Mark,

I won't speak for everyone here, but if PrayTellBlog has a worthwhile article I'm tempted to ask "worthwhile for what?"

If the thesis is that chant and modern music can both be appropriate..... someone needs to define "modern music".

Needs to define modern music

Indeed! Modern music (which is nothing at all new to the Church's worship) is the likes of Stravinsky, Poulenc, Britten, Howells, Lauridson, Whitacre, and so on. These, or music in their class, are 'modern music', and they can easily be in the same room with Tallis and Gibbons - and in the same mass.

What is commonly calledl 'modern music' isn't. There is nothing at all the least bit 'modern' about it. It is 'contemporary music', not very modern entertainment music which has had religious lyrics (mostly of poor literary worth) attached to it and called 'modern chucrh music'. It is neither modern nor church music. Utilising this contemporary music with modern or historical music in the same mass would be rather like placing a Kincaid next to a da Vinici and asking us to believe that they are of equal aesthetic or spiritual worth.

It is a true irony that Fr Ruff is one of the greatest scholars of liturgy and church music of our age, and is yet so destructive to the praxis of both.

I am very widely read
I have decades of experience
I have gray hair (which means wisdom to know what is true and what is not, what is beautiful and what is not, and what is good and what is not)

Run from praytell. Be careful with Baron. The others I would also recommend.

I used to engage and comment on PTB, and read (most of) Fr. Ruff's big book. I studied liturgical music back when the ritual music thing thing was all the rage. I've just moved on, that's all.

It's not that the past has nothing to teach us, it's that the past has to be understood in historical context otherwise we misunderstand and misapply it.

It's not that the Mass of Vatican II is a complete rupture, it's that a matured understanding of the assembly's dignity and participation required revision of liturgical rites to promote greater and more meaningful participation in the liturgy.

It's not that the characteristics of sacred music are meaningless today, it's that the ritual purpose of music is also now regarded as an essential characteristic of music for liturgical use.

Chris, literally nothing you stated is true. You seem to trade in hyperbole and straw men and you either didn't read carefully or you deliberately misconstrued what Fr. Ruff wrote.

Given all the strife and dissension in the Latin church, I have no difficulty understanding why several of my friends have become Orthodox. They tired of all the agendas, posturing and disagreements and left. They tell me it is peaceful in OCA and they love it. No question that the liturgy is beautiful, it is.

MarkB, I can see that awr pushed some of your buttons, but otherwise I don't see how the Pray Tell piece you link to is "worthwhile". Basically says, "read STTL". I've lost 4 minutes of my life which now I can never get back.

It's not that the characteristics of sacred music are meaningless today, it's that the ritual purpose of music is also now regarded as an essential characteristic of music for liturgical use.

Fr. Ruff is perfectly clear: it's not a matter of "both/and." "It is no criticism of old Pius X to note that he doesn’t say anything about how music functions in the simplified, reformed, participative liturgy of the Second Vatican Council" (my emphasis); "Pius’s characteristics of holiness, true art, and universality in music have had their role to play historically" - i.e. what he says is of historical interest only - it does not apply to the current liturgy.

If there was any doubt, he writes further on: "The bishops make clear that we should think about liturgical music not based on allegedly intrinsic qualities such as holiness or good art or universality . ; . " (my emphasis). He couldn't be more unambiguous that these qualities no longer apply, if they ever did (they are only alleged anyway).

So what CGZ says is perfectly accurate: "holiness, universality and fittingness are utterly meaningless today [in terms of the role of music in the liturgy], at least according to the article."

And I stand by what I wrote earlier, that what Fr. Ruffs thinks "goes against practically everything I have tried to do as a church musician for the past 25 years."

quips of modernism revealed:

Pius’s characteristics of holiness, true art, and universality in music

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have had their role to play historically. (what is true yesterday is not true today)
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But honestly, Pope Pius came from a

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Eurocentric (code word for nationalism on its way out globalism on its way in)
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world with a

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rigidly (have you heard this word lately?)
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uniform and

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clericalized all-Latin liturgy (full on insult of the TLM)
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and from a time ...this is before Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes... (before GES, we didn't have a clear focus? we were drifting and groping for truth? we were unenlightened?)
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when the Catholic Church was basically oppositional toward the modern world (with the coming of VII we need to be in it and OF it... aggiornamento, my friends!)
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fighting

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democracy (see encyclical on americanism)
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religious liberty ("all the gods of the nations are idols" ... Psalm 96)
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freedom of the press (nothing should be kept from our eyes and our minds... chuck the blacklist... let's look at everything... let's sing everything... let's celebrate everything... let's embrace all... it's our right!)
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and trying to get the Papal States back. Pius X said lots of good things about sacred music in 1903, but

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it all came from a different context and needs a lot of transposing and translating to fit our purposes. (again, what was true yesterday is not true today... rejection of absolute doctrine)
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And that work has been done by the U.S. bishops in Sing to the Lord. (rotfl)
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The bishops make clear (let's be clerically and ultramontically emphatic concerning "dated historical truth"... blind obedience required!)
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that we should think about liturgical music not based on allegedly intrinsic qualities such as holiness or good art or universality, but rather based on the demands of the ritual (the reformed liturgy) and the purposes of the liturgy as a communal act.

(...the worship of baal was a "communal act" and was rife with "demands of the ritual"... (and uppermost the sins of the flesh, I must add) this is reductionism enabled and fueled by narcissism at its absolute worst, replacing the Mass with a blasphemous idolatry.)

in the famous words of Gandalf facing the Balrog, "Run, you fools!"

Mark, I agree with you on the points you raised in other threads about traditionalists shunning Vatican II and the Novus Ordo, but Fr. Ruff simply isn't articulating what you think he may. Evaluating selections first and foremost as Gebrauchsmusik rather than on these "intrinsic qualities" inevitably leads to a spiral to the bottom and has contributed to the relative liturgical poverty of the Catholic Church in the last century. It's not a viewpoint I'm comfortable accommodating.

Francis, are you seriously expressing opposition to religious liberty and freedom of the press? We should remember how rosy the situation was historically in Protestant England and presently in much of the Middle East for Catholics deprived of both of those rights.

Then you don't deny that you actually played organ for the Canaanites?

Pius fought the battles he was confronted with. He would have different battles today, especially with the erosion of papal authority that has occurred in our time - partly caused by modern popes themselves.

The baby and bathwater have both headed down the drain long ago. I am not sure either can ever be retrieved.

To echo what Francis and Chris have observed (which I don’t always do), subjugating “intrinsic qualities such as holiness or good art or universality” to the “purposes of the liturgy as a communal act” is an incongruous notion, and I don’t think Fr. Ruff is correct in his interpretation of STTL or SC. He seems to treat Catholic liturgy and theology in general as a zero sum game, which is not helpful. All music at Catholic worship ought to necessarily possess those aforementioned intrinsic qualities, but their context in the OF of the Roman Rite is different, as an integral part of one’s participation in the Mass instead of background music while one does their Chaplets or (watches the backs of peoples’ heads and judges their choice of chapel veil). That our bishops recently condemned music with lyrics that espouse deficient or harmful theology, seems to indicate that they agree that those intrinsic qualities are still essential.

My Baby is still in the manger... sorry to hear about yours.

I would invite you to visit 95 percent of Catholic churches in the U.S. There is no baby, sad to say. It's gone.

I remember the B3. I actually played one for masses at a Catholic school some years ago.

I hope He is there. As one of my friends noted when i retired from Catholic music, "you will probably return to your Byzantine church." Yep.

"Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho."

no time to explain, just grab a trumpet.

Pius X's writings about sacred music cannot be simply and directly applied to the reformed liturgy without adaptation because Pius X was not writing about music in the reformed liturgy.

You may think this, but Fr. Ruff does not. It's clear that for him it's not a matter of "adaption" - Pius's X ideas simply do not apply to the new rite. I don't see how you can understand the quotations I discussed before in any other way.

To say the characteristics of sacred music "have had" their role to play historically does not entail that that role is over nor that the role is merely of historical interest. As in my first paragraph, the historical role must be understood in its own context and then adapted to a different context.

Again, this is not an unreasonable position, but it is not Fr. Ruff's. True enough, to speak of "historical interest" does not necessarily mean that it is "merely" of historical interest, but Fr. Ruff's other statements make it clear that "merely" is what he means.

those who accept the liturgical reforms of Vatican II and those who reject them

May I suggest that this is a vast oversimplification. "The liturgical reforms of Vatican II" can mean many things. A critique of how they were initially done, how they continuing to be carried out, even a critique of what Vatican II called for and the principles on which the reform has been carried out - not to mention the multiple interpretations of what this entails - does not necessarily imply a "rejection" of what the Council called for, as the writings of Cdl. Ratzinger amply demonstrate.

As for CharlesW's comments, seems like trotting out all the time-worn cliches about the trads simply fans the flames of the polarization and politicization of the liturgy he so legitimately laments.

Given all the strife and dissension in the Latin church, I have no difficulty understanding why several of my friends have become Orthodox. They tired of all the agendas, posturing and disagreements and left.

From what I have heard, the nationalistic schisms between branches of orthodoxy are alive and well. They may cling to their liturgical traditions a bit more rigidly (in a positive, literal, and appropriate sense of the term) than latins do, but I don't get the impression that there isn't strife. I live in a relatively small town/city. I think the general area is around 40-50k? We have multiple orthodox churches, including a ukranian and russian which are literally across the street from one another like competing gas stations or rite aid vs. wallgreens. It's sad.

“ Fr. Ruff seems to think that it's the 1990s and we're all still flying high from WYD Denver.”

A not terribly unperceptive observation. Though I’ve met him before (being only about an hour away by Interstate highway), I’m often struck that despite how forward-thinking he and his cohort seem to think they are, their worldview seem rather stuck somewhere between 1970 and 2000. His abbey was hugely influential down here in all aspects of our local church. In the last decade or so it increasingly seems like parishes here can’t rid themselves of their drab church interiors and kumbaya faith formation programs fast enough. Even the many non-trads just got sick of all the insipid hippie nonsense and realized their Church didn’t have to be that way.

Contrary to what was asserted above, I find it very easy to believe that a pope who was doing battle with the operatic mass a hundred years ago would wage and even greater war against the sorts of music which have all but taken over over the last sixty years.

Unfortunately, CW, I think that it's just that people are obnoxious in general.

Wouldn't it be nice to not have to hear popes' opinions on things, but just their confirmation and insistence on the perennial teachings of the Church?

We've seen how bad social media can be, as far as clergy goes.
When they're allowed to freely speak against Church teaching and nothing happens (a la Fr. James Martin)? That's extremely problematic.

A_F

That is a quote that we keep screaming louder and louder to each other these days

I suppose I must be obnoxious myself but at all the various traditional Masses I've attended around here over the years ahead still regularly do, I can't think of hardly anyone obnoxious, just a wide range of people, races, native languages, ages, class, education, etc. Catholic.

Maybe a sight obnoxious emphasis on having children and wearing Sunday best.

Arthur,

The mean trads are no longer willing to be held up in caricature, evidently, because the anti-trad voices on this thread appear to be outnumbered.

Any kind of niche religion attracts some "exotic" parishioners.

I have known many fine, intelligent, kind, and good humored people among the trads., even among their clergy.


It isn't just the trads., though, who can be obnoxious: the Charismatics are equally mean and uncharitable if they don't think that you speak in tongues enough or don't keep going to Youth Group once you've hit 45.

Then there are all the other wacky cults and "associations of the faithful" with their guru-priests.

Not to mention the devotees of various (unapproved) private revelations: And woe betide you if you don't believe in the special messages of Our Lady of Lake Wobegone regarding the special mission of Donald Trump to Save America, which our very special and humble visionary receives every Wednesday at 4:23 p.m., which you can find for free on our website. Please help our mission by subscribing to our newsletter.