Lovely !!

There needs to be a branch for "Clergy Uproar". Also for "Choir Uproar".

Actually in most places I know about the flow chart would be "So You Want To Sing The Propers?" -> "No".

P.S. I'm nimming this for my blog.

The chart is brilliant!
As much as I support propers, and have increased their use greatly at the abbey, I'm torn on this issue because I also like hymns.
I think for many people it's not that they're opposed to propers, but that they have found hymns to be spiritually powerful. They've had very positive experiences of participating by singing hymns. That seems to be the heart of this issue.
Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB

There is another both/and approach the propers versus alius cantus. One need not do all hymns, or all propers, or all propers & hymns (the so called "stuffed" mass). One can chose and alternate/rotate: one week a proper at X place in the Mass, a hymn at Y place; the next week, a hymn at X and a proper at Y. NOt all propers are equal in musical quality, any more than hymns; some are glorious, others less so. So, the ritual expectation becomes that at the introit, offertory or communion, we might have any of the listed options. It has the virtue of expanding the parish's ritual sense, by proposing rather than imposing. Instead of "this is what we do here", we have "these are what we can do here". Over a few years, a parish might then, having become familiar with the options, have an informed discernment about them.

The offertory chant is seldom long enough to cover the offertory.

Umnnhhh....I made it a point to instruct our musicians NOT to 'cover' the priest's prayers of the Offertory. Seems to me that the prayers are there for a reason.

Using the Bartlett propers (Antiphon/verse/antiphon/verse, etc.) we find that we cannot use all the verses provided before the celebrant begins his prayers.

Agreed, Chonak, that's how I read it as well. The missal assumes music covering the prayers. If the intention was otherwise, they could have made it clear, but as it is, they didn't.

That alternate reading might also make it difficult to use a longer motet at the offertory, in cases when incense is used.

Well, there are some permissions relating to music at the offertory which seem to allow for motets:

The 1958 document De musica sacra et sacra liturgia allowed (#27b) for any Latin song after the offertory chant, provided it be suitable to that part of the Mass.

Also, Musicam sacram (1967) allowed: "The custom legitimately in use in certain places and widely confirmed by indults, of substituting other songs for the songs given in the Graduale for the Entrance, Offertory and Communion, can be retained according to the judgment of the competent territorial authority, as long as songs of this sort are in keeping with the parts of the Mass, with the feast or with the liturgical season. It is for the same territorial authority to approve the texts of these songs."

I've been somewhat uncertain about applying Musicam Sacram to the liturgy. It came out BEFORE the Missal of 1969, but after the Missal of 1962. Does Musicam Sacram apply to the EF mass? It has also made me ask whether or not the Kyriale Simplex can be legitimately used in the EF. I've played it safe thus far by chanting the offertory to a Psalm Tone and THEN moving into a motecta or a hymnus.

I do have the Offertorale where psalm verses are provided for the Offertory chants, but I'm tending to favour the practice of singing a motet at the offertory after the antiphon is chanted, and then typically a latin hymn after the communion and a number of psalm verses have been chanted. Anima Christi and Adoro Te Devote are common, but O Filii et Filiae during Easter, Attende Domine during Lent, Rorate Caeli during Advent, and other suitable Latin songs have been used to fill out the communion.

exempts EF celebrations from any later laws contrary to the 1962 rubrics

But not laws which do not contradict? Clarifications, additions, general principles?

Sometimes one applies common sense to rubrics.

Can you provide documented evidence (i.e., Church Law) which specifically allows for the application of common sense? Is this considered a general suggestion, or does the Church foresee specific instances where common sense should be applied?

[comment deleted by author.]

Can you provide documented evidence (i.e., Church Law) which specifically allows for the application of common sense? Is this considered a general suggestion, or does the Church foresee specific instances where common sense should be applied?

Arguably, CIC Can. 17: "Ecclesiastical laws must be understood in accord with the proper meaning of the words considered in their text and context. If the meaning remains doubtful and obscure, recourse must be made to parallel places, if there are such, to the purpose and circumstances of the law, and to the mind of the legislator."

Pass out buttons that say "Judas left early".

It is incorrect to infer that what is said sotto voce or inaudibly is therefore less important.

In fact, perhaps the reverse (more important) is a better inference.

Reform of the Reform: Shout the Canon

(I know too many liturgists/sacristans who would be thrilled for that to happen...)

Maybe not the best approach.

Carping probably isn't the best approach either.

I think there is a good question there. Do we present a good case for singing Propers? How is it an advantage to the congregation? Or, are we just insular and anachronistic fuddy-duddies who only talk to each other?

I suspect my rotten-ness would never approach your gifts.

Never-the-less, I appreciate Ben's humor, as always. However, in many parishes I suspect many don't even know what Propers are. They are young enough to not have seen a pre-1962 liturgy. The EF is available in my area, but is limited by geography. It is in an older part of town where most of the population doesn't go. When I visit RCIA, I explain that Propers are scripture, and why they are components of the Mass - not just some holdover from the past. I think we do need to make a case for them being parts of the OF mass, as well. That has been lost, it seems.

I personally feel that the OF is too 'talky' and that THE WORST thing that happened after the Council was the audible recitation of the Canon missae. When I attend the EF I get a sense of something really, really, important happening when the sanctus (& benedictus) stop and there is silence - real focussed silence - until the sacring bell rings at the elevations; I do not get this same feeling even in the best (e.g. at the Colloquium) OFs I've attended.

The sotto voce recitation of the priests' prayers does not mean that they are less important that what is being sung/said on top of it - quite the reverse - it seems to me that it means (as Mr Malton said) they are the most important because there the priest is talking directly to GOD. When I hear the offertory prayers, I almost feel like I'm eavesdropping on someone else's conversation.

BTW: I'm 26 and never knew the EF, apart from stumbling into a Indult Wedding at my parish when I went to practise (Low Mass), until Summorum Pontificum.

True, Ben. When I introduced them to my own congregation a few years ago, many asked what they were. They had no memory of ever hearing them.