Larry Chapp had a very good conversation with Bishop James Conley (Diocese of Lincoln) where the discuss the reform of the liturgy and the ways that Bishop Conley is working to deepen the faith of those in his diocese.
It's not just that bad Catholic liturgy apes Protestant liturgy--it's that it's bad at aping it! There's a lot of ways this is true, but I don't want this comment to get too long, so I'll just use the example of contemporary music. Protestant megachurches will do rock songs that were released this year, with genuinely ecstatic emotional participation from the congregation. Whereas Catholic "contemporary" hymns were written probably somewhere between 1978 and 1988 in a folk style that was only popular a decade before the song was actually written, and don't produce any emotion beyond a bored, tepid, mildly warm feeling--the way a teenager might feel having Grandma present them with a mediocre batch of cookies.
Yeah that's what I was thinking too! And I agree it's boring music. But most people I know in my parish don't seem to mind. You can always go to mass at a different parish if you like that better fits your musical taste.
Most of those folk songs are also drinking songs repurposed. It’s a simple test to find out which ones are reformed drinking songs… hum the tune and if you feel the need to sway and wave an imaginary stein, you got one of ‘em!
One thing I think was off about Ed's comment was that the original ultra-Protestant tradition was psalms only, even to the point of "psalm-singing" as a negative epithet for Puritans and low church Protestants generally. The great hymns of Watts were mostly psalms paraphrased. (As for that matter, to digress for a moment, were the hymns of the St. Louis Jesuits, however unliturgical they may be melodically.) Evangelical hymnody with original lyrics is really a phenomenon of 19th-century origin. (Anglicans and above all Lutherans would be a different story.)
The Liturgical conversation and the Mass/Music, is a direction really directly correlated to the quality of the school’s teacher’s, principal and the pastor himself. But also one has to consider which Diocese one lives. More and more Diocesan offices of Education are taking over from the parishes the governance of Catholic schools. I am not speaking for my Diocese, but this is more of the case of so many across the country. That being said, we have pastors that do not want a Catholic School, principals that are not trained to facilitate the formation of children and families in the Faith (which is the formation of the whole person, not just to take a test as per public education), and of course teachers/parents whom are not invested either because of the lack of training/formation. Sorry to vent, but I was moved by the beginning of the podcast.
In my diocese the powers decided that my parish should build a Catholic school. They hired some expensive feasibility company to do a study. We just closed a school (4 yrs ago) in the parish across town.
The study showed that folks with kids of school age wanted the school but couldn't or wouldn't pay for it.
The majority of the parish voted "no" to a new school.
The cost at 12 million dollars was seen as too steep. We have a lot of turnover in parish members due to the town's main employer's practices. We already have a parish debt.
My biggest issue though (in the past being an administrator in a Catholic High School) was the inability to find well formed and devout teachers. I've dealt with too many situations where poorly formed or non Catholic teachers were a hindrance to the mission of the Church.
The Catholic population of the state being small greatly contributed to this.
For us, well formed cathechists, family faith formation and authentic liturgical practice and teaching suffices.
Great conversation about liturgy. It is exactly conversation like that between people like Ed and JD which we need for the reform of the reform. My fear is that if people like JD give up hope on finding that middle ground between tradition and the reform put forth by the council, then what has been a false dichotomy between TLM trad and 1990s suburban banality will be actualized and those two poles will only grow more divisive. There are faithful, orthodox parishes and schools which are doing the reform of the reform well, for real, right now. I would love to see the Pillar do an in depth look at places like these, as a sign of hope for people who really don’t want bad liturgy but are also trying to remain docile to and hopeful about the work of Vatican 2. (And if you need ideas of places to look, I personally know of several here in the Twin Cities. The Ash Wednesday grade 7-12 Mass at my kids’ school this week was made extra special for my kids and their friends because the high school choir would be singing Allegri’s Miserere during the distribution of ashes. Two large high school boys were chatting to themselves about the Miserere before Mass started! It did not disappoint! Sometimes they do Mass in English, sometimes in Latin. Either way it’s a novus ordo Mass, done ad orientem, with Communion received by all the children at the Communion rail. And St. Agnes isn’t the only parish school doing it beautifully here either.)
For many people, myself included, our interior orientation toward God flows from the externals around us. We are catechized by the way the Mass is celebrated. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
... sorry, it's not about it or lack thereof. It seems reform of the reform is all about Latin being "the" answer. Ed is spot-on. The Liturgy is ALWAYS and has always been about us, never about Him. Eucharist = Thanksgiving... us thanking Him. We participate... do we enter Heaven or not. He doesn't need us
To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, if the Mass is and has been about us and never about God, then to 4377 with it.
If Mass isn't first and foremost about God, about us joining in the worship of God that goes on in heaven, then we have it backwards.
If it isn't Jesus who is baptizing when I pour the water; it if isn't Jesus absolving through the ministry of the priest in the confessional; if it isn't Jesus anointing through the hands of the priest; (usw) what's the point?
Great discussion on the liturgy! A couple of points:
1. I completely agree with Ed on church architecture. And it ties into the education of children as well, though in an indirect manner. While my 4 year old may not be able to appreciate or understand everything in the Mass, he is able to appreciate the beauty of the church itself. This informs him that we (as a parish) value the worship of God, as it takes great effort to make something beautiful. It also provides him with a connection between God and beauty, which is only fitting.
2. As someone who has no appreciation for Latin, the best argument I have heard about its inclusion during Mass is to provide an audible connection between all Masses celebrated throughout the world. While it's undoubtedly true that the Mass is spiritually connected regardless of language, I think there is something special about parishioners across the globe all saying the Lord's prayer in Latin as a "tangible" commonality.
Huge THANK YOU to Ed and JD for finally saying out loud what has been so blindingly obvious for decades: the modernist Rite is a banal facsimile of a Protestant worship service, celebrated in ugly, modernist churches.
JD Flynn is 100% correct: the modernist liturgy is too calcified to be "reformed"; it can only be extirpated in its entirety and consigned to the dustbin of failed experimentation. Unfortunately, I think that there is a greater chance that we will go back to the Papal States than that we will admit that the Second Vatican Council reforms have been a failure. This is especially true here in Washington DC where the Cardinal Archbishop is increasingly vindictive against his own flock who see the obvious grave damage which the modern Rite has done to the faithful. I fear that the SSPX may be the last remnant within a generation.
Hmmm. I don't think that's what either of them said. The current missal can be, and should be, celebrated with great reverence and mystery. I have seen it and assisted at such Masses. A few weeks ago while traveling, I even stumbled upon a Mass ad orientem using the current missal mostly in Latin (the Confiteor, readings, homily, and Credo being the primary exceptions). Every pew was occupied, some filled with a single family — mostly young — and others with two, and there were enough babies that it reminded me of my youth in the early '60s. It was sublime.
The banality doesn't come from the missal, and it didn't start with the current missal. You can see it recorded with some permanence in the church architecture that flourished (if that's really the right word) after the war. Clerics of the sort who would abuse the new Mass also would abuse the old one as well, regardless of the rubrics. Not a few of the Masses using the old missal were said in "Latin".
Disappointed to hear my pastor talk about how recently ordained priests are too rigorous during Mass such as holding up the consecrated host for too long...
Our masses aren't heterodox or anything, but just vanilla and I haven't heard Latin or Greek in years. No felt banners or made up prayers though. Would like my kids to grow up with something that feels sacred and set apart from the rest of the world.
My husband and I were listening to the discussion about architecture and the liturgy and looked at each other as I said, "But...Quebec." As my Quebecois husband would say, "If you want to see an ugly liturgy in a beautiful church, come to Quebec."
Agreed on the liturgy discussion but would add using Eucharistic prayer I along with the missing antiphons and thurible. EPII was only intended to be used during daily Mass but has now become common place on Sunday. It is a reprieve just to hear EPIII every once in a while instead of “dewfall”
We just want a reverent novus ordo! I’m very thankful to have a parish nearby that does Latin Mass parts (Gloria, Sanctus, mortem, and angus dei) and has a kneeler for me to receive the Eucharist in a way in which I prefer.
JD is right about the use of a sacral language. The Early Modern English used in the Ordinariates can remind the faithful to step a bit outside of our everyday self-oriented attitudes, dispose ourselves to God interiorly before saying the first word, and be aware of our communion with the Church across distance and time. The Church's Latin rhetoric is similar: as the Dutch scholar Christine Mohrmann showed, liturgical Latin was always a 'constructed' way of speaking, an aspirational register of language.
Ed. is also right about the presence of "too much McDonald's" in the Church's worship; consumerist attitudes affect how the liturgy is carried out. The multiple-choice aspect of the modern Roman rite may feed into this, giving the celebrant an immense number of lawful textual permutations on one given day from which to choose. When Father has so many options, surely there will be temptations to take the ones that put ease and brevity ahead of liturgical expressiveness, recollection, or the spiritual formation of the faithful: so the ministers of the liturgy read the short reading, say the shorter EP, leave out the incense, etc.
I appreciate the discussion in this podcast, but I was frustrated at two points in particular. The first is when Ed talks about liturgy not beginning at Trent, so we shouldn’t worry too much about Latin antiphons. The Latin antiphons of the Mass were, by and large, first written down with music notation in the ninth century, and we can be reasonably sure from earlier books containing their texts that they were part of the liturgy before that. There simply is no extant music of the Church earlier than Gregorian Chant, which is therefore a precious and very early part of our cultural patrimony and our liturgical tradition. I feel that Ed is wrong to equate a desire to foster that particular aspect of the Church’s liturgy with the baroque or with the pipe organ. All of that stuff is extraneous, but the Gregorian melodies are the sung prayer of the Church and stretch way back before Trent. I love plenty of Church music from many different centuries, but the Gregorian chant is different and special and even amounts to a sacramental. This is why the council speaks so highly of it!
The second point is related; I think Ed is wrong to speak about liturgical music as something external to the liturgy. The Roman Rite has been, as long as we have written records of it, a primarily sung liturgy; there was even singing at the Last Supper. This reality gets a little bit lost in the post-conciliar period with the new Mass’a permissive options, when speaking into microphones generally took the place of the priest’s singing of the prayers and readings. This relates to Ed’s very good points about architecture. But architecture and acoustics are externals, while the singing of the Rite is very much an internal. What JD wants is not just something added to the liturgy but rather the fullness of the Roman Rite, when we do not just speak to God but sing to him in union with “all the hosts and powers of heaven.” We do take the music of the Church too lightly, much to our shame.
The liturgical music of the Roman Church, most especially her chant, is, at the very least, one of the great achievements of human civilization. And our kids deserve to have that handed on to them.
As I recall, the great and venerable St. Bede always wrote of singing the Mass, never of saying it. His formation came from Lérins Abbey, founded almost a century before St. Benedict began western monasticism by some accounts, and St. Peter's in Rome, which was founded almost a century before that.
The school at Wearmouth and Jarrow was the guiding light to that formed at York Minster, which in turn (in the person of Bl. Alcuin of York, a deacon I will point out) formed the instruction at Charlemagne's school (and for Karl himself), which in turn is where some modern historians suddenly find the origins of Gregorian chant.
You should visit the St Jerome Academy in Hyattsville, MD, and see what you think of their school Mass and their children’s choir.
Larry Chapp had a very good conversation with Bishop James Conley (Diocese of Lincoln) where the discuss the reform of the liturgy and the ways that Bishop Conley is working to deepen the faith of those in his diocese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSE1-Xdy4EE
It's not just that bad Catholic liturgy apes Protestant liturgy--it's that it's bad at aping it! There's a lot of ways this is true, but I don't want this comment to get too long, so I'll just use the example of contemporary music. Protestant megachurches will do rock songs that were released this year, with genuinely ecstatic emotional participation from the congregation. Whereas Catholic "contemporary" hymns were written probably somewhere between 1978 and 1988 in a folk style that was only popular a decade before the song was actually written, and don't produce any emotion beyond a bored, tepid, mildly warm feeling--the way a teenager might feel having Grandma present them with a mediocre batch of cookies.
And he will raise you up on eagles' wings...
Yeah that's what I was thinking too! And I agree it's boring music. But most people I know in my parish don't seem to mind. You can always go to mass at a different parish if you like that better fits your musical taste.
Not an option everywhere sadly…
Most of those folk songs are also drinking songs repurposed. It’s a simple test to find out which ones are reformed drinking songs… hum the tune and if you feel the need to sway and wave an imaginary stein, you got one of ‘em!
CHRIST BEEEEEE OUR LIGHT!
Ed, my cantor friend wanted me to direct you Collossians 3:16, in regards to your hot take
One thing I think was off about Ed's comment was that the original ultra-Protestant tradition was psalms only, even to the point of "psalm-singing" as a negative epithet for Puritans and low church Protestants generally. The great hymns of Watts were mostly psalms paraphrased. (As for that matter, to digress for a moment, were the hymns of the St. Louis Jesuits, however unliturgical they may be melodically.) Evangelical hymnody with original lyrics is really a phenomenon of 19th-century origin. (Anglicans and above all Lutherans would be a different story.)
The Liturgical conversation and the Mass/Music, is a direction really directly correlated to the quality of the school’s teacher’s, principal and the pastor himself. But also one has to consider which Diocese one lives. More and more Diocesan offices of Education are taking over from the parishes the governance of Catholic schools. I am not speaking for my Diocese, but this is more of the case of so many across the country. That being said, we have pastors that do not want a Catholic School, principals that are not trained to facilitate the formation of children and families in the Faith (which is the formation of the whole person, not just to take a test as per public education), and of course teachers/parents whom are not invested either because of the lack of training/formation. Sorry to vent, but I was moved by the beginning of the podcast.
In my diocese the powers decided that my parish should build a Catholic school. They hired some expensive feasibility company to do a study. We just closed a school (4 yrs ago) in the parish across town.
The study showed that folks with kids of school age wanted the school but couldn't or wouldn't pay for it.
The majority of the parish voted "no" to a new school.
The cost at 12 million dollars was seen as too steep. We have a lot of turnover in parish members due to the town's main employer's practices. We already have a parish debt.
My biggest issue though (in the past being an administrator in a Catholic High School) was the inability to find well formed and devout teachers. I've dealt with too many situations where poorly formed or non Catholic teachers were a hindrance to the mission of the Church.
The Catholic population of the state being small greatly contributed to this.
For us, well formed cathechists, family faith formation and authentic liturgical practice and teaching suffices.
the school is an apostolate of the parish. It seems weird for the diocese to compel the school to undertake an expensive apostolate...
Totally agree
Surely the powers that be would be willing to pay for a school they want so much, right? Right?
Great conversation about liturgy. It is exactly conversation like that between people like Ed and JD which we need for the reform of the reform. My fear is that if people like JD give up hope on finding that middle ground between tradition and the reform put forth by the council, then what has been a false dichotomy between TLM trad and 1990s suburban banality will be actualized and those two poles will only grow more divisive. There are faithful, orthodox parishes and schools which are doing the reform of the reform well, for real, right now. I would love to see the Pillar do an in depth look at places like these, as a sign of hope for people who really don’t want bad liturgy but are also trying to remain docile to and hopeful about the work of Vatican 2. (And if you need ideas of places to look, I personally know of several here in the Twin Cities. The Ash Wednesday grade 7-12 Mass at my kids’ school this week was made extra special for my kids and their friends because the high school choir would be singing Allegri’s Miserere during the distribution of ashes. Two large high school boys were chatting to themselves about the Miserere before Mass started! It did not disappoint! Sometimes they do Mass in English, sometimes in Latin. Either way it’s a novus ordo Mass, done ad orientem, with Communion received by all the children at the Communion rail. And St. Agnes isn’t the only parish school doing it beautifully here either.)
For many people, myself included, our interior orientation toward God flows from the externals around us. We are catechized by the way the Mass is celebrated. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Bingo.
How very Catholic!
Bouyer... Passover... But Latin
... sorry, it's not about it or lack thereof. It seems reform of the reform is all about Latin being "the" answer. Ed is spot-on. The Liturgy is ALWAYS and has always been about us, never about Him. Eucharist = Thanksgiving... us thanking Him. We participate... do we enter Heaven or not. He doesn't need us
To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, if the Mass is and has been about us and never about God, then to 4377 with it.
If Mass isn't first and foremost about God, about us joining in the worship of God that goes on in heaven, then we have it backwards.
If it isn't Jesus who is baptizing when I pour the water; it if isn't Jesus absolving through the ministry of the priest in the confessional; if it isn't Jesus anointing through the hands of the priest; (usw) what's the point?
Great discussion on the liturgy! A couple of points:
1. I completely agree with Ed on church architecture. And it ties into the education of children as well, though in an indirect manner. While my 4 year old may not be able to appreciate or understand everything in the Mass, he is able to appreciate the beauty of the church itself. This informs him that we (as a parish) value the worship of God, as it takes great effort to make something beautiful. It also provides him with a connection between God and beauty, which is only fitting.
2. As someone who has no appreciation for Latin, the best argument I have heard about its inclusion during Mass is to provide an audible connection between all Masses celebrated throughout the world. While it's undoubtedly true that the Mass is spiritually connected regardless of language, I think there is something special about parishioners across the globe all saying the Lord's prayer in Latin as a "tangible" commonality.
Huge THANK YOU to Ed and JD for finally saying out loud what has been so blindingly obvious for decades: the modernist Rite is a banal facsimile of a Protestant worship service, celebrated in ugly, modernist churches.
JD Flynn is 100% correct: the modernist liturgy is too calcified to be "reformed"; it can only be extirpated in its entirety and consigned to the dustbin of failed experimentation. Unfortunately, I think that there is a greater chance that we will go back to the Papal States than that we will admit that the Second Vatican Council reforms have been a failure. This is especially true here in Washington DC where the Cardinal Archbishop is increasingly vindictive against his own flock who see the obvious grave damage which the modern Rite has done to the faithful. I fear that the SSPX may be the last remnant within a generation.
Hmmm. I don't think that's what either of them said. The current missal can be, and should be, celebrated with great reverence and mystery. I have seen it and assisted at such Masses. A few weeks ago while traveling, I even stumbled upon a Mass ad orientem using the current missal mostly in Latin (the Confiteor, readings, homily, and Credo being the primary exceptions). Every pew was occupied, some filled with a single family — mostly young — and others with two, and there were enough babies that it reminded me of my youth in the early '60s. It was sublime.
The banality doesn't come from the missal, and it didn't start with the current missal. You can see it recorded with some permanence in the church architecture that flourished (if that's really the right word) after the war. Clerics of the sort who would abuse the new Mass also would abuse the old one as well, regardless of the rubrics. Not a few of the Masses using the old missal were said in "Latin".
Disappointed to hear my pastor talk about how recently ordained priests are too rigorous during Mass such as holding up the consecrated host for too long...
Our masses aren't heterodox or anything, but just vanilla and I haven't heard Latin or Greek in years. No felt banners or made up prayers though. Would like my kids to grow up with something that feels sacred and set apart from the rest of the world.
My husband and I were listening to the discussion about architecture and the liturgy and looked at each other as I said, "But...Quebec." As my Quebecois husband would say, "If you want to see an ugly liturgy in a beautiful church, come to Quebec."
(That is an over generalization but...)
Ed did not pull his punches today! Loved it.
ETA: this is a different Rebecca from the one above!
Agreed on the liturgy discussion but would add using Eucharistic prayer I along with the missing antiphons and thurible. EPII was only intended to be used during daily Mass but has now become common place on Sunday. It is a reprieve just to hear EPIII every once in a while instead of “dewfall”
We just want a reverent novus ordo! I’m very thankful to have a parish nearby that does Latin Mass parts (Gloria, Sanctus, mortem, and angus dei) and has a kneeler for me to receive the Eucharist in a way in which I prefer.
JD is right about the use of a sacral language. The Early Modern English used in the Ordinariates can remind the faithful to step a bit outside of our everyday self-oriented attitudes, dispose ourselves to God interiorly before saying the first word, and be aware of our communion with the Church across distance and time. The Church's Latin rhetoric is similar: as the Dutch scholar Christine Mohrmann showed, liturgical Latin was always a 'constructed' way of speaking, an aspirational register of language.
Ed. is also right about the presence of "too much McDonald's" in the Church's worship; consumerist attitudes affect how the liturgy is carried out. The multiple-choice aspect of the modern Roman rite may feed into this, giving the celebrant an immense number of lawful textual permutations on one given day from which to choose. When Father has so many options, surely there will be temptations to take the ones that put ease and brevity ahead of liturgical expressiveness, recollection, or the spiritual formation of the faithful: so the ministers of the liturgy read the short reading, say the shorter EP, leave out the incense, etc.
I appreciate the discussion in this podcast, but I was frustrated at two points in particular. The first is when Ed talks about liturgy not beginning at Trent, so we shouldn’t worry too much about Latin antiphons. The Latin antiphons of the Mass were, by and large, first written down with music notation in the ninth century, and we can be reasonably sure from earlier books containing their texts that they were part of the liturgy before that. There simply is no extant music of the Church earlier than Gregorian Chant, which is therefore a precious and very early part of our cultural patrimony and our liturgical tradition. I feel that Ed is wrong to equate a desire to foster that particular aspect of the Church’s liturgy with the baroque or with the pipe organ. All of that stuff is extraneous, but the Gregorian melodies are the sung prayer of the Church and stretch way back before Trent. I love plenty of Church music from many different centuries, but the Gregorian chant is different and special and even amounts to a sacramental. This is why the council speaks so highly of it!
The second point is related; I think Ed is wrong to speak about liturgical music as something external to the liturgy. The Roman Rite has been, as long as we have written records of it, a primarily sung liturgy; there was even singing at the Last Supper. This reality gets a little bit lost in the post-conciliar period with the new Mass’a permissive options, when speaking into microphones generally took the place of the priest’s singing of the prayers and readings. This relates to Ed’s very good points about architecture. But architecture and acoustics are externals, while the singing of the Rite is very much an internal. What JD wants is not just something added to the liturgy but rather the fullness of the Roman Rite, when we do not just speak to God but sing to him in union with “all the hosts and powers of heaven.” We do take the music of the Church too lightly, much to our shame.
The liturgical music of the Roman Church, most especially her chant, is, at the very least, one of the great achievements of human civilization. And our kids deserve to have that handed on to them.
As I recall, the great and venerable St. Bede always wrote of singing the Mass, never of saying it. His formation came from Lérins Abbey, founded almost a century before St. Benedict began western monasticism by some accounts, and St. Peter's in Rome, which was founded almost a century before that.
The school at Wearmouth and Jarrow was the guiding light to that formed at York Minster, which in turn (in the person of Bl. Alcuin of York, a deacon I will point out) formed the instruction at Charlemagne's school (and for Karl himself), which in turn is where some modern historians suddenly find the origins of Gregorian chant.