. People just don’t act normally in the dark, and even the most obnoxious get really uneasy

I'd say playing organ instrumental softly prior to the start of the Good Friday liturgy with the intent of discouraging chit-chat in the nave qualifies as acceptable...

Wait, wait!! Aren't you the "RULES ARE RULES" guy regarding the EF?

To the topic......the whole point of reducing use of the organ throughout Lent and bringing it to zero after the Mass of Holy Thursday through the Gloria of Holy Saturday is to emphasize the seasonal penitence. The organ represents joy; it is all of creation singing to its God. Non-organ concentrates the mind on what happened on Good Friday: sorrow.

Tenebrae's message is exactly the same. Extinguishing the Light--thus, darkness--is a metaphor.

If anything, artists should be very sensitive to these manifestations. By the way: it is very easy for congregations to sing hymns without organ accompaniment, if there's a strong cantor. Try it sometime.

I suffered through a situation similar to Salieri's just above here. It was three or four years ago. I had been retained to play a Christ mass for Houston's French community at the chapel of St Basil at UST. I had great delight, no, glee in choosing some French baroque noels and some Langlais, both of which I imagined these people would delight in. Huh! To my utter shock and sad disappointment they talked loudly, very loudly, throughout these carefully and gleefully chosen voluntaries. I was moved almost to tears.

The worse was yet to come. the ordinary parts of the mass were sung by eight or ten quite non-gifted early teens who attempted to play guitars and flutes as they sang. It had all the din and musicianship of a class of kindergartners. How disillusioned I was at this group of French would be difficult to put into words! I trust that somewhere in France French culture can be found uncluttered with modern junk - not to hint that there is not some very good modern music, but it was lost on these people. I think it's endemic in our times, times in which adults seriously remark rather shallowly to one another that 'well, Christmas just for the children' - ditto E

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As for Good Friday, one of my favourite pieces for this occasion is Bach's setting in the Orelbuchlein of O Mensh betrubst dein Sunde gross - played with a plaintive regal or schalmei against a rohrflut and light but distinct pedal - or, try a 4' flute topped off with a nazard or a tierce for the solo part.

O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, a canonical offering, from the same book is also very appropriate and not to difficult.

I have even used some carefully chosen French Tierce or Cromorne recits. These must be of the sort that are condusisive to meditaion.

Some Howells would fitting.

But is this not all moot, since presumably you are not supposed to play voluntaries during Lent? --- though we of the Ordinaariate can.

In my years of playing for the NO during Lent, I often played those Bach chorales as introductions to the sung hymns. They are hymns, after all. I followed the rules of using organ to accompany singing, only. I didn't deal with the EF and was not concerned with what they did.

I suffered through a situation similar to Salieri's just above here. It was three or four years ago. I had been retained to play a Christ mass for Houston's French community at the chapel of St Basil at UST. I had great delight, no, glee in choosing some French baroque noels and some Langlais, both of which I imagined these people would delight in. Huh! To my utter shock and sad disappointment they talked loudly, very loudly, throughout these carefully and gleefully chosen voluntaries. I was moved almost to tears.

The worse was yet to come. the ordinary parts of the mass were sung by eight or ten quite non-gifted early teens who attempted to play guitars and flutes as they sang. It had all the din and musicianship of a class of kindergartners. How disillusioned I was at this group of French would be difficult to put into words! I trust that somewhere in France French culture can be found uncluttered with modern junk - not to hint that there is not some very good modern music, but it was lost on these people. I think it's endemic in our times, times in which adults seriously remark rather shallowly to one another that 'well, Christmas just for the children' - ditto E

I am saddened, but not surprised with what you are saying: today, France is, unfortunately, a "Low-Church" Catholic country; and I am not even sure we can say it is a Catholic country.

Jehan,

There are Catholics in France, as evidenced by the large number (relatively speaking) of seminarians from that country which are popping up in Traditional seminaries.

Every year on "Pink Sunday" I played as many of those Lenten pieces as possible. I also wore a pink shirt and encouraged others to do the same.

The color is rose... not pink.

Jehan,

I didn't mean to suggest that France was a country teeming with faithful Catholics in every hamlet and city. Indeed, France appears to be mostly burning the fumes of her Catholic heritage. All I meant was that there are more traditional seminarians in the two well known associations than in all the diocesan seminaries combined.

For the record, rose is just a shade of pink. They are both correct, rose is just a little more specific.

Both rose and pink are the names of flowers, used as colour names but not precisely defined. Rose has been used as a colour in English since the 12th century, pink only since about 1700.

Interestingly, the "rose" used by the local Trads has more of a red color that is darker than pink. The NO rose is pink. Don't know if that holds true elsewhere.

All right.

Take last year's ordinants in the FSSP: out of the ten, only one is French. The others are Germans, Austrians, and Americans.
Then, consider the ICKSP: they ordained eight priests, out of which three are French.

That makes four French priests ordained for the two main traditionalist communities in the Church. That's not a very big number, though most French dioceses would be more than happy to have three or four ordinations (consider the fact some dioceses didn't have a single ordination in the last fifteen years).

Compare this with the Communauté Saint-Martin, which had twenty six new priests this year; also consider the Communauté de l'Emmanuel (a Charismatic community), with eight new priests (I don't like the way they celebrate the Sacred Liturgy, but I cannot deny they are for the most part good and orthodox priests). Granted, some of them are not French, but the majority is.

I am not at all writing this to say France has no place for Tradition; on the contrary, most young priests in France love and embrace it, to various degrees. For instance, consider the good work of Bishops Marc Aillet (in Bayonne) and Dominique Rey (in Toulon), with relatively flourishing seminaries, where most seminarians are traditional in their approach of the faith.

I don't know if you are planning for the Novus Ordo, but I think the hymn Ecce Homo would be a wonderful piece to use for Good Friday and during Lent. If you have a good schola or choir, you could do this hymn acapella. This hymn appeared in five different Catholic Hymnals: the Wreath of Mary, Ave Maria Hymnal, Mount Mary Hymnal, the St. Rose Hymnal, and the Laudate Hymnal. The Laudate Hymnal borrowed from Mount Mary, so it’s the same arrangement and I didn't include it. So far, I've only uncovered two melodies. One was composed by the Sisters of Notre Dame (I like this one the best), the other gives credit to Fr. F. T. Walter. I don't know very much about him. The Ave Maria Hymnal version credits a German Gesangbuch, but it looks like the same melody credited to Fr. Walter.