PrayTell has entered the debate over whether the new or old form of the Roman Rite has more scripture. But as the comment box illustrates, much of the answer turns on the music: are we singing propers with Psalms or replacing propers with hymns with invented words? Also, the old form is seriously subsidized in its scriptural references by prayers at the front and back of Mass that have since been trimmed. There is a case to be made either way, and I would even question the baseline assumption that more is always better. In the end, it is the praxis that matters most here: are we choosing the options that permit the liturgy to be heard or are we imposing another layer on top of it?
12 Replies to “The Mass Form and the Scripture”
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Ultimately, who cares? I didn't know Christian liturgical forms were in a race to the top of the "Who Has More Scriptural Quotes" contest.
"are we singing propers with Psalms or replacing propers with hymns with invented words?"
Neither. Song texts are based on Scripture and are not beholden to either the syrupy texts of devotional Catholicism or the random imposition of texts that were just bones thrown at the very few musicians who were even bothering with the chant repertoire.
More is not always better. But today we have a wider range, thanks to three things:
1. The reform of the 1962 Missal
2. The inspiration of most contemporary composers for the words of Scripture.
3. The expansion of lyrical texts beyond the Psalter.
Todd
Agreed. I'll bet you a pound to a penny that few people pay any attention to the first (OT) reading at a Sunday Mass in the Ordinary Form. Most of the scriptural references were removed from the Ordinary in the 1969 Novus Ordo anyway. The Roman Rite was never intended to be a bible study class.
The issue of which form of the Roman rite has more Scripture is important with regards to the issue of the Propers. It is more than an issue of quantity over quality, whether of diversity or length of citation. Following the suggestion of Dr Kwasniewski, it seems to me that the attitude towards the Scriptures at Mass changed after Vatican II, when the readings at Mass no longer were looked at as iconic but as homiletic. They became an extension of Sunday school rather than adorning and preparing us for the great Mystery at the altar. The Propers are iconic, that is to say, they are pericopes that "illustrate" to us the face Christ in His mysteries, calling us to humbly bow down before those mysteries, and in particular, to the Great Mystery at the altar.
The ideas of the Enlightenment surround us today as I am reminded on this 4th of July, that even the idea of "country" is a selfish invention of the Enlightenment, which for not a few has even become a false idol. The task of the Christian is not to conform to what surrounds him, but to change it. Mystery is very foreign the Cartesian mind that likes logic, order, and rational explanations, and is averse, above all, to the organic unity of the soul and body, which is the liturgy.
The Propers are mostly taken from the psalms which tell us what we need to know about the Christ in His mysteries and ourselves. We are meant to chew slowly on these pericopes at Mass and to digest them slowly so as to feed our everyday lives, to make the mysteries in Scriptures live in us and thereby to also evangelise that world which surrounds us to these mysteries of God.
When the Propers were replaced by hymns, particularly post Vatican II ones, attention changed to the people, to what the people think, usually not about the mystery of Christ, but about what the people "should" understand of Christ through the Scriptures, too often in the context of providing social services. Understanding is the basis of most hymns sung today.
For those who are interested in what Dr Kwasniewski has to say about this topic, here is a link:
http://catholictradition.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/l…
If anything is to be retained from his article in the context of this topic it is this:
"With all due respect to the inspired word of God, probably only about 10 percent of the Bible is liturgically suitable. The other 90 percent is fertile ground for lectio divina, the practice that all of us should be engaged upon in some of the hours when we're not at Mass."
This is a very interesting thesis.
It might well call into question many aspects of traditional Catholicism–the Catechism comes to mind. The notion that one can study one's way into enlightenment is often glossed over. But taken to its extreme, may well be a form of pelagianism.
And yet human beings have a natural curiosity to know, to discover, to penetrate the mysteries of God and life. Can we define "anti-curiosity" as "adoration"? Or even align the two?
I would deny that hymnody ever "replaced" the Propers. The baseline Catholic experience didn't include the Propers. Hymnody was dropped into the vacuum of the preconciliar Low Mass. And Scripture-based songs replaced a good deal of preconciliar devotional and catechetical hymnody.
My sense is that the Holy Spirit is at work among post-conciliar composers, even the less-skilled ones. What they have accomplished is placing the words of Scripture onto the tongues and into the minds and hearts of Catholics. They have moved beyond both adoration and an overly intellectual approach to Christianity. That's not to say that individuals don't occasionally over-indulge the peripherals of sentimentality or uniformity or trying to "learn" their way into heaven. But the fruits have been greater, deeper, and more obvious than the attempt to recover the Propers.
Todd
If by "the baseline Catholic experience" you mean the Low Mass, it most certainly did include the Propers. When, at the age of seven or so, I was taught to use a missal, you put one ribbon in the Ordinary and another in the Proper, and flicked back and forth. Although the Offertory verse was usually not recited aloud by the priest, we still read it. I remember the odd hymn at Low Mass, usually sung during the Communion, but the now standard four-hymn sandwich didn't come into its own in my parish until the large-scale vernacularization of 1965. 'Scripture-based songs' were a phenomenon of the 1970s. I don't know how widespread they were, since by then I had largely given up on the vernacular Mass; most of them were musically dreadful, and bad music is never redeemed by the text.
I am speaking of the Mass not of Sunday school or CCD, where the catechism has a rightful place, when one indeed does become "enlightened" by learning more about the Christ Who is our light and salvation. Please do not change the focus of my argument.
In the US, the 4-hymn sandwich was part of the Low Mass experience going back into the 50's. By the time I became Catholic, the second layer had already eroded somewhat with the move to play instrumental music or provide a choral piece at Preparation. My parish was already singing the Psalm and Mass Ordinary in 1971, so the so-called sandwich wasn't really in my experience until college, and by that time, the Newman Center was pastored by a guy who had a liturgy degree, and was moving the students into a model of singing the Mass: psalm, alleluia, and Mass parts as the main focus. It was also my first exposure to the Scripture-based music of the SLJ's and others. Since I became a church musician, I was formed to think in terms of twelve pieces to sing the Mass, not to sing a performance repertoire at the liturgy.
Todd
Okay.
I didn't think much of the conclusion you cited, nor the segregation of the experiences of adoration at Mass or catechesis in the classroom. God tends to surprise us in ways and in places we least expect it.
Todd
It wasn't? Justin Martyr remarks that the readings in his day went on "as long as there was time," and then at the next Mass they picked up where they had been left off. And this shows the continuity of the Roman rite, since at services in the Temple or synagogue the Jews had been accustomed to read and study lessons from Scripture as well.
I suppose it's difficult to generalize, as different things happened in different places at different times, and after 50 years one's memory isn't always reliable. The early vernacular texts were not standardized in the English-speaking world ; In 1965 England, Ireland and the USA each had their own approved translations. The 1965 interim missal allowed the omission of all the preparatory prayers, including the Confiteors and absolutions; but some Bishops' Conferences insisted they be used.
However, if the permitted four hymns were used in the pre-conciliar Low Mass, the entrance hymn might have overlaid some of the PATFOTA but would surely be over before the priest read the Introit. Similarly a Communion hymn would normally have finished before the Communion was read (after the ablutions). Furthermore, by 1962 the bishops were pushing the dialogue Mass where the people all responded to the PATFOTA, so they wouldn't want hymn-singing at this point anyway. The only "vacuum" arguably was at the Offertory, and various ways of "filling" this were suggested, not all of them involving singing.
Justin Martyr died in AD 165 or 166. What we normally refer to as the Roman Rite can be reliably traced back to the sixth century, and although elements of it are obviously much older, it changed far more in the previous four centuries than it did in the succeeding fifteen.