Gonna take a sentimental journey



Mgr Andrew Wadsworth, Executive Director of ICEL delivered the keynote address to the Church Music Association of America on 27 June at Salt Lake City. Vultus Christi has posted the full text in a blogpost. If you prefer a Scribd edition (which you can download as a pdf), thanks to NLM for this upload.

Mgr Wadsworth's address is a helpful, concise and balanced summary of the key issues that face us in the celebration of the post-Conciliar liturgy in its ordinary form. He has caused something of a storm because he illustrates some of the problems by referring to the closing Mass of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. The Mass was not a halloween/clown/beer-festival Mass of the sort occasionally featured on those dreadful blogs that show liturgical abuses (mea culpa.) Many priests and laity would see footage of it and wonder what all the fuss is about.

And that is the point. Mgr Wadsworth's criticism is precisely that the reforms promoted by Pope Benedict have been so comprehensively ignored that even many priests simply don't understand that a major occasion such as the closing Mass of a Eucharistic Congress should set an example by having the proper texts of the Mass sung, and by using sacred music, sung as sacred music and not a performance. His point is understood by the Italian press: Cattiva Liturgia. A Dublino la rivincita dei vecchi baroni (Bad Liturgy. In Dublin the revenge of the old barons.) The most obvious "old baron" was the President of the Commission for Eucharistic Congresses, Archbishop Piero Marini, whom Pope Benedict replaced with Mgr Guido Marini and a very different approach to Papal Liturgy.

Mgr Wadsworth has possibly aroused more fury than he meant to by criticising the postcommunion song by  "The Priests" as "impossibly sentimental." That's rather like saying that Daniel O'Donnell singing "The Blue Hills of Breffni" is a bit saccharine. I hope the good Monsignor has his windows boarded up - Mrs Doyle and her nuclear-handbagged associates will be searching to see whether Ryanair do cheap flights to Washington. If you want to see how unfounded Mgr's suggestion is, go to 2:39:56 on the above video and see how much the song is firmly placed in the Roman tradition of sacred music and not even a little bit impossibly sentimental.

Neither is Daniel O'Donnell. Totally not sentimental at all. (Now will you keep away from my windows, Mrs Doyle?)

Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Request for Novena to Blessed Pius IX

Image
A priest friend of mine is ill in hospital. He has a special devotion to Blessed Pius IX. Could I ask you, of your charity, to say a Novena for his speedy recovery. Novena In Honour of Blessed Pius IX Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX, who consecrated the Universal Church to you. (Our Father...) O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you Immaculate. (Hail Mary...) Saint Joseph, spouse of the most pure Virgin Mary, hear our prayer and glorify your servant Pius IX who declared you the Patron of the Universal Church. (Glory be...) Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Mary, our Hope, and Saint Joseph hear our prayers and glorify your servant Pius IX , granting to us through his merits and intercessions the graces which we ardently desire: that the glory of God be revealed through Father's illness. (Our Father..., Hail Mary..., Glory be...
Read more

Saint Gabriel

Image
The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
Read more

Saint Ignatius on heresy, and the capsizing boat

Image
On the feast of St Ignatius, I offer my prayers and good wishes to some great Jesuits. Just off the top of my head, I think of Fr Joseph Fessio SJ the founder of Ignatius Press which has not only published the English translations of various works of Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, but has also given a break for good Catholic authors both of theology and of Catholic fiction. Then there is Fr Bob Spitzer SJ, with whom I studied in Rome many years ago, and Fr Paul Mankowski SJ who has written some superb articles over the years. Here in England, I recall Fr Anthony Meredith SJ, the great fatherly commentator on the Fathers of Cappadocia and in Rome, there is Fr Gilles Pelland SJ, the fierce French-Canadian patristics scholar was a bit harsh when I first arrived in the Holy City, but seemed to soften a bit when after 5 years he seeme satisfied that, though English, I was not a modernist. Many of my Jesuit priest friends and mentors have now reached “that night when no man can work”...
Read more

Downloadable booklets for Vespers

Image
Gregorian Chant Hymns is a most helpful website that I mentioned in a post just over a year ago. As I said then, the site "[...] promotes the learning of Gregorian Chant by making sheet music, recordings, translations, and instructions. There is a short guide to Gregorian Notation (those square notes) and to Latin pronunciation. Everything is available free of charge, in line with other great traditional music websites." Work has continued at the site and there is now a section which makes available pdf (or .docx format) booklets for Vespers for every Sunday of the Year and a few major feasts. There is the basic booklet for ordinary Sunday Vespers which is supplemented by separate files for the Sundays after Pentecost which contain the Magnificat and Collect. Then there are booklets, for example for Advent and Lent, where the office is different from the regular Sunday Vespers with its antiphons. All of the booklets have texts and notation for Benediction and the Maria...
Read more