IMO it's mostly colloquially-affected.

Yes, the Missa pro defunctis saw massive changes in the 1970 Missal:

• the singing of Alleluias, etc. based on the season;
• the suppression of the Sequence, which is now used in the Office for the last weeks of ordinary time;
• the greater variation of propers and of vestments permitted

But both the actual texts and the actual rubrics emphasize hope rooted in Christ's sacrifice, not the "all dogs go to heaven" mentality so prevalent in modern Christian culture.

IMO the bigger issue is not one specific to the funeral liturgy, but rather a general weakening of the Church's penitential discipline. To be fair, this was in response to a penitential culture than in many cases had become toxic, more about ticking off boxes than growing in holiness and virtue — but as is so often the case, the reformers let themselves swing on the devil's pendulum and massively over-corrected, and far too little has been done to remedy matters since.

Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 81) said that "The rite for the burial of the dead should express more clearly the paschal character of Christian death, and should correspond more closely to the circumstances and traditions found in various regions. This holds good also for the liturgical color to be used."

Here's Archbishop Bugnini's own commentary the changes to the funeral rite:
"The Introduction [to the new rite] emphasizes the point that a Christian funeral is a celebration of the paschal mystery of Christ as accomplished in his faithful followers. The need to bring this out was one of the main concerns guiding the reformers.

"To this end they drew from the treasury of euchological tradition texts that would best express this aspect of funerals. At the same time, they got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as the Libera me, Domine, the Dies irae, and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection.

"These changes explain the closer and more organic connection between the funeral and the Eucharistic celebration in the new rite, the restoration of the Alleluia, and the abandonment of the color black for another, which, in the judgment of episcopal conferences, will inspire a calmer approach to sorrow and suggest a hope that is illuminated by the paschal mystery" (Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, pp. 773-74).

The NO doesn’t allow the tract outside of Lent. Also, the propers belonging to the priest, that this, the orations, have been completely revised such that much like those of other Masses, sin, death, and our eternal fate are obscured.

But both the actual texts and the actual rubrics emphasize hope rooted in Christ's sacrifice, not the "all dogs go to heaven" mentality so prevalent in modern Christian culture.

So with respect to my comment: except for that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

The office of the dead does maintain some traditional texts, but many others are suppressed, and the Libera me is gone from the funeral. Also, the absolution at the catafalque is suppressed, and they got hives about calling it an absolution even at funerals. Sigh.

Liam is of course correct. With the liberality of a tradition friendly priest, it could be as he says.

Agree to disagree. The Dies Irae is a towering part of our western liturgical heritage. There is no document that says to stop doing it; that should carry more weight than the misbegotten intentions of Bugnini et al, who, for whatever reason, forgot to explicitly say to stop doing it. Those of us who are actively trying to preserve the penitential character of the Requiem, for which AnimaVocis pines, should have no qualms about exploiting the optionality of the books to do so. The traditional option is to do the traditional text, not the so-called first option given.

As far as the Libera Me goes, the books explicitly state "or another song" can be sung for the Final Commendation. This is not grasping at straws. Singing the responsory which has been sung at roughly this point in the liturgy for hundreds of years is likely the most appropriate "or-another-song" that could possibly be sung.

Agree that singing the alleluia with the Dies Irae is weird, but not as weird as dropping the sequence all together.

Those of us that believe in a hermeneutic of continuity need to fight for our liturgical inheritance

the change of focus of the Requiem Mass change from praying for the departed soul to God, to all this expectation of heaven and canonization of the departed?

As far as changes in the liturgy itself goes there are a few which spring to mind:

* Readings can be chosen that suggest or can be interpreted to say that the deceased is already in heaven. In particular, a very popular reading (Wisdom 3:1-9) begins: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them." The gospel of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) suggests that the deceased was holy and worthy of heaven; as it does when read on the feast of All Saints. (The reading from Wisdom was also traditionally read on feasts of the saints, not at a Requiem.)

* The proper chants pray for the deceased, but as these are optional other chants and songs can be chosen that never mention prayer for the dead. Other prayers for the dead were changed or omitted: the Agnus Dei was changed from " . . . grant them rest . . grant them eternal rest" to the usual ". . . have mercy on us . . grant us peace," and the final the "Requiescant in pace" was omitted.

* The prayers of final commendation ("Before we go out separate ways . . ") seems to speak of the future meeting in heaven with the deceased as a certainty - "One day we shall joyfully greet him/her again . . . "

* If a eulogy is done (and it is officially allowed in the rubrics), it is rarely put in terms of praying for the deceased.

So a Mass for the Dead (new rite) can be (and often is) said with very little emphasis on praying for the dead. Part of this may be because of customs quite foreign to the traditional understanding of the Requiem liturgy (it's a "Celebration of Life!"), but it's also on account of the official changes and options.

well: I think that there's a bit of a 50-50 on whether another suitable chant covers a proper that the reformers and even Solesmes seemed to suppress. I don't care, but maybe someone else does.

Kyrie tropes per se are not back in. You can't just do anything with form C!

in fact, we got the Justorum animæ at the offertory today in the traditional Mass…it's hardly fit for a funeral.

I think it would be impermissible to add it as a sequence between the gradual/responsory and alleluia, since the rubrics are clear about when sequences may or must be done, but alius cantus aptus clearly allows for its use elsewhere in the mass.

I’ve heard lots of improvised form C’s

There is no Sequence in the 1970 Requiem. I see no warrant for shoehorning a long liturgical action in before the Alleluia, especially THAT action. ("Amen...oh, just kidding about that judgement stuff.")

There is also nothing preventing one from using the Dies Irae as a Communion motet.

A brief "remembrance" of the faith life of deceased may be given after the post-communion prayer.

That’s not the same as a eulogy. Given that people don’t understand the difference, even that’s being forbidden by dioceses and moved to either the vigil or the luncheon in the hall.

Considering the tone and content (and length) of the Dies irae, and the purpose of song in the Novus rite and its funeral liturgy especially at the Offertory and Communion, not to mention the (older) notion of “motet”, I reckon that the Dies irae is not congruus actioni.

I myself have elevated the issue that permission==>pressure to perform. Too many people feeling forced by the practical existence of permission to get up in front of a congregation to speak in a way that would be much gentler in the context of a visitation or collation. (I think of friends who also got saddled with offering remarks from other family members who did not want to shoulder that burden, but felt compelled to prepare remarks). Awful, awful, awful.

For my late mother in 2014, then my late father in 2017, I told their parish curate and bereavement committee to the following effect "We just mourners who want to pray and have the usual prayers and sacrifice offered for the deceased. We have no wish to bear the burden of offering remarks in addition to that." Which the first time came as something of a surprise to them. Besides my parents outlived almost everyone else they knew other than their adult children (the one grandchild being institutionalized across the country); so there were fewer mourners than parish staff in a church that seats many hundreds of people; offering remarks to a mostly empty space would have been an additional cruelty.

It reminds me - in that pervasive "oh, we never thought of that" mindless way of Catholic parish life (which, according to testimony of my own forbears, also existed well before V2, just dressed up in pieties designed to silence objections) - of preachers who gather children around them and earnestly tell them that God loves them just like their parents love them; preachers who apparently lose any sense of how monstrous the lives of children can be in their own families and homes.

GIRM The Kyrie, Eleison

52. After the Penitential Act, the Kyrie, eleison (Lord, have mercy), is always begun, unless it has already been part of the Penitential Act. Since it is a chant by which the faithful acclaim the Lord and implore his mercy, it is usually executed by everyone, that is to say, with the people and the choir or cantor taking part in it.

Each acclamation is usually pronounced twice, though it is not to be excluded that it be repeated several times, by reason of the character of the various languages, as well as of the artistry of the music or of other circumstances. When the Kyrie is sung as a part of the Penitential Act, a “trope” precedes each acclamation.

I think that what it is actually saying is use these, or do something similar. It is not saying that you can use the tropes, which have absolutely nothing to do with the form that is in the missal. Sure people do all sorts of nonsense, but the book is right there. No one’s forcing them to do it, and even if you could, those people won’t be convinced anyway.

Also, I agree with Andrew that the Dies Irae is incongruous with the liturgical action.

t's just a though experiment to say that, if someone can make something up, why not also have the option to do something like this

I once had someone earnestly say to me that under alius cantus aptus (which I jokingly tell my friends should have really been written, ONLIUS cantus (in)aptus...) it is perfectly licit to chant a hymn in place of a proper, but it is NOT licit (so they say) to chant the Palmer Burgess propers because the translations are not "official".

It seems to me that anything that is firmly rooted in actual tradition, however imperfect it may be, would qualify under alius cantus aptus, even when those things are modern renditions of the old—and it stands to reason that these things would be preferable to eschewing them away all together.

To bring it home in context: if tropes are permitted (which, indeed, they are) then using historic texts as the bases for such tropes seems entirely appropriate (and indeed, preferable) IMHO. Hermeneutic of continuity and all that...

Indeed the rubric in the missal is clear Invocations naming the gracious works of the Lord may be made, as in the example below,
Nothing to suggest a penitential character! Just one of the flaws in liturgy design by committee. As ICEL suggested in 1988, the troped form should moved, and would better used when the Gloria is not used.

StephenMatthew within discussion of liturgical texts 'tropes' has been used to refer to phrases interpolated into the standard official text. Many examples of interpolations into the Gloria and Creed exist, but the most well-known are those in the Kyrie which indeed give the tunes their standard names., such as Kyrie fons bonitatis.
As to the meaning of eleos, it is used in the NT to translate chesed.
Eleos (ἔλεος) is an ancient Greek word that means mercy, pity, or compassion. It describes a deep feeling of kindness or goodwill toward people who are suffering or in need, paired with an active desire to help them.
Chesed (חֶסֶד) is a Hebrew word that translates to "loving-kindness," "mercy," or "steadfast love". It describes active, loyal, and unselfish love and kindness between people, or God's devoted grace and covenant faithfulness toward humanity.

All of this is partly why I marvel at Marier's hymnal; I really think it is the closest thing to the vision of the council that I have found yet. He clearly actually read the documents and labored to implement them in a sensitive and congruous way that aligned with what had come before. It is so staunchly different from anything else produced at that period. Imagine what things could have been like in America if his hymnal had become the standard rather than what we got.

Dr Marier had been preparing for the moment for years; there was no way he was going to put down his toys and walk away. He had been parish organist since 1934, and working through aspects of the liturgical movement; when Mediator Dei was issued in 1947, Dr Marier (with the strong support of his pastor, Msgr Hickey), set to work over years. He edited the St Pius X Hymnal, and compiled Cantus Populi in 1963 (I have both choral editions, as well as of what follows); the first edition of Hymns, Psalms & Spiritual Canticles came out in 1975 (the pew edition of which I remember in the pews when I arrived at St Paul's), and the second edition in 1983. It was a long evolution combining scholarship, curiosity, patience, ingenuity, active pastoral and congregational engagement, learning and profiting from experience and a willingness to reconsider and revise.

A number of his settings of the vernacular Order of Mass were lucid and lovely; I am saddened that they were not appreciated by new people in authority who should have appreciated their worth but did not because they were strangers to the parish praxis and valued their own desiderata over that. Then again, under Dr Marier and his immediate successors, most of the Mass (other than the lections and Eucharistic Prayer, other than on occasion) was sung, priest and people. Everyone did that work, together. It was not a solo magisterial effort controlled entirely from on high, but relied not only on scholarly and technical skills, but also people- and Spirit-skills. (Not the work of people who want nearly total command but who do not relish dealing with all manner of people all the time.)

People imagine St Paul's as the Harvard parish (while true, Harvard people also populate St Peter's and other adjoining parishes), but it's been much more than that: (1) before Harvard bought out the lower lying (used to be flood plain...) riverside blocks along the Charles to build its upper class houses, that was a largely blue-collar Catholic working class area of multi-family homes (again...flood plain), and many of those families tried to stay with St Paul's years, even decades, after their displacement - though, overall, Harvard basically chopped 1/3 of the parishioner base away when it redeveloped that land; (2) St Paul's attracted and attracts a lot of MIT* staff and students, even though MIT had its own Catholic chaplaincy, and (3) of course it attracted and attracts a broad swath of regulars from all over the area.

* Imagine having the hearts of Oxford U and Cambridge U 1.5 miles apart...Cambridge, Massachusetts is not just any college town.

FWIW, the hymn order worked perfectly fine in practice. Hymn boards were used, but if your line of sight was blocked by a column, alphabetical was reasonably ... practical for someone in the pew. (For much of the year outside Advent/Xmas/Lent/Easter, a seasonal+topical grouping of hymns is not especially helpful to the PIPs.)

The rollout was so very botched.

Indeed, however it seems to me a tribute to Bugnini's organizing genius that we got even that. Later revisers managed to produce a missal in 2002 which required reissuing in corrected form in 2008 just to remove errors. ++Roche's assertion that we have what VII intended is ridiculous.

Liam, to an extent I agree, but the problem is that the rest is so cluttered in hindsight, and of course, Advent and Christmas come first, and Christmas and Easter have lots of people who, at least in the past, might kind of follow if they can figure it out.

All of these seasons have both fan favorites and obscure gems (we hope) that where alphabetical order may help…if you properly catch the title.

But having a paper copy for research and planning purposes would frustrate me for the same reason. It is compounded by the PDF being the only source.

And that’s why I rag on the H1982 not having titles. It’s not helpful!

in fact that's how my own list is arranged, with some breakouts (I like having a separate list for feasts and for Marian hymns).