Bishop Blair promotes chant
  • lmassery
    Posts: 406
    Just wanted to share some interesting news. One of my friends in the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, sat in on a meeting with Bishop Blair and the musicians for the diocese. According to my friend, Bishop gave them materials for the new translation of the Mass as well as the instruction to use organ primarily and give Gregorian chant and Polyphony pride of place in the liturgy. It seems like the new translation is presenting a great opportunity to re-evaluate our liturgical music.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    wow, that's great great
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,051
    Yay hooray! Maybe it's contagious and the Diocese of Youngstown will catch it.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    A good friend of mine, who is also the DM of the parish church in my hometown (in the Toledo diocese) is also the chair of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission.

    I'm hoping to speak with her soon to get the "straight dope" on this.

    I'll report back when I have more details.

    I can tell you that this will not go over well generally in that diocese, which is known for typical, liberal, "spirit of the Council" contemporary music junk.
  • miacoyne
    Posts: 1,805
    lmassery, thank you for sharing. I wish the bishop in our diocese and others also do something similar. It would be truly wonderful.
  • Allan DAllan D
    Posts: 43
    I attended the Toledo diocesan workshop, which was held Oct. 16 in Findlay. Bishop Blair's talk was outstanding; parts of it sounded almost like something you might hear at a CMAA Colloquium. From the notes I took, these were his main points, which I've paraphrased:

    - We have both tradition and innovation, and we have both unity and diversity. (This was the main theme of his talk.)
    - The World Youth Day Masses, with their use of both Latin and contemporary music, are a good example of bringing together and respecting tradition and innovation, unity and diversity.
    - Pope Benedict's "hermeneutic of continuity" is the way we should look at Vatican II and liturgical music.
    - The pipe organ has pride of place and must not be excluded; we should ask ourselves, are we respecting that in parish life?
    - We should, by now, have a certain maturity about the use of Latin and not feel threatened by it, as if it was somehow going to undo the changes of the Council.
    - Vatican II said Latin should be preserved; "Sing to the Lord" recommends specific settings that people should learn.
    - Some of our clergy and people will not be enthusiastic about you doing this, but it's still important.
    - It seems that people often sing the old hymns better than many contemporary hymns. Consider this when planning music.
    - The USCCB documents talk about the three judgments of liturgical, pastoral, and musical; we should also take into account the *doctrinal* element, although that is mainly for the bishops to worry about. (He gave as an example the names of the Persons of the Trinity and the problem of changing the language of the faith for reasons of, in his words, "ideological revisionism" and "misplaced feminism".)
    - The Responsorial Psalm should follow the official Lectionary text and should not be paraphrased.
    - He singled out "Sing a New Church Into Being" as an example of a text whose words, as he put it, "have no basis in the scriptures or the catechism or the liturgy" (although he stopped short of saying we shouldn't use it.)
    - We should sing Christmas hymns throughout the entire Christmas season, and Easter hymns throughout the entire Easter season, rather than go back to "ordinary time" music as soon as the day itself is over. (This is apparently a problem he has observed throughout the diocese.)
    - Liturgical music is about singing the Mass, not just singing AT Mass; hymns are the last priority.

    I got the sense that a lot of the people in attendance were uncomfortable with what he was saying, which didn't surprise me one bit, as Bishop Blair inherited a very liberal diocese when he took over 7 years ago, and the liberals remain firmly in control of virtually all the parishes and the diocesan administration. No one really criticized him, although during the Q&A, one person seemed somewhat distressed about his comments on the pipe organ. He responded that you don't have to use the organ all the time, but it should not be excluded completely from a parish's experience of the liturgy.

    Several other people gave talks, accompanied by handouts, which included online resources for liturgical music. Much to my pleasant surprise, these included the web sites of the CMAA, Corpus Christi Watershed, Adoremus, CanticaNOVA, CPDL, and IMSLP. The final speaker provided a list of chant resources and church documents on sacred music, starting with "Tra le sollecitudini". Of course, this was all mixed in with the usual NPM/GIA/OCP/WLP stuff, but at least it was there. I hope some of the people who attended will start to take a serious look at sacred music and what the Church really asks of her musicians.
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