Speaking at the NPM, Rita Ferrone urged conventioneers to keep looking ahead:
“We’ve come a long way the past 50 years,” she said, but cautioned them to “remember Lot’s wife,” who was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Is this really a good way to think about this past? As Catholics? Hmmm. In fact, this attitude seems like a direct contradiction to the whole sacred music framework. It was not a good thing when the past was (temporarily) destroyed, and the past was no Sodom.
Maybe my interpretation of her remark is wrong.
What's "aggiornamento" for today? The Knights of Columbus meeting at the rifle range to train for church defense? I'd be willing to go back to 12/4/63 and implement the letter of SC.
No, it's not wrong, it's of a piece with most of the things she says. I'm no liturgist – the number of genuine liturgical scholars world-wide is quite small, and La Ferrone is not one of them.
It is chronological snobbery.
It's at least very interesting. I mean, it says something important about a person's point of view, if recovering the past is not only undesirable but actually unGodly, and immoral. Supposing this is the correct reading, it puts the conversation on a different plane. It's not just a progressive ideology but actually a religious duty to forget the past and make a clean break, if that's what is meant.
Which also gives the lie to the pretentions of "archeologism" used to confect the Novus Ordo of Bugnini. The implementation is too clever by half, erase the very heart of The Holy Mass, by suppressing the Roman Canon, to which committee paid lip service by labeling it "E.P. #1."
I wonder if the Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus after his death had similar feelings when so many of their sacred rituals were deemed unimportant in this new era where Christ was all and in all.
I find it an interesting analogy. Whenever I think of the radical and militaristic zeal of many (not all) post Vatican II "reformers" in their efforts to completely, totally and decisively do away with everything that came before (musically, at least) I always think of some of our modern military terms that conjure mental pictures of that attitude. Things like "shock and awe" and "scorched earth" do somehow seem appropriate when comparing the two things. But I'm guessing that Ms. Ferrone and I find these two things analogous for *very* different reasons!
And Dr. Tracey Rowland's point at Sacra Liturgia 2013 was very relevant here. The "modern" era was very much about destroying the past, whereas the "post-modern era," which begins about 1968, was more "wistful and nostalgic" about the past and tradition. But church officials never got the memo. Prof. James Hitchcock wrote something along the lines of "just as Catholics were throwing out rosary beads, hippies were picking up prayer beads; just as priests were discarding Latin chant, some young people were picking up Sanskrit chant." Remember the Beatles' fascination with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and traditional Indian music? Also, think about the hit that the Chant CD of the Spanish monks was in the early 1990's. Again, some "church people types" just haven't gotten the memo. The modern era is over.
This analogy becomes deeply meaningful, or disturbing, when we consider the context of Genesis 19. The reason why Lot and his wife were fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah was because the Lord was thoroughly displeased with the sin of the men of Sodom. Abraham had bargained with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were even ten good men there. But there were not, and so Lot and his wife had to flee. __"Likewise, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding towns, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual promiscuity and practiced unnatural vice, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." (Jude 7)____There are times, indeed, when good men and women should flee from evil, and not look back. But does the keynote speaker realize when, and why, we should flee? In a recent, related article, mention was made of some participants wishing to flee from the celebration of a Mass in which an orange "fish" flew over the entrance procession. Perhaps it was not symbolic of a rising fish, but of falling brimstone. Hence, the desire to flee?