2nd Monday quarterbacking: open letter to all liturgical leaders

Dear Celebrants, Deacons, Liturgists and Musicians,

When you meet, could you thoroughly discuss how each of you has approached the “changes” with regard to preparing the people. We should consider (and we are not alone) whether we have adequately prepared the people in the pews for both the acceptance and the implementation of the ritual language changes. It is difficult to assess that, even though celebrants have valiantly taken up the ritual language with acceptance, whether we have adequately prepared our congregations sufficiently to both understand why and what the changes exactly ask from them. This needs to be addressed from a united front from all of us immediately. We can allow and allot ourselves a cushion that “change” will take time, years even. But after two weeks, it is painfully apparent that we have not done enough preparation.

It is not enough to simply “give ourselves a break” and say “let time take its course.” The very structures of the church local and Church demand that we step up and take responsibility for how we prepare ourselves and our Faithful for “the Liturgy” This would still be true under previous or future editions.. One retired “seasoned senior” pastor’s remark that he has regarded this fourth version of the Missale he’s “endured” through his priestly tenure as an opportunity to learn how to pray anew is so very apt and encouraging. What a remarkable perspective. Each of us has also taken a pro-active role in assimilating this change as an opportunity, rather than an inconvenience. But we who are at the top of the liturgical food chain need to remember than the people cannot assimilate these shifts by osmosis, unless we are resigned that if they get “it” after sufficient repetitions that rote learning and recitation is the hallmark of “right worship” of God Almighty. That rationale is a death knell for worship of the Creator of creation in this cynical, wary era. We have to do more, each and every one of us.

Deacons, you’re not exempt: you have to prepare yourselves for your responsibilities to all your important duties to liturgy in advance. Taking a cue from the celebrants’ need to review their new orations, you all should avoid the inclination to “wing” the Universal Prayer on the fly. You have to study the syntax, the phraseology, the prepositions, the names of the deceased with determination to understand each intercession with precision.. It really is inconsequential whether each of us assumes that we have fulfilled our liturgical roles simply because we keep a regular schedule and have accepted and know our basic “responsibilities.” Souls are at stake; we cannot waver, rest on our laurels, or our personalities, or our legacies over time, assuming that we have satisfied our rubrical roles and the rest is up to everyone else. We have to risk more, each and every Sunday, more not less.
Celebrants and Deacons- we have to cross the first beach-head, that after two weekends, we must admit we have not presented a united mission to the faithful, and in many situations we have abysmally failed to prepare ourselves, much less they whom we guide. We have not been able in so many documented anecdotal recollections been able to elicit a fairly pro forma response to “The Lord be with you.” This second weekend has provided many accounts that this inability was more evident than the first week. I don’t think this indicates “revolt” or “revulsion” towards the new Missal. I think it reflects our own casual approach to helping our Faithful adjust. Each celebrant and deacon ought to consider reviewing and practicing the manner in which he elocutes the “Dominus vobiscum” or “The Lord be with you.” We’re not talking about the theology of that invocation and its response, we’re talking just how to perform it so that the response is “called for.” Have you considered whether you have continued to orate “The Lord be with you” with the normal, expected cadence that has been in place for 45 years? Five syllables, “ Bada bing boom boom.” And what happens? The people aren’t afforded a cue, a clue or a context to offer the proper response because the celebrational medium likely didn’t change, so they literally fall into the convenience of the former response. Despite the fairly well-documented and easily acquired access of online and other pedagogical guides, how many celebrants actually took to heart the notion of “singing the Mass?” So many accounts of successful workshops offered by the likes of Dr. Paul Ford and Dr. Jerry Galipeau, when crunch time finally arrived, how many of those who heartily endorsed both the efficiency and beauty of chanting the orations, backed away from that goal for whatever expedient reason provided a rationale for abandoning any enthusiasm for that noble effort. However it’s clear that with some modicum of preparation and setup, tasks musicians do all the time, week after week, whether sung or recited, presiders can help the faithful to take up the new responses deftly:
“The Lord (pause for a beat) be WITH you.” “And WITH your spirit.” It’s about knowing something about dynamics, emPHAsis, and contextual clues so that the people get a sense they’re being led to the elevation of the new semantical responses.
Lastly, it is an expressed concern that the Church’s primary witness to the world, not to mention our own local community, is centered upon how we worship. Despite local indications that might offer us all a cushion to rest upon and think that because our numbers, attendance, etc. are better than our neighbors, the Church is in serious crisis. We need to re-evaluate our priorities vis a vis Sunday worship. Should we not capitalize upon this moment to clarify the meaning of worship for our people, and that means it is not about “me, us, the community, feeling redeemed and happy etc.”? There is nothing intrinsically wrong about singing “rejoice and be glad” or reminding the faithful during homilies that “GOD IS HERE” and “all will be well.” Sure, we’ve heard that for two generations. But we are the Church where the corpus is still on the cross. Suffering is still part of the equation, and we cannot pretend that this mystery is an either/or story. It is a “both/and” story. We should have no problem with celebrating the concept of corporate redemption and that should elicit a demeanor of joy and hope. But reality has a very efficient way of intruding upon that in each of our lives, and we need words (already present in our rituals and our scripture) that should acknowledge that life is a struggle, and that Jesus calls us, each and every one of us, to improve our disposition through prayer, deeds and DISCIPLINE so that we can help others to recognize Christ in US. That cannot be encapsulated or canned in any one type of corporate response such as singing a “happy, familiar” song or laughing at an illustrative joke or anecdote.

Our Church’s future, in the largest sense as well as local, is at a critical crossroads. And all that is being proposed and advocated here is that we all “up our game.”
Where Catholicism goes, so goes Christianity. Christ promised us that holding the keys would prevent the gates of hell (and the Enemy) from prevailing, ever. May each of us consider all the vows and covenants we’ve made to point souls towards Christ without any illusions or excuses.

The Cultural Retreat of Catholics

Robert Fay observes:

The obvious reason for this literary vacuum is that the Christian faith, and the Catholic Church in particular, have been in full-cultural retreat since the 1960s…. Yet there was another revolution in the 1960s — an internal Catholic one — that was in many ways as profound as the one taking place in the streets of Paris, New York, and London. It was a liturgical revolution, and it impacted each and every Catholic at that most fundamental unit of faith — Sunday morning Mass.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

The Liturgy Sings Itself

A few days ago, a composer sent a set of Mass propers that struck me as absolutely beautiful. They had thick choral writing in the antiphon, and beautiful set Psalms in parts too, using a fresh-sounding Psalm tone on top. It is a great example of what the new consciousness about Mass propers has done for liturgical composition. Fulfilling a hope first expressed in modern times by Aristotle Esguerra, we are now seeing some of the best artistic and compositional talents turned to service of the Roman Rite.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking about this model and its parish viability. This is a concern that has been central to my thinking for some time and increasingly important to strategizing going forward. The stunning success of the Simple English Propers demonstrates just how crucial it is to think about the resources available in the average parish and to have music made available to work within this framework.

Here is the reality we are dealing with. Most parishes, by which I mean probably 4 out of 5, do not have a single choir available that can consistently sing in four parts. This fact shocks musicians when they first hear it. It seems pathetic in some way. There is plenty of blame to go around to account for this. But I’m not sure there is much point is continuing to express horror at this.

We must work with the resources we have, and at this late date in the postconciliar church – after a time when children’s choirs were disbanded, music education in parish schools was defunded, and the very existence of serious choirs was questioned and put down, and when knowledge of the musical framework of the Roman rite has fallen to new lows – we just do not have them.

Nor are organists plentiful. Many are just pianists who are doing the best they can for $50 per week, at best. They bear a huge burden to somehow make the music happen in parish after parish. But even in the lucky parish that has enough singers for four-part writing or even complex polyphonic composition, it can’t usually happen at every Mass. It appears perhaps once on Sunday, but there are two, three, or four additional Masses to be covered, not to speak of feast days during the week where there is a desire for music.

What it comes down to is this. Given the liturgical demands of the Roman rite, most Catholic music must be prepared with the expectation that it can be handled by a single cantor. That is the reality and the usual experience of liturgy. Music that is most marketable, viable, and appropriate at this point in history has to be rendered by a single voice.

There is where we are right now. Perhaps in another ten years, matters could be different. But we must remember that right now, we are really in a rebuilding stage. The foundation has to be laid on what is really something of a wasteland. From there, wonderful things can happen, and even already I can think of many examples where fabulous and well-developed programs are already emerging. But the process will be slow, and we need a good beginning.

The question is whether it is possible for a parish to have beautiful liturgy with cantor-led Masses without support singers or even instruments. I believe the answer is: absolutely yes. It is completely possible that every Mass in a parish feature a single voice and nothing else. If you choose the music well and adhere closely to the demands of the Roman Rite as it is given to us – without being distracted by all the whiz bang being dished out by the big publishers – you can have a thoroughly Catholic program that does everything that Catholic music is supposed to do.

The starting point here are the chants of the new Roman Missal. They are simple but elegant in just how fitting they are for liturgy. When you sing them off the page and out of context, you wonder if they are really suitable. But once you sing them in Mass, even without any accompaniment, you are struck by how seamlessly they integrate into the overall fabric of the rite. The words and music flow into each other so that the entire Mass becomes one prayer.

The new language of the Missal helps to make the music seem better than it otherwise would be because here you find a similar simple elegance. It is not chatty and popular but heightened and solemn. One suspects that this is made possible by the overarching theory of the composers who chose these particular settings of the text. For them, it was clearly the case that they believed in the primacy of the word. The word is the driving force behind the melody and not the reverse. If the word is already musical in its cadence, the additional of notes brings about an elevation of the overall structure. This is what happens with the Missal chants.

Don’t judge them harshly until you have tried them in a live liturgical setting! The dialogues from the Missal are truly inspired. They should be used in ever Mass, even if you are using a more complex setting of the ordinary chants of the Mass. They do not need accompaniment. They should be standard practice everywhere.

That leaves only the sung propers of the Mass: entrance, Psalm, Alleluia, offertory, and communion. These can all be sung by a cantor alone. Even an inexperience cantor can sing the Simple English Propers. More experienced singers can move to more complex chants in English, and gradually introduce the authentic Gregorian chant from the Roman Gradual. It is true that Gregorian chant is intended to be sung by a group, but again let’s think about current resources and what is possible. A lone cantor can in fact sing all the music that is assigned to the ritual within its official books.

That leaves additional hymns if you are using them. They are not necessary. A silent recessional can be a beautiful thing to observe. The only music becomes the footsteps. This can be great drama and leave people with a profound sense of prayer. Even if you don’t do this everywhere at Sunday Mass, it is certainly something to consider on Advent or Lent or other special occasions. A Marian antiphon in Latin is also a great choice. Or you can do an English hymn led by a cantor alone and without instruments, so that the people’s voices really do become the only source of sound.

It is sometimes said that instruments are necessary to support the singing. I don’t believe this actually. Voices alone can support hymns. Try it out sometime and see.

Pastors, do not despair. There is no reason to panic about your lack of resources. A few cantors alone, assigned to different Mass times, are actually enough to be the foundation of an excellent music program. If you choose the right music, you can even have a better program than the well-funded parish across town that dozens involved in making all the wrong choices.

In the end, it really is all about letting the Roman ritual speak for itself – without fuss, without artificial attempts to inflate things, without the attempt to turn the Mass into something that it really does not want to be. Let the mystery and majesty speak for itself. The liturgy sings itself.