Liturgy

We do have a rich treasury of hymn-poems to read, to sing, and to keep close to the heart. Some of them are almost as old as Christianity itself. They come from Latin and Greek, from our own English, from French and German and all the languages of Europe. Some were written by saintly divines with a fine ear for poetry: John Henry Newman (“Praise to the Holiest in the Height”), Charles Wesley (“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”). Many were written by the great Dr. Isaac Watts, who set the psalms to English meter and rhyme. Some rose up from an anonymous lyricist among the folk: “What Wondrous Love Is This.” Some entered our language by the skill of great translators, like John Mason Neale and Catherine Winkworth. Some were the work of pious laymen who meditated upon Scripture all their lives: so the blind Fanny Crosby gives us “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” Just as many of our most beautiful melodies were written by the finest composers who ever lived—Bach, Handel, Haydn—so too many of our hymn lyrics were written by poets of some renown: George Herbert, Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Milton.

So why, then, why do we have verse-by-numbers lyrics posing as real poems in our hymnals? Why, when we have such a trove of the great, the profound, the beautiful, the memorable, the poignant, the splendid, do we have to endure what is banal, clunky, clumsy, dull, vague, and silly?

A piece from an excellent article from Antony Esolen

Often it is like living in a warehouse full of fine china plates and when we eat we break out paper plates. We do the same with our hymns – our heritage is a treasury of beautiful hymns and we dine on banal ones.

The headline at the top is from Fr. Dwight Longenecker who has his own thoughts on the article.

There has been much discussion in St. Blogs concerning this Jimmy Fallon interview.

In an interview with Terri Gross, Jimmy Fallon weighs in on liturgical innovations:

GROSS: Do you still go to church?

Mr. FALLON: I don’t go to – I tried to go back. When I was out in L.A. and I was kind of struggling for a bit. I went to church for a while, but it’s kind of, it’s gotten gigantic now for me. It’s like too… There’s a band. There’s a band there now, and you got to, you have to hold hands with people through the whole Mass now, and I don’t like doing that. You know, I mean, it used to be the shaking hands piece was the only time you touched each other.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. FALLON: Now, I’m holding hand – now I’m lifting people. Like Simba.

(Laughter)

Mr. FALLON: I’m holding them (Singing) ha nah hey nah ho.

(Speaking) I’m doing too much. I don’t want – there’s Frisbees being thrown, there’s beach balls going around, people waving lighters, and I go, ‘This is too much for me.’ I want the old way. I want to hang out with the, you know, with the nuns, you know, that was my favorite type of Mass, and the grotto, and just like straight up, just Mass Mass.

For me though it leaves me rather sad. There are certainly themes I can identify with in what he said, but I still find it a lousy reason not to go to Mass. Even at the most happy-clappy Folk Music Mass with a forgettable homily we still receive Jesus in Holy Communion. The reason to be Catholic is because it is true, not that your liturgical experiences will always be what they should be. This attitude makes the Mass all about us and not about worshiping Christ, an attitude I am quite guilty of when I spot something not quite right at Mass and focus on that instead of worshiping. This is not to say that we should not do all we can in the reform of the reform when it comes to liturgical renewal, just that we should not lose sight of what the liturgy is for in the first place.

Just because the stores, businesses, etc are already playing Christmas music doesn’t mean I have t o follow suit so early even if I so love traditional Christmas carols.

So I wanted to put together a proper Advent playlist.

I subscribe to Spotify so I have access to a lot of music, so I ask you dear readers to suggest proper Advent hymns – other than O Come, O Come Emanuel (though I can hear this hymn over and over).

Six years ago I decided to create my own Advent Wreath graphic instead of just using the normal animated gif that I used previously. If you would like it for your own blog you can use the html code below which uses some homepage server space that won’t effect the bandwidth for my blog. I will replace the graphic each week so that it correctly shows the number of candles that should be lit. On Christmas I will change it to another graphic I created for Christmastide.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="http://home.comcast.net/~curtjester/curtjester_advent.gif" width="170" height="189">

Additionally underneath my Advent graphic on my left side I have created a JavaScript that gives a countdown to Christmas. If you want to do the same thing you can insert this script into your blog template with the following code underneath where you place the graphic. Though WordPress.com users would be out of luck since they don’t allow JavaScript.

<!-- Christmas Countdown - Jeff Miller--><br /> <script language="JavaScript"> function eventcount() { var now = new Date(); var message = ""; var event = new Date("Dec 25 2011 00:00:01"); var seconds = (event - now) / 1000; var minutes = seconds / 60; var hours = minutes / 60; var days = hours / 24; if ( (days%1)<.5) days++; days = Math.round(days); if (hours< 0 && hours >= -24) message = "Merry Christmas; Christ is born!"; else if (days > 0) message = "Only "+days+" praying day"+ (days>1?'s':'')+ " till Christmas!"; document.write("</p> <p>"+message+"</p> <p>"); } eventcount(); </script><br /> <!-- End Christmas Countdown --><br />

New Vatican commission cracks down on church architecture

The new commission will be established shortly, as part of the Congregation for Divine Worship. It will also be in charge of music and singing in the liturgy

ANDREA TORNIELLI

A team has been set up, to put a stop to garage style churches, boldly shaped structures that risk denaturing modern places for Catholic worship. Its task is also to promote singing that really helps the celebration of mass. The “Liturgical art and sacred music commission” will be established by the Congregation for Divine Worship over the coming weeks. This will not be just any office, but a true and proper team, whose task will be to collaborate with the commissions in charge of evaluating construction projects for churches of various dioceses. The team will also be responsible for the further study of music and singing that accompany the celebration of mass.
Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Benedict XVI, consider this work as “very urgent”. The reality is staring everyone in the eyes: in recent decades, churches have been su
bstituted by buildings that resemble multi purpose halls. Too often, architects, even the more famous ones, do not use the Catholic liturgy as a starting point and thus end up producing avant-garde constructions that look like anything but a church. These buildings composed of cement cubes, glass boxes, crazy shapes and confused spaces, remind people of anything but the mystery and sacredness of a church. Tabernacles are semi hidden, leading faithful on a real treasure hunt and sacred images are almost inexistent. The new commission’s regulations will be written up over the next few days and will give precise instructions to dioceses. It will only be responsible for liturgical art, not for sacred art in general; and this also goes for liturgical music and singing too. The judicial powers of the Congregation for Divine Worship will have the power to act.

[Source]

It is always interesting the synchronicity of news stories for examples this story coming out after the buying of the Crystal Cathedral of the Diocese of Orange. While not directly connected, the reason such a committee might be forming can be given plenty of examples.

Though I am rather wary of any article that says the “Vatican is going to crack down” on something. That is just not the way the Vatican works. The way the idea of the Vatican and the Pope is often portrayed is with words like “slams”, “attacks”, and “cracks down” is rather far from the slow deliberate actions of Vatican officials. I certainly hope this committee will exist and issue guidelines and recommendations concerning liturgical architecture, liturgical art, and liturgical music. But in the end they will still be guidelines and recommendations and what actually happens at the local level will still be in the hands of he Bishop as ultimately it must be. So much of this area has been trumped by the subjectivism of “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” which has a grain of truth, but not the whole truth.

My problem with so many things in this area, especially liturgical architecture, is that it normally directs your attention to the ability of the architect and not the architect of all things. Some of these structures can be quite captivating and have elements of beauty to them, but if they does not help you to lift your heart to God in worship it is a failure. We need such aids in worship as we are not pure spirits. Sure we can meditate on God in the most stripped of structures, but I need all the help I can get.

The erudite Fr. George Rutler writes a column on the “Shorter Form” of the modern Roman lectionary. The “Shorter Form” are edits of the Sunday Gospel readings supposedly allowed because of time considerations. Though as Fr. Rutler points out some of these edits reduce the Gospel by only 30 seconds.

Regardless this column is well worth reading and too good to just excerpt.

I find the whole concept of the “Shorter Form” Gospel readings to be a real bad idea driven really by removing hard sayings and not time reduction. This fact is obvious considering the readings that are shortened. If parishes have enough time for the “Liturgy of the Bulletin” where they read all the announcements, they have time for the Gospel.

St. Paul did not say.

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, unless of course it is a hard saying and might make somebody in the pew uncomfortable.”

Though of course it must be remembered that the”Shorter Form” is optional and we really should encourage our pastors to preach the full Gospel.

Visited a parish were they are taking a very positive catechetical approach to the new translation. Before the Mass started they sang the new Gloria and announced it as such. As part of the priest’s homily he covered some of the changes in the new translation.

I really liked the approach that he took in that he started by making some humorous points and then going more in depth into why the new translation was needed. The initial points were “words matter” and that precision in meaning is important. He also made some great points regarding how so much of the new translation is more biblical along with conforming more closely to the Latin. He also explained why following the Latin more closely is important as he addressed the universality of the Church and how the Mass is not the property of any country or culture. His specific catechesis on specific instances of the new translation were also spot-on such as explaining why using “incarnate” instead of “born” was more than just a word choice and the theological significance of it.

I really appreciated this positive approach and the effort they are putting into preparing people for the change. Change, even positive change, often results in ruffling of feathers, I suspect their will be less ruffling in this parish. It takes more than just bulletin inserts and pew cards to prepare people.