I wrote that tongue-in-cheek and didn't intend for anyone to take me that seriously. You haven't insulted anyone. BTW, if you haven't read the Liturgical Mysteries - e.g. "The Mezzo Wore Mink" - they are hilarious. You would have to be a musician to get some of the humor.

Doug S.- The LU is/was useful to religious orders who use the Roman Rite and parishes. It is not really desighned for Monastic (Benedictine) communities. They cannot use it for the Divine Office because they do not use the Roman office. Also it does not contain the propers for the weekdays of lent, not an issue for most people but the setting in which they are most likely to be used is the Monastic one.

Charles, I got my wife started on those earlier this year. Hilarious!

Yes, Charles. Smug attitudes and obnoxious wrong-headedness are very difficult to stomach.

One thing I will ask. It seems Ruth needs our prayers. She is now on my prayer list, and I would ask that others say a prayer for her, as well.

AA, that's kind of the point. Missals, like everything else, change and are revised continuously over time. There is no ideal missal that is the end all, and be all of what the mass should be. I tend to think that for my purposes, the missal is the one I have been authorized to use by legitimate authority.

When I encounter this EF only, sacred missal of Trent, only way to salvation, and free from the errors of the infamous Novus Ordo attitude, I am usually talking with a convert. Usually, someone who is angry the Church took "the Mass" away from him. It didn't, BTW, since he was a member of a non-Catholic church and never had it to begin with. Generally, this individual(s) pines for what he never knew, never experienced, and was never a part of. Now granted, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing wrong with the sacred music of the ages. I do my best to preserve what I can of it. However, I am accepting of lawful changes enacted by legitimate authority. It is my job to work with them, not berate the Church for not conforming to some imagined romanticized ideal that likely never existed outside my own mind.

Andris,

Dropping sequences seems like a major change to me, if we are talking about the actual soundscape and content of the liturgy. Graduals antedating the Council of Trent are filled with them, irrespective of the 1474 missal's contents

Even though I recently examined a facsimile of a 1474 missal next to a critical edition of the 1570 missal, I don't remember anything more significant than that (however I was looking for some other reason) and I'm sure you are right.

Thank you, Doug!

Graduals antedating the Council of Trent are filled with them, irrespective of the 1474 missal's contents

This is surely true. But they seem to be part of the diverse local traditions. For example, the Valkenburg gradual (OFM, end of 13th c.) has 3 sequences (+ 2 glued in later), the gradual from Bellelay (OCist, 12th c.) has 4 sequences the all of which are different from those in the former book (Easter and Pentecost have no sequence there). It would be interesting to look if there have been printed graduals before 1600 to answer the question whether it was the prestige of the papacy or the invention of printing, or something else yet, which contributed most to the demise of those local uses.

Liturgies do change and develop over time. The prayers at the foot of the altar were not formally added to the liturgy until 1570. They were originally a private devotion carried out in the sacristy. They were formalised as a public devotion of the clergy to stem the tide of the reformation.

There are people out there who go further than called it the "Traditional Latin Mass", but call it things such as "The Mass of Ages" or "The Mass of the Saints" or even "The Mass of the Apostles". The last in particular is complete dalberdash because for the first four centuries the liturgy was in Koine Greek!

Then there are people who believe that liturgy was perfect before 1963. They don't like it when I show them photos of mass being said versus populum dated from 1940, or from Cathedral masses in the 1950s which show a Bishop accepting gifts from an offertory procession! The fact is that liturgical abuse had been going on for a long time. Few people knew it for two reasons: 1.) Rubrics for the old mass can get very complicated and; 2.) Abuses were being done in Latin, and escaped the notice of 99% of the congregation.

Then there are a lot of myths about Vatican II such as:

VII banned latin
VII abolished chant
VII got rid of sacred polyphony
VII forbids the priest from saying mass facing east
VII got rid of pipe organs

and a whole host of other myths. Boy do people get a nasty surprise when I show then what Sacrosanctum Concilium actually says!

There is no perfect little Catholic world, is there? And there never was.

But there should be.

I, too, have witnessed the retreat to the EF. Granted, many may have valid reasons for doing so. I don't challenge anyone else's reasons, but I have no such reasons. If I did it, it would be a case of running away, and I am not, by nature, a coward. I would rather stay and fight.

Well, the EF is nothing compared to the Divine Liturgy, so I can't blame you there, CharlesW!


"6. Ask: Why isn't the Novus Ordo like this?"
Because at one time, people asked the same question of the EF, or in those days, just the Mass. Ever since the early 20th century, liturgical scholars and Popes have felt that the Mass was not quite what it could be. They tried reforming how it was done, with little avail. So they tried reforming the Mass itself. We know how that turned out. I think that what's interesting is that things started to improve dramatically once there became options (Summorum Pontificum).

If you have a large group of people who want a more reverent Mass, and they have the liberty to congregate with others who feel the same way, then OF COURSE it's going to be more reverent! It isn't intrinsic to the Form, it's the desire of the community. In the EF, the priest could just as easily start Mass with the "Hihowareya!", wear felt ponchos, use glassware, Vosko-ize his church, change the words, etc. All equally illicit/licit in the EF as in the OF where these things are more common. But the community has a singular, focused goal, reverence, so that's what goes on.


"It seems that all the best choristers, musicians, liturgists, etc are going to the EF Mass"
This isn't my experience at all, though I think I recall Hartley is from Australia. With no malice, I've found that a lot of EF Masses are provided music by people who are decent to skilled chanters, and unremarkable organists. Which is not to insult these people, I hope, nor to say that I don't know fantastic musicians who serve the EF Mass, such as David Andrew. But in my limited experience, I've found an amateurish yet enthusiastic musical culture to be somewhat the norm. As anywhere else, money is a big factor in the quality of the music. On the contrary, some of the best Catholic musicians I know work in OF churches, often churches of highly questionable liturgy. Again, this is a generalization and based on a limited experience - for example, one of the greatest organists of my generation from my home region I know to be a staunch advocate of the EF Mass.

I found she had no real care of language, but simply was drawn to the model of celebration she attended in her youth: reverent, high-quality music, orthodox preaching.

Very yes. There's a great little quote by then-Cardinal Ratzinger about the "retreat", basically to this effect, that gets used in the local Una Voce promotional items. I have no idea how to start looking for it.

I think most people at the EF Mass cannot tell you why they are at an EF Mass rather than an OF Mass. I don't think there's more than a handful who would breathlessly tell you how wonderful the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar are, or go on an energetic polemic about the the Last Gospel.

Yes. This sort of speculation comes later, when trying to justify their intangible attraction. Being very modern, these traditionalists, they try to define it in mechanistic terms.

But I think they just had to escape from the common Catholic landscape. Every church is pretty much the same in America, and the EF really is the only game in town (usually) if you want something remotely different. The retreat isn't from this or that, it's just from a lack of options within the OF practice.

Very no. The chief problem with the Novus Ordo is not that there are not enough options but that there are too many, that it is ruled by the personality of of the priest, more master of ceremonies than celebrant. This, if not also something else, is what contributes so heavily to the shallowness of the liturgies in America: Each parish is a liturgical autocracy ruled by two crushing forces: the whims of who is in charge and the overbearing weight that is decades of terrible liturgy.

Not only do people believe that it isn't going to get any better, they have lost the idea of better or worse, because they have lost the proper sense of worship.

If I'm reading my two young cohorts Gavin and Adam correctly, their point is well taken. Whether anyone wishes to acknowledge anecdotal or statistical evidence that is outside their parameters of personal knowledge, there remain but three things: the perfunctory and status quo "rendition" of the OF Mass, the reality that the style "wars" will likely continue well into the future, and "faith, hope and love." Because the greatest of that latter trio is love is why I have faith and hope that folks might just wake up and assume responsibility for improving their lot in liturgy in whatever medium of music they choose to employ. A reverent OF celebration can be had even should 6/8 or strong beat 4/4 contemporary settings of songs and Ordinaries be a certain Mass's standard faire. And the next scheduled Mass in the same parish could offer a reverent OF using all four options for processionals. Next one, Latin chant for everything, and so forth.
But this cannot be achieved within the circle of "music ministry" alone in every church/parish. There has to be a Venn diagram of intersecting circles between clergy celebrants/deacons, support "ministries" (musicians, lectors, EMHC's, et al) and any other "stakeholders" who have in some way, shape or form studied documents, liturgical philosophies, repertoires, demographics, the calendar and catechetics (and any other disciplines necessary) so that the water-boarding drip of death that I call the Missalette Mass can finally have a stake through its convenient heart and be laid out cold forever.
Can I get an Amen?

"The chief problem with the Novus Ordo is not that there are not enough options but that there are too many"

I mean options for the Massgoer among churches. Look at the options for the music: GR Antiphon, GS Antiphon, Psalm, or Alius Cantus. Do you really have a choice between those when you go to an OF church? Options for orientation: face the congregation or liturgical East. Do you have options on that? Language: There's probably thousands of options as for what's in Latin, what's in English, what's in another language. When deciding on an OF church, do you have an option to go to one where the Canon is in Latin? Or where the proper prayers are in Latin? "Et Cum Spiritu" followed by a Collect in Spanish? Or are you pretty much choosing between English and Spanish? For that matter, there are four Eucharistic Prayers - where do you go to hear the Roman Canon anymore?

In the pre-SP church, you did not have any options, even though there were millions of possible and licit ways to celebrate Mass, effecting varying levels of solemnity, reverence, personal devotion, sense of community, etc. The EF now presents people with an option, where in the OF world there is usually (again, notable and laudworthy exceptions being plenteous) only one way to celebrate Mass.

>> A reverent OF celebration can be had even should 6/8 or strong beat 4/4 contemporary settings of songs and Ordinaries be a certain Mass's standard faire.

I believe this is true. The "ideals" (so-called) of all Latin, or all chant, or all "traditional" music are well and good, and I have no quarrel with anyone who holds them or works for their universal dissemination. But their implementation is by no means required for Mass to be celebrated in a way that is reverent, sane, and supportive of orthodox theology.

>>Theoretically?

I've seen it in reality, though sadly not often enough.

Here's the thing: When folks say contemporary music, they don't mean Kevin Allen. They mean a specific style of music which does not lend itself well to reverence for the otherworldly or incredible.

Even granting that, for the sake of your eyewitness account, there's also the trouble with of song selection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaY7TwMBHuc

... is a lot closer to reverence than "contemporary" music gets. Is there a song in the contemporary repertoire that comes nearly as close? How often do you want to play it?

Yet if you want a song with more interesting melodic content than most P&W, consider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2cXR1yGKb4&feature=related

Yet if you want a song with more accurate theological content than most P&W, consider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f72CTDe4-0

Yet these are, of course, inappropriate for Mass.

Hi Gavin I think you are right about a lot of people I know at my church, that is if you are speaking of me as the Ruth in your post and Assumption Grotto as the church. The church has a lot of historical appeal as well because it has the second oldest Marian Shrine in Michigan and because it had one of the biggest Catholic schools in Detroit. The people who stayed through the social experiment of the 1970s in this city, (I was still living in New Orleans at the time), were the most attached to their church and probably also the more conservative. The priest who preceded our current pastor was more conservative than most priests in Detroit at the time and was there for around 30 years I think. But there is also a growing number of people who come to Grotto for that feeling of reference you speak of in your post.

I agree there is little choice in the Detroit Metro area when it comes to Masses with better music, that is outside of the more traditional city parishes like St. Joseph and St. Josaphat and downriver with David, but it isn't a wasteland either. In the past 10 years I have heard of more and more change taking place in the OF vernacular parishes because of young dynamic MDs and younger priests who are slowly bringing back solid hymns mostly in English, some Latin chants mostly during Lent and other better newer compositions. I have told my students about Musica Sacra and CanticaNova and Corpus Christi Watershed and introduced as much as I can to help the vernacular OF Masses they may be responsible for. But it is a slow change that at times frustrates folks on all sides.

Fair enough, Mr. Charles. I just like Nyan Cat.

... however, for the sake of argument, does a rock beat, or bongos, lend itself well to the otherworldly?

Maybe my experience is flavored by the LifeTeen Mass that sets up just as the TLM is finishing up, but there is a really good reason to deal with generals and archetypes, sometimes, and you can sometimes get pretty conclusive.

... but banjos? They are string instruments!!!

Ah California sure can be hot, I remember how hot it could get in Bakersfield when I was a kid and the dust!

Read Chapter VI of SC and then find out when and where the bongo drum was invented. You could make a case for using a bongo like drum in Africa as it is a part of the culture of the people before they were Christianized but not the bongo itself, as it was invented in the 1800s in Cuba. I doubt very seriously that bongos were used in the well established Roman Catholic Church of Cuba in the 19th century. But I am sure there will be those who make the case for using the bongo as part of the liturgy. Personally I think there are much worse instruments that are used in some liturgies, like electric guitars and snare drums. IMHO, acoustical guitars are better than electric guitars.

To interpret this document in a "Hermeneutic of Continuity" I would ask that you refer to Tra Le Sollectudini, Moto Proprio of 1903, which strictly forbade the use of the piano and banned the use of "noisey, superfluous instruments such as cymbals".

You can also look at Musicae Sacrae of 1958 (i think) and Musicam Sacram of 1967 immediately following Vatican II.

Musicam Sacram 16 stated that the active participatin of the whole people be carefully promoted in the parts which pertain to them which are: Acclamations, responses to greetings, prayers in litany form, antiphons, psalms, refrains or repeated responses, hymns and canticles. This was to be done through "suitable isntruction and practices". It also stated that if the congregation was not sufficiently instructed or if the music required several voices then the music can be handed over to the choir alone. Masses where only the choir sings are to be "depreciated".

I take this to mean that the sung antiphons from the propers should be made available in the weekly mass leaflet, as well as the melody lines for hymns, responses, etc. I find that a reasonable balance can be struck with having certain things made clear that the congregation must participate, such as the Psalm response by printing the melody line, and providing one or two hymns and a motet. Active participation of the laity doesn't mean to aim for the lowest common denominator!

Musicam Sacram 19 states that choirs are to be developed in Cathedral Churches and educational institution and that similar choirs are to be fostered and encouraged in smaller churches. Basically, the Parish choir is meant to imitate the Cathedral of their diocese.

Musicam Sacram 21 goes on to say words to the effect that if a choir cannot be raised, then a number of cantors to lead congregational singing should be maintained in each church.

Absolutely. That's exactly my opinion, too. Appealing to SC, when wanting to restore the right sense of liturgy and worship, can only beg the question. It takes more than Vatican II.

Sorry if everyone already knows this. I'm trying to talk my way through it.