This video Eucharistie Lisbonne shows Bishop Jacques Gaillot presiding over various chants and dances leading Christopher Gillibrand to label it The Red Bishop and the Stealth Priestesses. I'm not going to embed the video here. To be honest, I couldn't bear to watch more than the first two minutes and it is over 19 minutes long.
What struck me was the first song which had the swaying ladies chanting "Yahveh, Yahveh, Yah-a-a-veh something something" with the Bishop shouting in the background. Now my point is this. There has been was a tremendous fuss about a prayer in the older form Good Friday Liturgy which prays for the conversion of the Jews. A lot of ink has been spilled about this, some of it sensibly to point out that if we believe that our faith brings eternal salvation, it is an act of charity to pray for the conversion of others. If they do not agree with us about our faith, surely, they could agree that if it were to be true it would be reasonable and good to want to share that eternal salvation with others?
But using the tetragrammaton, the most sacred name of the Lord, wantonly in songs like this must surely be far more offensive to any orthodox Jew. Why have the secular papers not taken this up at all, ever?
Fairly obviously, the answer is that the "offence to the Jews" story has largely been manufactured by the secular press and liberal Catholics as an opportune stick with which to beat Pope Benedict; one that serves conveniently at the same time to attack traditional Catholicism.
14 comments:
There must be something wrong with me. I read about the video and I just couldn't resist. Your description gave me the most extraordinary thrill of horrified excitement. I've never been one to gawp at road accidents, but I just had to look.
It's what makes me unable to resist reading (devouring) the British news every day. It's just sooooo horrible it's thrilling.
Didn't the celebrant strike you as deeeeeeeeeeeply caring and sincere! You can't help but get the feeling that the only thing in life about being a priest that he regrets is that he isn't a woman.
...and how polite the white froggies are, all standing there with sincere caring expressions...
It is a bit like watching a road accident.
Rather better dressed dancing girls than is usual in N.America though.
Excellent point, Father, I've never thought of that.
BTW, I may be able to explain the non-coverage of Jewish outrage.
Jews are no longer the favoured victim class of the media. They've been edged out by gays and Muslims. The media is actually going through one of its periodic bouts of fashionable anti-semitism.
I think they only people the MSM dislikes more than Jews at the moment is Catholics.
This was certainly a Protestant community, right? No crucifix in site -- only a plain cross on the wall behind the reverend.
--Guy
I have said this elsewhere:
I feel very uneasy about the celebrations of the passover that take place in many parishes in Holy Week. I'm sure many Jews would take offence at this practice.
fr paul harrison
So right! But if the media were really worried about offending Jews (and anti-semitism, in general), then they would be more outspoken about the way many vocal Muslims incite hatred towards Jews. The media is rarely slow in jumping on the 'Islamaphobia' band waggon; indeed, this very comment would be hailed by some as being Islamaphobic for simply pointing out this obvious inconsistency.
It is not just Jews. Catholics are not supposed to utter the Divine Name either. See CCC 2666
"The one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: 'Jesus' -'YHWH saves'."
and Liturgiam Authenticam 41
"In accordance with immemorial tradition, which indeed is already evident in the above-mentioned “Septuagint” version, the name of almighty God expressed by the Hebrew tetragrammaton (YHWH) and rendered in Latin by the word Dominus, is to be rendered into any given vernacular by a word equivalent in meaning."
I mentioned this on Fr Michael Brown's blog and a Hebrew Catholic lady said that "songs and readings which use the Divine Name feel like a punch in the guts to me".
I would make a similar observation about the whole issue about how insensitive to ecumenism the new CDF document is. It's interesting, however, that whenever the Anglican Church OK's women priests or the Episcopal Church ordains homosexual bishops that you don't here a peep about how bad that would be for ecumenism with Catholics or conservative Protestants. Reason being is that the whole line about ecumenism is a farce and what they really are ticked about is the Catholic Church standing up for its own traditional values, using the shtick about ecumenism as way to try to make the Church look bad.
Welllll...if this was some popular devotion in a Low Mass, fair enough. But the Big Brother Voice-over (amplification -that's the subject of the next motu proprio, I told the HF over breakfast the other day), the song-leader or whoever waving his or hands from the side of the sanctuary, and the fact that this is clearly not some well-known devotional lyric that everyone in the congregation has known from always... you don't really get the impression it's the equivalent of "O Sacrament most holy", do you? Note, for example, the gentleman in shirt and jacket in the foreground.
On the subject. It occurred to me that the new missal doesn't allow for popular religiosity in the same way that the old Low Mass does/did. Songs/hymns give the impression of being part of the liturgy in the NO.
I actually quite like the choirs of heaven effect of random singing over the Low Mass - I know it's bad, don't hit me, but the ltos-of-things-going-on-but-all-the-same-thing thing is, well, to be precise, rather nice.
Padre -
You're not the only one who has questioned that. When I was rather randomly singing with the Hendon Reformed Synagogue Choir, they didn't even pronounce 'Adonai' except in prayer. And they're *reformed*...
I actually watched the whole of this thing.
So far as I could see, no Mass took place.
I was strongly reminded of the film "Zulu"
There were very few non-Africans present.
I noticed the flowers at the beginning of the show. They were Strelitzia Regina, or "Bird of Paradise" plants. Somehow I do not think that they are native to France.
The "offertory" procession turned into an offering to all within the congregation i.e. versus populo.
The offering was of bread and fruit but no wine.
The elements for Mass simply were not there!
Perhaps the implication that this was a Mass is not true!
At least, it could never have been a valid one if such were intended.
JARay
Why would they have Mass in a bomb shelter?
1. Since "Yahweh" is used throughout the Jerusalem Bible and shows up in many of our popular hymns (e.g. "Yahweh, I know you are near"), I can't see what the objection is to its use here.
2. As for the dancing and singing, I have no French, but I wonder if it might have been in an African language for the most part. It certainly seemed to be liturgy in an African mode, by and for Africans for the most part, whether immigrants from Africa or conference participants therefrom. Here the correct terminology escapes me, but is not inculturation a phenomenon approved by the Church at the highest levels, liturgy conformed to the extent possible to the legitimate cultural attributes of any people? If there is an African community in France, or an ad hoc community of Africans at a conference, is it liturgically (or canonically) incorrect to permit them an African liturgy?
3. Since the video only takes 19 minutes and any such Mass would have had to be much longer, there is no doubt that much was left out. The fact that it was left out of the video does not mean that it was left out of the Mass.
4. In the January issue of First Things is an article by Philip Jenkins called "Believing in the Global South"- an aticle which is must reading for anyone concerned where the Church is headed at any level, not least liturgically. "By 2050, Christianity will be chiefly the religion of Africa and the African diaspora. By then there will be about three billion Christians in the world, and the proportion of those who will be white and non-Latino will be between one-fifth and one-sixth the total"
If you stayed till the end as I did, you would have seen that the whites had been considerably Africanized by then- they were no longer merely dispassionately observing. They were smiling, they were clapping, they were swaying.
I am no foe of the Motu Proprio or of Pope Benedict's hopes for liturgical reform- after all we are very willingly driving our daughter out to a Carmelite convent in Nebraska tomorrow- a convent where the Mass is always the extraordinary rite and the psalms (seven offices a day) are all sung in Latin.
However, it seems to me that the kind of liturgy you found so repellent may actually be part of a pastoral solution to a problem so well articulated by a young latino when he was asked why he no longer goes to Mass. "Why should I go to Mass to share the boredom of the priest?"
For many people the Latin Mass is deeply satisfying aesthetically and spiritually, but it remains to be seen whether that will be true for Africa, India and China. I rather doubt it. At least not for the overwhelming majority.
It occurs to me too, that the patriarch David would hardly recognize his compositions as sung in the aforesaid Carmelite convent. He would wonder where were the tambourines, the dancing. I think we are going to get ourselves into a much bigger intramural ecclesial squabble if we insist that the high Church culture of Europe is the cultural norm for everyone. It is very difficult to envision that ever working out.
In fact, there is no possibility whatever of it ever working out if we insist on our way while pouring scorn on their way. Intramural ecumensism in liturgical matters must be the order of the day if Pope Benedict's reform is going to go anywhere at all. There must be a dialogue not only between the rites, but between the cultures. At least, we need to have an appreciation of one another.
So, take another look at the tape- all 19 minutes :)
There's a song that many churches sing here in America that makes casual use of the tetragrammaton, and it just gives me shivers. Besides those groups you mention, Father, I'm surprised that the liturgists--being so interested in the historicism--haven't pointed out that this is wrong.
Post a Comment