Liturgy

OMAHA, Neb. (CNS) — The St. Louis Jesuits, liturgical music icons from the 1970s, are back together and have released their first album in more than 20 years.

"Morning Light" is the seventh recording for the St. Louis Jesuits — Dan Schutte and Jesuit Fathers Bob Dufford, John Foley and Roc O’Connor — who were known for such songs as "Blest Be the Lord," "Lift Up Your Hearts" and "Sing a New Song."

In the mid 1980s, various assignments moved the men to different parts of the country, and Schutte left the Society of Jesus. These changes made it difficult to record music together, said Father O’Connor, a theology professor at Creighton University in Omaha and liturgist at St. John Parish on the Creighton campus. [Source]

Daniel Vitz in a post on the "Return of the St. Louis Jesuits" links to an article about their reunion and (gasp) new album.

There are some wonderful songs for funerals, some for prayers, and some that are rock-sounding. There’s something for everyone." Vocals will be handled by all four and a chorus; instrumentation will be mostly piano and guitar but augmented with some bass, flutes, drums, oboes, and strings.

Something for everyone? Maybe in this case I am the exception that proves the rule. Though I think there might be a lot of exceptions are there in St. Blogs and the St. Louis Jesuits certainly don’t rule dude!

In their heyday, the St. Louis Jesuits were a sort of religious equivalent of the Beatles, although they never toured or performed concerts. Instead, they conducted liturgical music workshops and spoke at conferences. This surprised some people.

Where’s Yoko Ono when you need her?

ARCHBISHOP CRISTIAN CARO CORDERO OF PUERTO MONTT, CHILE. "My proposal is that, given the close theological, spiritual and pastoral relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, and taking into account the shadows in the latter, a year be dedicated to the Sacrament of Penance, taking as fundamental points the following: the meaning of the true and living God, and His eclipse in modern culture; the need of salvation and the announcement of Jesus Christ; … the sense of sin, which is diminished or annulled, due to the loss of God and moral relativism; conversion and the virtue of penance; spiritual guidance or accompaniment; the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance as an encounter between the sinner, who converts from his misery, and God who, in His mercy in Christ, welcomes and forgives him; the conditions for receiving Holy Communion; new life in Christ, as His disciples and members of the Church. With respect to the relationship between the Eucharist and the pastoral care of vocations, I propose that in the ‘Year of Penance’ priests be formed and motivated to give spiritual direction to young people and to give time to the Sacrament of Reconciliation which, together with the Eucharist, are fundamental in spiritual guidance. [Via Annunciations]

This is a wonderful idea and is exactly the corrective we all need. As I have said before I am convinced that a new springtime for the Church will not blossom until such time as Catholics generally return to confession. In a culture that has reduced the effects of sin to a guilt that should be excised the emphasis really needs to be placed not only our personal sinfulness, but to the remedy of both God’s forgiveness and the grace to overcome our sins. It has been remarked that if we were truly aware of the sacramental realities that occur during Mass we would instantly fall on our knees in awe. I think the same thing applies to sacramental confession. The Archbishop talked about the "spiritual and pastoral relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance" and there is also a connection to how these sacraments got deemphasized. Tabernacles were removed to locations not fitting the dignity of the Blessed Sacrament. The presence of Christ in his believers was put on the same level as the Real Presence. Sacramental confession was relegated to Saturdays to a block of time normally less than an hour and Penance services were offered without sacramental confession. In both cases the sacraments were moved aside in some sense and the community was made the emphasis. As a result unless you go to the Vigil Mass people are unlikely to see people in line for confession. I firmly believe in the "If they have it they will come" model of confession. My own parish has confession before every Mass and there are always people in line. The example of seeing people in line can be a reminder to others who do no regularly frequent confession. With the limited numbers of people going to confession compared to Communion lines you would think that Pope John Paul II had also canonized the majority of American Catholics. We have solved the problem of going forth and sinning no more by getting rid of the concept of personal sin. We can too easily admit that we are sinners, but at the same time think that we have nothing really to repent of. So I pray the the synod might act on this suggestion and that it bears fruit in our souls.

Today being the feast day for St. Therese here are some newer Carmelite blogs.

At last I have found my vocation; my vocation is love!

Palouse Carmel Ponderings

Also Steven Riddle provides a link to an online version of The Story of a Soul.

(CBS) Schools across the country are pitching in to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

While there are lemonade stands and bake sales from Connecticut to California, some schools are finding more creative vehicles.

Delone Catholic High School in McSherrystown, Pa., has a fun fundraising program called "Stop the Bop."

Suggested by a few members of the student council, the school is playing Hanson’s 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. The idea? Annoy students into donating; have them pay to stop the music. [Source]

Wow what a great idea for Church fund raising. I would gladly pay through the nose to have hymns from Haugen, Haas, Shutte, and the St. Louis Jesuits stopped in mid hymn when I am occasionally afflicted by them at some Catholic churches. ‘The next selection is Ashes, the bidding to stop it will start at $100.’ Though I guess it would be imprudent to go bankrupt over hymns.

Phillip Blosser got permission to post an article from the 2004 issue of the New Oxford Review titled "Why the Second Vatican Council Was a Good Thing & Is More Important Than Ever" by John Lamont. I found it very interesting and in fact read it twice (something I almost never do).
One example paragraph says:

The very evidence for this conclusion raises doubts. The Second Vatican Council was a valid ecumenical council, which makes it impossible that its teachings could have really given a justification for the extreme abuses that followed it. Attempts by so-called Traditionalists to demonstrate that the Council was not valid, or that its teachings should be rejected as contradicting other authoritative pronouncements of the Church, are all contrived; they involve insisting that texts which can be understood in perfectly orthodox senses must be read as making heterodox claims. They also ignore a central feature of the Council’s history, described in Fr. Ralph Wiltgen’s The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber. Several hundred of the Council Fathers became alarmed about possible heterodox tendencies in the conciliar texts. These Fathers were able to insist that the texts be framed in ways that harmonized with Catholic tradition, and that the texts explicitly state that they are meant to be interpreted in line with that tradition. This is not to say that the texts are not in some places vague, ambiguous, or simply banal; but this is not the same as heterodoxy.

This is something that I have noticed also on the part of some radical traditionalists that only a heterodox reading of phrases in documents such as Dignitatis Humanae are correct.

He also makes the argument that The liturgical movement that produced Sancrosanctum Concilium was a valuable attempt to restore Catholic tradition and that the Mass of Paul VI was a departure from the wishes of the council as espoused by its documents. Not being an expert on this subject I don’t know how valid his claims are other than to note that it is obvious that much occurred that was not in conformance to the council’s wishes as regards liturgy. This is of course not to say that the Mass was illicit or invalid in any way only that some of the changes made were not prudent.

Today being the feast of St. Augustine I was hoping to attend my diocese of St. Augustine’s celebration which included Mass, a procession and to be capped off by a speech by historian Michael Gannon. Unfortunately the local weather made this impossible. As a result I had to attend Mass at a parish that had a later Mass. The phrase "When we sing,we pray twice" is attributed to St. Augustine and he might have revised it if he attended the Mass I did. I thought I knew what was in store when I saw the Gather hymnal, but it turned out it wasn’t used. I guess they considered this hymnal not to be vapid enough and they had spiral booklets of their own hymnal. The priest who celebrated Mass did give an excellent homily and even chanted some of the Mass, but the music the choir used was discordant to say the least with his reverential celebration. Think what it would have been like to watch the Passion of the Christ with Barney on the soundtrack.

The choir included a drummer, electric bass player, and one acoustic guitar player. They had the tendency to drag every song they did on and on. When they did the alleluia before the Gospel I swear it lasted at least three minutes. I think I said alleluia when they finally finished. The same thing for the Agnus Dei. They had one of those multiple line introductions not actually part of the Agnus Dei and then said the refrains so many times that you were never sure when the verse would actually change from " have mercy on us" to "grant us peace." Now I have experience all this before and am getting better at just ignoring it and concentrating on the sacrifice of the Mass instead, or at least I though it was. After receiving Our Lord in Communion I was kneeling and trying to pray when what do I hear? Bah-ba-ba-dum-ba-da …, yes a drum intro followed by an electric bass for a couple of lines until the choir chimed in. Not exactly conducive to prayer. For the final hymn they invited children up to play the maracas and I witnessed the choir do some choreographed arm movements to whatever it was they were signing (I am desperately trying to purge it from my memory.) At the end people clapped and I can only hope that it was in response to the choir finally finishing. I am just not sure how people can be so oblivious to just how inappropriate the music was. At times during the Mass my wife and I would exchange glances when we were just dumbfounded by the music.

As L.A. Catholic says about this photo with Archbishop Levada and Cardinal Mahony.

"It’s a good thing that there are no liturgical abuses in L.A."

I just want to know where they got that chalice from? Being L.A. perhaps it is a leftover from the set of Barbarella or some SF epic.

From time to time you see some Catholic bloggers ask about a location of a good parish in a city they will be visiting or talk about finding one good parish in their area. This is a sad indictment about the state of liturgy in a universal church. Many liturgists always talk about community to justify their fiddling with the liturgy at a local church, yet this very act reduces the liturgy to the local community. I doubt that progressive Catholic bloggers experience the same problem from their point of view. It seems that that majority of liturgies have gone down that same path of Masses with some local improvisation or quirk added to them. I know that in my own experience of about six churches in my area that only one of them is one hundred percent faithful to the GIRM and it also happens to be the only one that has music that doesn’t give me flashbacks of being in an elevator. There is really just no reason that the rubrics of the liturgy should be different from diocese to diocese within the same rite of the Church. Now there will always be variances in liturgies to some extent. Some priests are more gifted homilists than others and some choirs are more talented than others.

By the way speaking about gifted homilists have you ever noticed that many Protestant Church’s the name of the pastor is prominently displayed on a sign in front, whereas in my limited experience I have never seen this associated with a Catholic Church. I think this is because in the Catholic Church the emphasis is on the Mass and not just the homily. Of course in non-liturgical churches it follows that all the attention is paid towards the pastor.

I was fairly impressed with the document Instrumentum laboris and the issues that it brought up in the celebration of the Eucharist. This document is the working copy produced for the Bishop’s synod that deals with "The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church." Obviously from the submissions made for this document many other bishops see some of the same problems in the Church’s liturgical life. It will be interesting to see the final document produced, but more importantly whether any of the suggestions made will be instituted by the Church. I am too much of a cynic to believe that most Vatican documents have much effect on local liturgies. Though I have seen some corrections made to certain liturgical abuses that were addressed in Redemptionis Sacramentum in some local churches. Bishops and priests who are willing to ignore and downplay some of the Church’s teaching are not going to be worried about following liturgical laws. The document addresses such topics as to whether moving the tabernacle from the center of the sanctuary to less prominent places has deemphasized the role of the Eucharist and other church architecture related topics. Gregorian chant was also addressed and the suitability of some musical instruments for sacred music and also the uses of a Church for purposes other than the liturgy (note to Cardinal Mahony). The document has a good grasp as to the problems, but mostly does not address what to do about them so we will need to see how this will translate into something more easily understood at the local level. It also address some of the more positive movements in the Church such as the increase of Eucharistic adoration. As much as I might gripe about the liturgy – God stills brings people towards himself despite our flaws.

O, most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel,
Fruit of the Vine, splendorous of Heaven.
Blessed Mother of the Son of God,
Immaculate Virgin,
assist me in this my necessity.
O, Star of the Sea, help me
and show herein you are my mother.
O, Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth,
I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart
to succour me in my necessity.
There are none that can withstand your power,
O, show me here you are my mother.
O, Mary, conceived without sin,
pray for us who have recourse to Thee.
Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands.
Amen.

Here is an introductory history on Carmelites I wrote a couple of years back.