Category: Article by Jeffrey Tucker

“And with your spirit.”

We hear this exchange between the celebrant and the congregation at every Mass now. It happens as a matter of course. Hardly anyone thinks a thing about it. It’s just what Catholics do. Fading into the memory of only those who were intensely interested at the time is the odd fact that these words in Catholic Mass have only been spoken by people in the pews for about 18 months.

Before that time, there were grave warnings that these changes would never stick. They would drive people away. Years of debate and discussion preceded the change. There were warnings that this change would end badly. And yet, the change happened, and, today, hardly anyone thinks a thing about it. I would venture a guess that there is no one in my parish who sits and seethes, thinking “we should bring back the old words ‘and also with you’.”

Why is this? Why were the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council accompanied by grave upheaval, factions, drops in Mass attendance, and widespread frenzy wheres the changes adopted just last year have been generally met with widespread acceptance? The experience of the 1960s and 1970s made Catholics generally fearful of changing anything at all. It drove the Catholic world into a paradoxical state of rigid conservatism. But the recent experience of the new Missal illustrates something very important: change can be wonderful provided it is change in the right direction.

It is true that the new Mass was a much more dramatic change. The liturgical traditions of many centuries were thrown out for something radically unfamiliar. Even so, the changes enacted by the new Missal were not trivial. They changed the whole tenor and linguistic/cultural framework of the liturgical language, taking us away from the “dressed down” feel of 1969 to a much more formal and poetic mode of expression, one that departs from the cultural sensibility of our time.

My own theory is this: if the change is directed toward making the liturgy more true to itself, it will be accepted and even embraced. If it goes the opposite direction of making the liturgy less authentic and more decidedly “with the times” it will be met with opposition and rancor.

This principle has governed the changes we’ve made in our own liturgical experience with music at my parish — and our experience parallels that of hundreds of other parishes.

Just like week, our choir sang the entrance antiphon from the Simple English Propers plus one verse. We repeated the antiphon, and, by that time, the procession was over and Mass began. We sang Vidi Aquam for the sprinkling rite. We sang the Gloria in Latin (from Mass XV). The Psalm came from the Parish Book of Psalms. The Offertory antiphon came from a chanted English version from Fr. Samuel Weber. The Sanctus and Agnus were in Latin. The Communion antiphon was the authentic Gregorian, and we sang 4 verses of Psalms with it. We also sang a Latin motet by Victoria and an English motet by Tallis. The recessional hymn was in English and the only hymn that day.

We do some version of this lineup every week in my parish. The resources we are using are mostly newly available. There were no readily accessible and comprehensive book of antiphons and Psalms even available five years ago. Ten years ago, hardly any ordinary form parish sang the authentic communion chant from the Gregorian books. Now this is common all over the English-speaking world and the world generally.

What we did last week and what we will do this week seems completely normal and even predictable. It is something people expect as part of their Mass experience. No one is “against” what we are doing. Neither are people jumping up and down with celebration. It is just something natural and normal, the way the liturgy expresses itself in song. The sheer normalcy of it all is something that completely thrills me.

You see, if we had dropped this program on people ten years ago, it would have been a radical undertaking. In fact, we would have been reluctant to do it. Actually, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. The resources were available. The awareness of Mass propers was in its infancy, or maybe it didn’t exist at all outside a small circle. English versions were nowhere in sight. They certainly weren’t accessible. Instead, we spent all our time digging around second-rate hymnbook trying to find material that seemed vaguely acceptable.

A vast experiential chasm separate 10 years ago from what is common today. In fact, there is no comparing the two. What we did 10 years ago was fine and inoffensive but we were not singing the actual liturgy, and that made us uncomfortable, and created the nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right. We worked and worked endless hours to make it right but we ultimately lacked in that crucial thing: a vision for what could and should be.

Once the ideal clicked, we had a plan which we implemented slowly, piece by piece. The final result is really something spectacular. The way we do the propers changes each week. Sometimes we sing them in a choral style. Sometimes we do pure Gregorian. Sometimes we do English, variously choosing to add Psalms or not depending on what other motets we have prepared. There is a glorious stability about the whole thing. Mostly, we can feel like we are making a contribution to the liturgy because our role as singers is beautiful integrated into the liturgy itself.

When you back away and look at it, the swift from ten years ago today is absolutely revolutionary. It amounts to a radical change. But no one feels it. It just seems like the liturgy is doing what it is supposed to do: invite the whole community in a meeting with eternity.

Why did it succeed? The reason it worked is the same reason that the new translation has worked out really well. The liturgy is now permitted to be truer to what it wants to be. This is the kind of change we need — not change for its own sake but change toward truth and beauty. That’s what the the “sense of the faith” emerges from the experience of the people at Mass. It goes with the grain rather than against it. Everyone is happier for it.

Nearly every day, I hear of new projects from major Catholic music publishers for chanted propers or new settings of the actual text of the Mass. This is a great thing. It is happening after nearly 50 years of wandering in the desert but it is still a much-welcome thing. I would expect that as these new editions hit the market, they will proliferate more and more, because choirs and priests will discover what we discovered. If we just stop trying to substitute our own judgement for the judgement of the Church, and instead let the words of the Mass become our liturgical song, wonderful things start happening.

It took the election of Pope Francis to remind me of how utterly idiotic press coverage of the Papacy can be, especially in the early days. Unless you have read absolutely nothing about the new Pope — which would not be a bad idea in the balance — you already know the score. Pope Francis is compassionate, simple, humble, and humane, and this stands in contrast to…wait for it…a certain predecessor whose name shall not be mentioned.

I’m thinking in particular about a BBC short on the Francis’s visit to a juvenile prison in Rome. The BBC reported this as some sort of astonishing first. It added that the Pope’s homily the previous day urged priests to focus on compassion to the less fortunate and not get caught up in trappings and vestments, at which point the camera threw in an image of the certain predecessor who, again, shall not be named wearing full regalia. Never mind that Benedict himself made a visit to the same prison in 2007 and the videos of that extraordinary and moving visit are all over the web.

This has been the unrelenting theme of the press: Pope Francis vs. Benedict XVI. They are covering this in an identical fashion to the way they cover presidential politics. Francis is Obama and Benedict is Bush. Us vs. Them. Liberals vs. Conservatives. Progressives vs. Reactionaries. It’s the only model they know and they cram all existing reality into that model, mainly as an effort to sell their newsprint. I have no doubt that Pope Francis would be astonished to discover that this is being done, and even more surprised that people are going along with it.

I’ve had many flashbacks to the election of Benedict XVI. Here is a man who writings I had devoured for years. I had my own mental dossier on him. I knew from his writings that he was an old-fashioned liberal in the great 19th century tradition of that term, like Cardinal Newman and Lord Acton. I knew that he had been steeped in the German theological tradition of that period. I knew that he was utterly and completely dedicated to the proposition of religious liberty as the foundation of how the Church interacts with the world. I knew Benedict would not be about laws and impositions but rather inspiration and liberality. Specifically, I knew for certain, based on his writings, that he would seek to liberate tradition from the chains that the so-called progressives had put around it. I knew that he had a compassionate heart and a broad mind and would fearless engage anyone on crucial topics. I knew that he was more about conversation than excommunication.

So, I was absolutely astonished to see the way the press treated his election. The rap sheet on Ratzinger read: reactionary, pit bull, crack-down man, and even proto-Nazi. Think Torquemada and you have the archetype. It was so unjust and so vicious. And malicious. Everything Benedict did during his papacy was interpreted in that light. He pursued fantastic ecumenical activities that promoted peace and understanding and yet he was derided as a man who set back Catholic-Muslim relations. He was showing compassion to those estranged from the mainline of the Church but his efforts were fobbed off as giving approval to people who denied the Holocaust. It was like he couldn’t escape the label of that worst of all possible things: conservative (boo hiss, goes the press). Then of course there were the scandals, and many journalists even took the ghastly step of implicated Benedict himself because he had somehow approved of someone who approved of someone who approved of someone who had been been accused in the scandals. They would stop at nothing to confirm their biases and harm this great man.

And so, fast forward to the election of Pope Francis. Nearly all the coverage from morning until night has been about how he is the anti-Benedict. This coverage has been enormously harmful not only to the faith but also to Francis himself. For all we knew. Francis might be more temperamentally severe on issues of doctrine and morality that Benedict, but it doesn’t matter because this doesn’t fit the hyper-politicized prototypes that pre-exist in the files of writers at the BBC, New York Times, CNN, and all the rest.

So you really must ask yourself: has your understanding of this new Pope been compromised by taking these press reports too seriously? I’m pretty sure that I had been overly influenced by them in the early days. I had been observing patterns of behavior of this new Pope, mixing them with hopped-up news coveraged, feeling a terrible sense of sadness about the resignation of Benedict my hero, and coming to conclusions that were wildly unjustified. So far the papacy of Francis has been an added value to Benedict’s own and not a displacement.

Also and regrettably, Pope Francis has given the press plenty of fodder to fuel these archetypes. His personal style throughout his priesthood has been to embrace the lifestyle of the people he served. He rode on buses in Argentina. He wore plain and severe clothing. He mixed it up with everyone and encouraged the priest to do the same. This is a country where the faith is under severe strain, and his commitment to evangelism made it imperative that the Church not seem like a branch of the state, isolated and protected and privileged. He is dedicated this, just as Benedict was and is.

He has brought that sensibility with him to the Papacy. It could end up being a great gift to the cause of evangelism. And there is a sense in which I do not even slightly regret the hugely positive coverage that his papacy has so far elicited. We really do need this right now. There is no question that this Pope has certain gifts that can help in many ways. Benedict had great gifts too as a theologian, liturgist, and as a teacher in every way. There is no reason to set one against the other.

And yet there is one area in which it is all too easy to set Francis against Benedict and that concerns liturgy, the subject I feel an intense passion about. Francis — sadly in my view — seems very much uninterested in the topic. He doesn’t sing. He doesn’t follow rubrics from the Missal or the GIRM. He used Holy Thursday to establish a dramatic new demographic precedent in the foot washing ceremony. People have explained this by pointing out that he is, after all, a Jesuit, and every Catholic knows what that means, hint hint nudge nudge. Others who have worked with him over the years point out that his non-interest in liturgy stems from his personal style. Quite frankly, one associate told me, “he is a slob.” It was an affectionate comment but still: ouch. This is indeed a contrast from Benedict. It is never a good thing to have the Pope himself flout rubrics even if inadvertently. And yet we are most likely going to have to get used to this. It is going to be commonplace.

Consider the Holy Thursday event when Pope Francis presided over liturgy at the kids’ prison. He washed the feet of young women. This is significant because the liturgy’s purpose is to recreate the time when Christ’s humbled himself to wash his apostle’s feet. It is repeated in liturgy as a sign of the priesthood with the celebrant taking on the person of Christ. The washing of women’s feet might be seen as a foreshadowing of a women’s priesthood — or so the “progressives” might suggest. But actually, if you consider this from the point of view of the Pope, he was there and not exactly in a position to separate boys and girls in their liturgical roles. Such an endeavor would probably have struck him as pointless or even cruel. Given that he tends to see the liturgy as less a veritical symbol and more a horizontal form of human service — a seeming position I deeply regret, to be sure, because it seems less than fully informed — his choice here makes perfect sense.

The big question is whether the new Pope is going to continue chipping away at the rubrics and the liturgical traditions in a way that damages Benedict’s legacy. I seriously doubt that, but even if it does happen, it would again seem to be an inadvertent result. It does strike me as irresponsible that the Pope is not more attentive to these matters, and I do wish that he could have spent more time during the last ten years in a deeper study of Benedict’s own writings on liturgy. And perhaps that time will come. But whether he does or not is irrelevant for the continuing veracity, wisdom, and influence of Benedict’s own writings.

Regarding one of the Pope’s messages that priests should be more willing to sacrifice, let me add one final regret on one possible interpretation of this position. I’ve never known a priest who has not known intense sacrifice in their daily lives. They are called upon to do service to others at a level of intensity unknown by the rest of us. They are poor. They are pulled and tugged on at every turn. They exhaust themselves in service, and even get burned out as a result. Most of what they hear from the faithful consists of complaints that they aren’t doing more. Follow a priest around for a day or two and you will be astonished. It is awe inspiring.

This is also true of other servants of the faith such as musicians and teachers. They all sacrifice income and prestige, and suffer deeply for their choice. This is the current reality. The idea that the Church consists of big shots in ermine robes living it up at the expense of the faithful, luxuriating in finery and comfort, is absurd and insulting and even plays to anti-Catholic stereotypes. I don’t believe that Pope Francis has intended to leave the impression that he agrees with the caricature but it would still be wise to see that this is a way his words can be taken and twisted by the press that doesn’t understand or appreciate the extent to which any Church work is undertaken with deep humility in our uncomprehending world.

I’ll offer one final example concerning the chasm between press coverage and reality. The blogs were filling up with announcements that the new Pope had already enacted a “liturgical revolution.” Startling, right? Well, I watched the Palm Sunday services at the Vatican. All the chants of the Grauale Romanum were there, including the real Graduale as a replacement for the Responsorial Psalm. In the scheme of history, this is an amazing restoration, already a precedent in Vatican liturgy. You might say: oh that was already planned. Maybe. But what matters here is whether the Pope has the incentive or the desire to change the precedent. I see no evidence that he does. What I do see is a serious and dedicated servant of the faith who hopes to bring his unique gifts to the institution in a time of great need.

To be sure, we might face some harrowing days ahead. It is crucial that observers keep on eye on the reality, not the spin.

Sing a Te Deum, goes the expression you sometimes hear in the Catholic world. Just one thing: one hardly ever hears a Te Deum. I’ve heard it probably six times in real life but that’s because I attend Catholic music events that actually teach this music and encourage people to sing it. But the people singing are experiencing it for the first time. Most Catholics have no idea what a Te Deum sounds like.

There is a huge body of work out there which we can call the Gregorian hymn. No, these were not written by St. Gregory the Great. But they are part of the spirit of the tradition of Gregorian chant: vigorous and evocative music on one note that are structured to convey the truths of the scripture and the Catholic faith.

These tunes are not part of the Mass liturgy proper in the sense that they are not usually drawn from the text of the liturgy itself (which is to say they are not part of the ordinary or the propers of the Mass). Many of them are taken from the Divine Office, which, believe it or not, was a common liturgical experience for Catholic in the middle ages. These days most all Catholics experience the Mass only so many of the forms of singing that began with the Office gradually moved over to become occasional music for Mass. Others pieces might have served particular purposes in Mass and then entered into general use. Still others are just pretty pieces. Solesmes has called these pieces Gregorian melodies. They are the people’s music.

Some examples might include: the four Marian antiphons, Adoro te devote, Ave verum Corpus, Christus vincit, Da pacem Domine, Jesu dulcis memoria, Panis angelicus, Oremus pro Pontifice, Ven Creator Spiritus, Ave maris stella, Tota pulchra es, Conditor alme siderum, Veni veni Emmanuel, Resonet in laudibus, Te Deum, Dies Irae, among many others. They constitute popular Catholic song as it has been known through the ages. Today, not one in a thousand Catholics know of them at all.

After World War II, with the chant tradition in serious decline, some publishers worked to salvage what they could of the chant tradition and settled on these pieces on a way to preserve and inspire. They put out books with this music. It was a noble effort. But of course it failed. After the Second Vatican Council, there was a widespread perception that lasted for 40 years that anything in Latin was outmoded and therefore discouraged and therefore not to be used at all. It was not suitable to the new age of vernacular.

That situated persisted. The books went out of print. The chant conferences ended. No one really cared anymore. There were some pockets of exceptions, a few Latin Masses here and there. But for the mainstream of Catholic life, there was virtually no circulation of this music, editions of this music with English translations, instructions on how to sing, and even the ability to read the notes nearly vanished.

A book that attempted to bring it all back, and also provide other music for the people from the Mass itself (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus) was the Parish Book of Chant. It was published by the Church Music Association of America. It was the largest collection of Gregorian hymns published in the post-Council period and probably ever, and it included enough actual service music to be a great book for the pews too. Well, it was published by an organization with no money at all and no staff, and done on the fly, just because no one else seemed to be doing.

It seems incredible to me that this was only 5 years ago. Most of the growth of the Gregorian chant movement has occurred since that time. This has been an essential resource, the basis of so much else. Since that time the CMAA has published new books of scholarship, English propers, Pslamody, choral propers, and so much else. Looking back at it, I suspect that I too had begun to feel that this book was less necessary. I became newly convicted of the new for sung propers and ordinary in the Mass, and was drawn to a more strict rendering of the liturgical text that had been entirely dropped. It became unclear to me (or at least less clear) what the role of this popular chant really was in Catholic life.

But then several strange things happened. After several printings and a total distribution of about 12,000, the Parish Book of Chant fell out of print. Richard Rice began to work on a much-expanded edition. The prices of used copies on Amazon began to soar to as much as $100 and more. Then I was teaching at a conference on chant, with an intention to focus on propers, and someone had a copy with her. I asked to borrow and flipped through the pages. It was love all over again. I love these songs. They so beautiful and so accessible, truly the people’s music. I realized all over again that this is a dazzling collection.

It wasn’t long before Richard finished his second edition. He chose to put in the full verses to the hymns. He added the Sequences. He added the full Requiem Mass. He included the fully 18 Mass settings from the Gregorian Kyriale. The edition included even the five communion chants that are commonly used in the ordinary form. It keep the full ordo for the extraordinary and ordinary forms of Mass, plus much else. The entire book came in at 325 pages. I worried about the thickness so we thinned out the paper to make it easier to handle. Then we changed the cover and added two pretty ribbons. Truly, this is the  book that it should have been all along.

So who is using this book? Well, the natural market is the new scholars that have been formed over the last few years. They need to begin singing the parts of the Mass and this is a great resource for that. In addition, new scholas need to revive the Gregorian tradition of hymnody. The addition of the Requiem Mass is a brilliant stroke since this is a good place for parish scholas to sing in the early stages. The end result is absolutely spectacular in every way.

In addition, every period in history must absolutely have a book like this in print. This is the only one today. It is not an official book of the liturgy but it can and does play an essential role. In the perfect world, it would be in the pews in every parish. Also, for a parish that uses both forms of Mass, this is the only book to include both in an easy-to-use format for the pew.

Must this tradition of singing be kept alive and must it thrive? Absolutely it must. But it cannot happen unless there are beautiful resources — with English translations — to make it happen. This is the might contribution of this book. It is newly available on Amazon. Look for the Parish Book of Chant with the blue cover. And let’s sing and sing to the glory of God, together as a Catholic people.