Category: Fr. Christopher Smith

I have been asked several times to give a full list of all the books I mentioned in rapid random fire during my talk on Liturgical Theology: Are We Just Now Beginning?

So, here goes the full list:

Romano Guardini, The Church of the Lord
St John Paul II, Ecclesia de eucharistia
Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis: Summorum pontificum
CDF, Dominus Jesus
St Pius X, Tra le sollecitudini
Pius XII, Mediator Dei
Vatican II, Lumen gentium; Sacrosanctum concilium

Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975
Piero Marini, A challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal 1963-1975
Nicola Giampietro, The Development of the Liturgical Reform As seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli 1948 to 1970

Gero Weishaupt, forthcoming book on Summorum Pontificum

Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy
Laszlo Dobszay, The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform
Josef Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy

Laurence Paul Hemming, Worship as a Revelation: the Past, Present and Future of Catholic Liturgy
Jonathan Robinson, Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backwards

Charles Journet, The Mass: the Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross
Abbot Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist

Happy reading, and to all the CMAA Colloquium 2014 participants in Indianapolis, thank you for your kindness and good spirits during an excellent time together!

Oremus pro invicem!

One of things that I thank God for is that I was born within an observant Baptist family, if for no other reason that when I became a Catholic, the grace for which I thank God the most for, I already had a tremendous foundation in the Bible that made my experience of Catholicism richer. I have often in these twenty years since I left for the land of milk and honey looked back upon the onions and leeks of Nashville with fondness, so much so that I took the spoils of the Canaanites with me into the Promised Land. I received from them, not only knowledge, but a method of how to study Scripture and apply it to my life. It also has made me think a lot about the place of Scripture in liturgy and the life of the Church.

Evangelical Pedagogy

As most of you know, for the evangelical, there is only the Word. There are no sacraments. And in 500 years, the evangelicals have developed a pretty effective pedagogy by which their people learn the Word of God. It is direct, simple, and free of unnecessary theological speculation. The idea is to let the Word speak for itself to the person. This is done by private reading of Scripture in the home, Bible study at home and in the church, and preaching.

One of the most interesting things you will note is that almost the whole of an evangelical Sunday or Wednesday night service is taken up by the sermon. And that sermon can take well over an hour, and more in some places. A pastor’s sermons are collectively referred to as his “teaching” and it is clear that those who hear him are there to learn. Everyone brings their Bibles and a pen, and it is not unusual to see people taking notes in their Bible or in a separate notebook for that purpose.

Often the teaching is centered around a small passage of Scripture which is usually read by the preacher at the beginning of the sermon. Evangelicals do not try to preach on the entire Bible in a year, even if some encourage everyone to read through the Bible in a year at home. The idea is simple: short passages of Scripture which are the central focus.

But the sermon is much more than a simple exegesis of one tiny passage. A good evangelical sermon will illuminate that passage with numerous other Biblical texts and relate the whole very directly to the Christian life of faith and morals. Stories, jokes, passages from other literature are often weaved in seamlessly as the preacher brings about a point. Often, however, his point will go on over a series of successive Sundays. The point evolves over time, and gradually becomes clear, all through the preaching on the text. Sometimes a preacher will take his hearers through an entire book of the Bible, and it is not unusual for him to take months or even a year on one book of the Bible. I still remember a vivid series on the Book of Revelation when I was a kid that took a year. But at the end of that year, I knew the book backwards and forwards and can still remember much of what I learned.

Does any of this have anything to teach Catholics? I think it does. As much as some older adults complain that, before Vatican II, no one read Scripture, Scripture reading and study is a large part of our Tradition that only needs to be recovered. The problem we are grappling with is: how? No contemporary Catholic would dream of having one hour long sermons on Sunday morning (although no one seemed to have a problem listening to St John Chrysostom in the 4th century or St Francis de Sales in the 17th century for hours on end). But is there something in the evangelical pedagogical method that is useful? Yes. We have to let the Word of God speak for itself in its own power and might. But we also have to get Catholics to understand that this will happen only to the extent that private Bible reading (guided by the Magisterium of the Church, of course!), study and prayer are part of it. Also, our presentation of the Bible has to be direct, simple, free from unnecessary theological speculations, and related to actual Christian life and practice today.

The Readings

When Catholics think of the Word of God, we automatically think of the Scripture readings at Mass. We think that the only objective of the homily is supposed to explain those readings. But in our Tradition, the Word did not become a Book, but Flesh. The Word of God is seen in Scripture and Tradition. It is celebrated, not only by the readings during a Eucharistic celebration, but in the life of the Incarnation in the world and most especially by the Word Made Flesh in the Real Presence of the Eucharistic species. The Incarnational aspect of the Catholic’s engagement with the Word of God is visible, in part, in the way in which the Church celebrates the Word. The ritual accompanying the reading of Scripture underscores its importance: singing the Word, carrying the Gospel Book in procession, incensing the Word. The way in which we engage the Word at Mass through the senses is inspiring and beautiful, and should be celebrated as well as possible always.

But strip away all of the externals surrounding the proclamation of the Word, and what do we have? The readings are not proposed willy-nilly, but according to a plan in conjunction with the Liturgical Year. The Catholic Church has always had such a plan, even though it has differed from place to place and time to time in parts. And that plan consists, not only of the readings at Mass, but also the special Antiphons which come at the Entrance, Offertory, and Communion, as well as those parts of the Scripture which make up the Ordinary of the Mass. The current plan which most Latin Rite Catholics follow was designed as part of what we now call the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. This plan was a response to the call of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council to offer richer fare at the Table of God’s Word.

It is true that, quantitatively, at least, more Scripture is read, during the Readings, at Mass in the Ordinary Form of the Mass than at the Extraordinary Form of the Mass which was most Latin Rite Catholic’s experience of the Mass before Vatican II. The organizing principle of the Plan behind that is for almost the entire Bible to be read on Sundays in a space of three years, and weekdays in a space of two. So the pericopes chosen are shoehorned into that scheme. Those responsible for making the Plan a reality sought to establish as many connections as possible between the Readings. Sometimes, however, the connections are forced. Also, the fact that the celebrant may often choose between an option to have a continuous reading on weekdays or choose another set of special chosen readings according to the liturgical calendar brings about the occasional odd juxtaposition of themes within one liturgical celebration.

What is the pedagogical method behind this Plan? Often the Ordinary Form is criticized for being too “didactic.” Even the arrangement of the readings according to a two and three year set of cycles is dismissed as being too pedagogical in and of itself. But, as we have noticed, our evangelical brethren, who do not have a ritual liturgical proclamation of the Readings, for pedagogical reasons, choose very short passages of Scripture as their central theme, around which other passages are used to illuminate it.

It is not clear if according to the Plan for the OF Lectionary, the same pedagogical method, which as we have seen, has its benefits, is employed. It would be understandable if, for example, the Gospel was always considered to be the main passage and the other readings proclaimed at Mass illuminated that Gospel pericope in some way, as through typology, for example. But it seems that the principles for the selection of the readings are the following: 1) we need to fit as much of the Bible into a cycle of two or three years as we can. 2) we need to arrange them so we have an Old Testament reading, a non-Gospel New Testament reading, and a Gospel reading, as well as a Psalm thrown in there too. 3) we will arrange them in such a way as that there seems to be a connection between them somehow.

The establishment of a connection across the readings comes at the end of the reasoning process, not at the beginning. It is for this reason, I contend that the Plan for the Lectionary in the OF is not pedagogical at all, or at least not pedagogically sound. The mere proclamation of more Scripture does not translate into greater understanding. Greater understanding can be had, without resource to explanation, only to the extent that a sound pedagogical method takes as its first principle one reading and the second principle the other readings which are connected with it by theme, typology, or theological verity. Such it is that Our LORD was able to illuminate words of the Hebrew Bible by His own Word.

Homily

Often Catholics think of preaching as the homily which explains the readings at Mass. Priests attempt to explain what the readings mean. Often they will ignore one or more of the readings appointed for any given day because he can find no obvious connection between them, or he forces a connection between them all. Each Sunday is seen as a discrete unit all to itself, and no attempt is made to set the appointed readings in the context of the other readings in previous or subsequent Sundays. He also attempts to do all of this in five or at most ten minutes. He might tell a joke or share a story, but because it is in Mass, he will generally respect the formal nature of the homily as a part of the Mass. And he will almost never preach outside of Mass.

I content that this situation is an unintended byproduct of Vatican II. Before Vatican II, the homily was not considered a part of the Mass. In fact, it was not considered essential, even on Sundays, although warmly encouraged. In some places, the priest took off, not only the maniple but also the chasuble, as a cue that this sermon was not a part of the Mass. But what has happened is that, the emphasis on the homily as an integral part of the Mass has led some priests to limit their preaching to Mass. It also has led many priests to preach when they probably should have not, because of illness, lack of preparation, lack of knowledge, or just plain lack of ability to speak clearly and properly.

The time issue is the first thing that must be addressed if the Word of God is to richly inform the homily. We are told that, because people’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter, we must preach less and less. Yet the same teenagers in our pew who can’t string two consecutive sentences together that have a logical connection between them can watch a two and a half hour movie rapt at attention. We often skimp on the homily because of fear of our own limitations. That, and the fact that the next Mass is in five minutes and the parking lot has to clear. So we do not teach our people the Word of God with calm and with a sure pedagogical method because of practicalities which could be re-arranged if we only have the courage to re-arrange them. We also have to spend time with Scripture and prepare our homilies well and in advance, as well as practice them. Composing them in our heads on the way to the ambo from the chair is not a way to preach!

Also, we must revisit the idea that the homily explains the readings at Mass. Often, this can become little more than an exercise in exegesis, with no application to the actual lives of people. How is the Word of God living and effective through a homily if it is little more than an academic exercise? Is that all it is, or something much more?

Also, there is precedent in Catholic Tradition for preaching outside Mass. Some priests will say, “I can’t even get them to Mass, how am I going to get them to another sermon?” But there have been other times in history when Catholics, who were not bound to come, did come, and sometimes in great numbers, to sermons held outside of Mass. Some Catholics would even come to Mass just to go to the sermon afterwards, especially during the Catholic Reformation and Patristic periods. If you preach well, they will come!

Sunday School

Often we give the Mass the burden of reading and explaining Scripture. Before Vatican II, for Protestants, religious education consisted of Sunday School for the whole family and for Catholics, the Baltimore Catechism for children preparing for sacraments. Sometimes there was more, but not often. In the Catholic Church, we have so closely linked religious education with the reception of the sacraments, that we have produced now generations of Catholics who are only barely catechized. And some are beginning to ask, Are they even evangelized?

I contend that the pastoral priority for the Catholic Church is to develop in every parish and diocese Christian formation for the whole family, for all the Church’s children of every age, and that this be, if not as important as Sunday Mass attendance, certainly next to it. In many places religious education, which once was memorizing the Baltimore Catechism, is now arts and crafts and self-esteem lessons.

Christian formation has to integrate the Scriptural and the catechetical, and be for all Catholics of any age, not just kids preparing for sacraments. There are various ways to do this: 1. adopt a primarily Scriptural model, into which is integrated the full catechetical program, for all ages. 2. adopt a primarily catechetical model, into which is integrated as much Scripture as possible. 3. a liturgical model, which integrates Scripture and catechesis into the liturgical year and celebrations. My preference is for the first. It was the way the Church Fathers did evangelization and catechesis and does not suppose such a huge gap between Scripture and Catechesis.

The Church Fathers, the evangelicals and the pre-Vatican II Church did have one good pedagogical method common to all of them: memorization. There is no reason why Catholics of all ages cannot memorize Bible passages and the Baltimore Catechism (which is a model of pedagogical soundness) in the context of a wider Christian formation which teaches Scripture, Catechesis, as well as spirituality and moral life. What has been separated out into distinct spheres for learning theology must be reunited together for Christian formation of all people.

Often Bible Studies for adults have been started in parishes. But they, along with the homilies, often do little more than repeat well-worn theories of Biblical scholars about how the text isn’t really the text or about the socioeconomic situation of the time period. They also get lost in theological speculation, much of which is difficult to square with the teaching of the Church. At any rate, much of what passes for Bible Study in the Catholic Church, particularly in canned programs, is not direct, simple, and free of useless theological speculations. It doesn’t help people get in touch with Scripture. But is there a way that can?

Lectio Divina and Collatio

In the seminary, every Monday night we gathered in the Chapel and sang the Veni creator spiritus. We would then hear the readings for the following Sunday proclaimed just as they would be proclaimed the next Sunday, ritually. Then, one of the seminary staff or a guest would give a conference on those readings. The speaker would often do a careful exegesis of the readings, bring in Church Fathers and theologians, and relate it to the life of the community. The seminarians would then go to their rooms and spend an hour praying over the readings. We would work with the Greek and Hebrew, use commentaries, write out the Scriptures in our hand, whatever we wanted to study those Scriptures.

Every day in the seminary we had a Eucharistic Holy Hour. Seminarians would often bring down their missals, Bibles and commentaries. Sometimes they would bring breviaries, rosaries or other spiritual books. But often part of that time in the Holy Hour was spent studying the Word of God, especially as it would be celebrated on Sunday. But some of us also used it to read the readings for the next day. On Fridays, we gathered in small groups, with a man from each year of the seminary, to discuss the readings and pray together. On Saturdays, the deacons would then meet with the Rector and do the same with him, often sharing what the other seminarians had come up with.

Many of the graduates of the Roman Seminary brought these traditions of lectio divina and collatio into their parishes and schools, often combined with a Eucharistic Holy Hour. Think of what it could bring to our American parishes: the lay faithful and clergy together studying the Scriptures for next Sunday, silently praying before the Blessed Sacrament, sharing in small groups the fruit of their prayer, and learning under the guidance of their pastor? Much better than canned programs of dubious orthodoxy that are boring and don’t feed the soul!

The Mass and Music

The new corrected translation of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal is important for many reasons. Perhaps the most important is that it returns many of our prayers, not just to the original Latin, but closer to the words of the original Scripture from which the prayers are taken. I have often remained stupefied at the fanciful interpretations for and against certain aspects of the new translation, none of which go back to the Scriptures. (Matthew 8.8. and Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof comes immediately to mind).

The corrected English translation is not the only thing which will help the Word of God to be more visible within the life of the Church. There is a move afoot to replace man made hymns with the proper (mostly) Scriptural antiphons appointed in the Roman Missal at the Entrance, Offertory and Communion of the Mass. For those who are always looking out for increasing richer fare at the table of God’s word, I ask: Why then promote man-made hymns when the people can sing the actual words of Scripture which are appointed by the Church for those times? For the Word of God to be powerful in one’s life it is not sufficient merely to hear it. For the faithful, not only to say the words of Scripture in the Ordinary of the Mass every time they go to mass, but also sing those words as the appear in the Proper of the Mass: that’s a real way of offering richer fare at the table of God’s word, instead of just random songs composed by others.

The Divine Office

Finally, I would like to note that, if we are to offer the faithful more of the riches of Scripture, as well as offer them tools for Christian formation, there is no better way than the Liturgy of the Hours. The Psalter, the other scriptural readings and the texts from the Fathers, saints and other ecclesiastical writers complement the Liturgy of the Mass. Opening the treasures of the Scriptures to the faithful also entails involving them in the public prayer of the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours. How many parishes offer centering prayer, yoga, devotions, novenas and Perpetual Adoration, but not Lectio Divina and the Liturgy of the Hours?

Conclusion

It is often charged that Church musicians of a certain stripe only care about a certain type of music, and that they do not take into account the consequences of Vatican II’s call for a Church embued with Scripture. In this view, these musicians actually are an obstacle to that vision, because they propose music of a certain type, or in another language. It is also often charged that the postconciliar liturgical reform has been a tremendous success in bringing Catholics closer to Scripture. I think both charges need to be analyzed more closely.

For the Church to implement the desire of Vatican II to restore Scripture to its rightful place of honour in the Church, as well as the call of Pope Benedict XVI in his latest Apostolic Exhoration Verbum Domini, several things need to happen. First, the Church needs to discover what is the best pedagogical method by which the Church arranges her Plan for Scripture during liturgical celebrations in such a way as to be fruitful. Simply by asserting, “There’s more now than there was before” is not sufficient. We also must find ways to re-envision both preaching and Christian formation in such a way, not only to be pedagogically fruitful, but also to more effectively initiate believers into Scripture. Finally, we must take advantage of the riches of the Missal (in both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms) and Liturgy of the Hours to assist Catholics not only to be present at, but feast at the table of God’s Word.

Our own time, then, must be increasingly marked by a new hearing of God’s word and a new evangelization. Recovering the centrality of the divine word in the Christian life leads us to appreciate anew the deepest meaning of the forceful appeal of Pope John Paul II: to pursue the missio ad gentes and vigorously to embark upon the new evangelization, especially in those nations where the Gospel has been forgotten or meets with indifference as a result of widespread secularism. May the Holy Spirit awaken a hunger and thirst for the word of God, and raise up zealous heralds and witnesses of the Gospel. – Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini

Just had some thoughts, for what they are worth. While it is true that yes, cantus can be translated as song as well as chant, there are some observations to be made:

1. If I am correct, the rubrics and the GIRM will be printed in the MIssal for the first time in the new translation, with all of the post-Redemptionis Sacramentum adjustments. There were editorial comments in the last Sacramentary that approached rubrics, or at least so it seemed. (Before the Syllabus of Errors gets started on this point, please remember that I haven’t said an English OF in so long, I can’t remember, and I don’t have the book here to look at it.)

2. The changes in the Missal might mean that priests who have never read the red bits or the GIRM before (and they are legion) might just do so for the first time, or for the first time since 1970. That alone might get some thinking.

3. While it may seem that the last option is still an argument to allow hymns at Mass, I am not sure it really is, whether it is in the original Latin rubrics, or the new corrected English version. Why? In any translation, it i necessary to go back to the intention of the author when using that word. Now, I would be interested if anyone could go leafing through Bugnini’s Reform of the Liturgy, his apologia for the liturgical reform, and see if he had any intention of vernacular hymns replacing the propers. From what I remember from what I have read, the answer is no. Also, if Musicam Sacram is still the proper legislation for music in the Roman Rite, is cantus as used in that document referring to the Propers?

The REAL question is this: What is the mind of the Church about music at those times? I don’t think there is any indication in any official document that the mind of the Church was to use vernacular hymns when the Propers are called for. To argue that, because hymns are used by the People of God at Mass, that is the mind of the Church and it is as such expressed in the GIRM I find a little backwards. It seems to me that the use of vernacular hymns was tolerated in the German-speaking world. Toleration in the official documents does not mean that the Church desires it for her worship, at least not universally.

4. While it is clear that hymns at Mass and Low Mass have occurred and continue to occur throughout Church history, it also seems clear to me that the Church’s intention is to SING THE MASS (Ordinary, Responses and the Propers that are in the text of the Missal) and not to SING AT MASS (paraphrases of the Ordinary as in German and Spanish, and Hymns at Mass.)

Those who are derided as having an ideology to push the propers have a better argument that trying to legislate the Propers into existence everywhere. The argument is simple: SING THE MASS, DON’T SING AT MASS!

The first time I ever went to a Life Teen Mass I was sixteen years old. It was New Years’ Eve and I thought, instead of going downtown with my pagan friends, I should be a good Catholic boy and ring in the New Year with Jesus. The parish that had the Life Teen Mass was not mine, but I went anyway. Everyone had been telling me that there were lots of people my age, who were serious about their faith, and that it would be a Spirit-filled time. Some of my friends were going to be there, too, so what could be better?

But as soon as the Mass started, I felt like I had stepped into a no-man’s land suspended between Catholicism and some vague form of Protestantism that I as a convert had never seen before. It wasn’t that the music was strange to me. I grew up with contemporary Christian music around the house and listened to it on the radio (when I wasn’t listening to classical music or Latin dance music). So I knew the songs. The church was full of high schoolers and Baby Boomers and they all seemed to know and love each other.

But as the Mass unfolded, I kept noticing things that I knew very well were not in the rubrics, those pesky little red directions in the Missal that tell us how to celebrate the Mass properly. The Life Teen coordinators had decided that they would modify the Mass to make it fit whatever they deemed necessary to get the kids involved. And so there was dancing, hand-holding, and music that had nothing to do with the actual texts of the Mass.

But then, it was time for the Eucharistic Prayer. The celebrant invited all the kids to come around the altar. As the church was quite full, this was rather cumbersome and also pointless. But everyone stood up and made their way as through a mosh pit (I am showing my age, now!) to get closer to the altar. I stayed behind in the last pew. And of course, the celebrant thought that I was too shy to come up and so he encouraged me, from the altar, to join the kids. I had had enough, and so I yelled from the back pew, “No, sorry, Father, I’m a Catholic, I don’t do that kind of thing,” and pulled out a rosary and knelt to pray it as I watched the Eucharistic Prayer degenerate into something eerily similar to the ecstatic cults we had studied about in Ancient Greek History.

Not only did I never go back to a Life Teen Mass, I started the next Sunday to go to the Orthodox Church. There I felt like I was worshipping God and not having earnest adults try and fail to make religion relevant to me by assuming I was too young or stupid to understand real worship. It was fifteen years before I ever had to participate in anything similar ever again. By this time, I was a priest and I had been asked to preside over a Holy Hour for young people. The youth minister in this particular parish was very sensitive to the fact that Praise and Worship was not my thing, and she warned me ahead of time.

As I knelt there in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I realized something. The same people were doing the music who were doing it fifteen years before. It was the same music, the same songs that I made fun of when I was the age of the kids who were in the pews behind me. How relevant is that? But this time the kids who were there just seemed bored. I asked them afterwards what they thought of it, and one young man said, “Well, that was ok, I guess. When are we having another Latin Mass, Father?”

Of all of my friends from high school who were Life Teeners, not one of them is a practicing Catholic anymore. Will the kids today who are raised on a diet of Praise and Worship continue to practice the Faith when they are no longer of that age middle-aged people in the Church want to cater to? I don’t know. But my experience has brought me to reflect on why Praise and Worship Music is not appropriate for the liturgy:

1. P&W music assumes that praise is worship.

All of us are called to lift our hearts, minds and voices to God in prayer. A particular type of prayer is praise, when we recognize God’s goodness, holiness and mercy by our own actions of praise. Praise has always been accompanied by music. Praise has always been something that takes place on an individual or small group level. It is often spontaneous and takes the form of culturally relevant symbols and forms. Praise is something common to all Christians and to many other religions.

Worship is indeed a type of praise, and music is an integral part of it. But the sacred liturgy is the public prayer of the Church, a corporate worship by which baptized Catholics enter into a Mystery which is not of their making. Being a corporate action, it is governed by law and tradition so as to preserve its unity throughout the world and its fidelity to the Message revealed by God. Worship is a Christian act of the baptized gathered by bonds of communion with the visible institutional Church.

P&W music actually identifies worship with praise, by grafting the freer and more individualistic nature of praise onto the communal prayer of the Church’s worship.

2. P&W music assumes that worship is principally something we do.

Martin Luther defined the Mass as a sacrifice of praise. It is something we render to God. The Council of Trent solemnly defined against Luther that the Mass is a true sacrifice. The Mass is the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Christ to His Father on Calvary in the Holy Spirit. The Mass is something that Jesus does, the Redemption, the fruits of which are shared with us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Worship is not Praise, but Sacrifice and Sacrament. Worship is something that Jesus Christ brings about in us through His self-offering to the Father.

P&W music reduces the Mass to a sacrifice of praise that we offer to God. Even when P&W proponents assent to the teaching of the Church on the Mass, it is as an abstract truth of faith. In the concrete, our sacrifice of praise is grafted onto that Sacrifice of Redemption. It overlooks the fact that it is the Sacrifice of Redemption that is the highest Praise to the Trinity, and that our participation in it is not by what we do, but by who we are as baptized Christians in the life of grace.

3. P&W music assumes as its first principle relevance.

P&W recognizes that music is important in the Church’s worship. But it also posits that music must “reach people where they are.” It must be relevant to those who hear it. Relevance, however, is an ambiguous notion. What is relevant to me may not be relevant to someone else, and so P&W introduces into the liturgy an element of subjectivism based on human concerns.

Often P&W is directed at an ostensibly missionary effort. The idea is that, if people find the music at Mass attractive or relevant, they might be brought into a deeper relationship with God. Yet, faith is a gift that comes from God, not from us. P&W attempts to clear the way for divine action, as if relevance could accomplish that.

4. P&W music assumes as its second principle the active participation of a certain age group

P&W essentially views active participation as everyone doing, singing and feeling a certain way about God when at Mass. The music is a means to produce an end. It also sees the absence of young people at church, and argues that, if the music at Mass were more like what young people like in their normal lives, they might be opened up to a more abundant life. Thus, P&W is designed often by middle-aged people with little or no theological, liturgical or musical background to coax teenagers and college-age kids with a similar background into a theological, liturgical and musical milieu. That milieu reduces the liturgy to a man-made act of praise engineered to produce an apostolic result.

5. P&W music self-consciously divides the Church into age and taste groups

P&W music is principally designed based on an abstract idea of what young people like. It often reflects more the trends of the past that were germane to P&W participants’ adolescence than it does the actual relevant trends of current adolescents.

It also tends to disparage the Church’s musical tradition by claiming that it is too difficult, elegant, or irrelevant to teens. For them, P&W is a grassroots, democratic, egalitarian, music relevant to youth. In contrast, the Church’s musical tradition is often painted as theatrical, aristocratic music for old people in concert halls.

By selectively choosing the abstract notion of youth and what is relevant to it as a criterion for liturgical music, P&W effectively divides the Church according to what is arbitrarily considered to be youthful and not youthful. It also argues that different “styles” are fine for the liturgy. This introduces into the liturgy the ambiguous notion of style and taste as a principle by which the liturgy and its music should be conducted.

6. P&W music subverts Biblical and liturgical texts during the Mass

The Roman Missal contains antiphons for the Entrance and Communion which are normally biblical texts. The Roman Gradual, which is still the Church’s only official source of music for Mass, contains antiphons for the Offertory as well as for the Interlectionary Chants. These together are known as the Proper of the Mass. The Missal and Gradual also contain official texts for the Ordinary of the Mass, for the Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus and Agnus Dei.

P&W bypasses the first and preferred option that the Church’s liturgical law mandates for music at Mass, namely the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass as contained in the Church’s liturgical and musical books. It substitutes hymns, which have never been part of the Roman Mass, or paraphrases or re-workings of the Ordinary. If a biblical text is used, it often has little or nothing to do with the texts appointed by the Church in the Missal or Gradual.

In doing so, P&W sets up a situation in which people do not sing the Mass (i.e., the texts contained in the Missal and Gradual), but they sing at Mass songs chosen by the impoverished criterion that those songs “kind of go along with the readings or the theme of the day.” P&W divorces the music of the Mass from the Mass and substitutes in its place texts that are not or only barely Biblical or liturgical.

7. P&W music assumes that there can be a core of orthodox Catholic teaching independent of the Church’s liturgical law and tradition

Many P&W proponents assume that, as long as they continue to believe in what the Church teaches in the Catechism about faith and morals, that the liturgy can be adapted to how they think such a teaching should be incarnate in song. There are some who would never think of denying an article of the Creed or promoting immoral actions condemned by the Magisterium. But the same proponents see the liturgy as another sphere. Any appeal to liturgical law or tradition is rejected according to the principles of relevance and active participation of youth.

Orthodoxy is then separated from Orthopraxis, right belief is separated from right worship. The Church’s power to speak on faith and morals is upheld even as the Church’s power to safeguard the liturgy through rubrics, laws and traditions is dismissed as man-made legalism. In doing so, P&W promotes an attitude of passive, or even sometimes active, resistance to the hierarchy’s duty to safeguard the sacral character of the rites of the Church. The impression is created that there is such a thing as right belief, but that the idea of right worship is contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel.

This creates problems of communion between priests and their people when a priest attempts to reform the liturgy in any given place to bring it into line with the Church’s liturgical law and tradition.

8. P&W music consciously manipulates the emotions so as to produce a catharsis seen as necessary for spiritual conversion

Conversion is seen principally as a dramatic emotional event accompanied by strong feelings. Recognizing that music can stimulate feelings, P&W seeks to produce liturgical events which will bring out the feelings that could in turn bring about the emotional catharsis seen as necessary to conversion. The way the liturgy is planned and the music developed is done so with an eye to aiding this conversion process.

Yet, this is not what conversion really is. Conversion is the formation of the conscience under the grace of the Holy Spirit to inform the intellect and strengthen the will to live the supernatural life of the virtues in union with Christ. Although emotions are involved in the life-long pilgrimage of conversion, their deliberate manipulation, even for an ostensible good end, is abusive. It sees the human subject not as ready for the response to a divine call, but as something to be primed for an experience. In reality, the life of grace brought about by conversion is not an experience at the level of the emotions, but a movement of the soul over and above those emotions.

9. P&W music confuses transcendence with feeling.

The deliberate manipulation of the emotions by P&W often produces an excess of sentiment. The very strength of that feeling can induce some to think that such an event is the work of the transcendent God in them. Musical forms which truly are transcendent, in that they disengage from the emotional and bring the person above their emotions, such as Gregorian chant, are rejected because they do not necessarily cause an emotional event, which is seen as proof of divine action.

The constant spiritual tradition of the Church has taught to distrust feelings and to prize the transcendent holiness of God. It also teaches that human manipulation of other people’s intellects and wills is a violation against the freedom of the human person. When done in the name of God, it is also a violation of God’s sovereignty over the intellect and will of man, as it replaces the free action of God in the soul with a gimmick to make that action in theory possible.

10. P&W music denies the force of liturgical and musical law in the Church in favour of arbitrary and individualist interpretations of worship

P&W, in making relevance and a reduced notion of participation the fundamental principles for engineering liturgical/emotional events geared towards emotional catharsis taken for conversion, ignores liturgical and musical law in the Church when it contradicts its goal. Often the greatest proponents of P&W have never read the pertinent documents of the Church’s Magisterium about liturgy and music, or they read them within a hermeneutic of rupture.

Liturgical and musical law seeks to safeguard the unity, purity and clarity of the Church’s corporate worship. P&W offers other criteria for how the Church should worship. First, it subsumes true liturgical worship under the rubric of praise. Second, those who are in charge of the praise often engineer the rites and music according to principles alien to those that govern the Church’s liturgical and musical law. Third, the opinion of individuals, small groups and committees, often uninformed by a wider theological, liturgical and musical education, is preferred to the Church’s theological, liturgical and musical heritage which is found in the Church’s documents and the Missal and Gradual.

11. P&W music prizes immediacy of comprehension and artistic ease over the many-layered meaning of the liturgy and artistic excellence.

P&W prefers simple music that anyone can understand or participate in easily. It also prefers what can be sung or played with a minimum of practice, instruction, or talent. Its levels out the many-layered meaning of the liturgy to that which is most readily accessible, and denies access to the infinite riches in the Church’s liturgical life.

A constant diet of P&W throughout the liturgical year separates people from the Church’s actual liturgical prayer as found in the Missal and Gradual. It also denies them access to the art form produced by the Church herself, Gregorian chant, and to the transcendence to which it points. It also gives the impression that the Church is not serious about serious music. The idea of excellence in liturgical motion, sound, and sight and that the Church is a patron of the highest forms of such expression, is dismissed in favour of what is easiest. In doing so, P&W does not inspire youth and older people to plumb the riches of the Roman liturgy and music.

That is a lot to take in, I know. I am also sure that many of my P&W loving friends will take issue with some of what I have written here. But it is important that those involved in the Church’s ministry remember the following:

1. The Church’s musical and liturgical tradition is an integral part of worship, and not a fancy addition.

2. While Praise is a high form of individual and small group prayer, it is not Worship as the Church understands the corporate public prayer of the Liturgy.

3. Worship is not principally something that we do: it is the self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit, the fruits of which are received in Holy Communion. Worship is Sacrifice and Sacrament, not Praise.

4. Relevance is irrelevant to a liturgy which seeks to bring man outside of space and time to the Eternal.

5. Participation in the liturgy is principally interior, by the union of the soul with the Christ who celebrates the liturgy. Any externalizations of that interior participation are meaningless unless that interior participation is there.

6. The Church’s treasury of sacred music is not the province of one social-economic, age, cultural, or even religious group. It is the common patrimony of humanity and history.

7. The Church must sing the Mass, i.e., the biblical and liturgical texts contained in the Missal and Gradual, and not sing at Mass man-made songs, if it is to be the corporate Worship of the Church and not just Praise designed by a select group of people.

8. Orthodox Catholic teaching on faith and morals must always be accompanied by respect for the Church’s liturgical and musical teaching and laws.

9. The deliberate intention to manipulate human emotions to produce a religious effect is abusive, insincere, and disrespectful of God’s power to bring about conversion in the hearts of man.

10. While music does affect the emotions, sacred music must always be careful to prefer the transcendent holiness of God over the immanent emotional needs of man.

11. The Church’s treasury of sacred music inspires and requires the highest attention to artistic excellence. It is also an unfathomable gift to the Church, and must be presented to the faithful so that they may enjoy that rich gift.

Do I think that P&W has a place in the life of the Church? Of course I do. It is praise, it is prayer, it does get people lifting their minds and hearts to God. There is obviously a place for that in the Church. But that is not Worship, and the communal prayer of the liturgy, by which God unites Himself with us, must be allowed to be itself. We should not be so cynical as to think that our Catholic people are too young (or old), too stupid (or overly-educated), and too spiritually weak (or indifferent) to pray the Church’s liturgy as it is indicated in the Missal and Gradual. The music of the Church’s tradition is the Church’s own gift to mankind. Let’s pray the Mass, let’s sing the Mass as worship. Then our praise will be worthy of the Spirit’s breath, because Christ through His Mystical Body will sing the Father’s praise in us.

Anyone who has read anything about the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century has come across the name of Pius Parsch. He was the pastor of a small parish in the Austrian countryside, and a chaplain to any number of youth groups in and around. His name is important to know, because many of the things which we now take for granted in our celebrations of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite began as experiments in or were popularized from this one place. Mass facing the people, offertory processions, vernacular mixed with Latin in the text of the Mass: all of these things were already “traditions” fixed in the minds of Parsch’s parishioners well before Vatican II.

But Pius Parsch was not a diocesan parish priest. He was an Augustinian canon, a member of a religious community in Klosterneuberg not from Vienna. As a canon, community daily Mass and the Divine Office were already part of his spirituality, and he sought to bring the riches of that liturgical experience he loved in the monastery to his parishioners. How he did that is a fascinating story in and of itself, and we cannot underestimate the influence Parsch had on the liturgical reform of Vatican II, and the influence he still has today, especially in Austria. But that is the subject for another article.

Klosterneuberg is not just any monastery. As one of the canons explained it to me, Klosterneuberg is to Austria what Westminster Abbey is to England. It is the spiritual heart of Austria, and its importance in the fascinating story of Austria has always been great.

The history of the Austrian Church has been very peculiar, especially on account of the widespread meddling in Church affairs by the “Sacristy Emperor”, Joseph II. What this means is that the way religious life is lived in Austria is different than the way it is lived in any other place in the world. What it means to be a Benedictine, a Trappist, or a Norbertine in Austria is markedly different than what it means in other parts of the world. The active life has been emphasized very much over the contemplative life, not by accident of history, but by imperial edict.

The Austrian Congregation of Canons Regular of St Augustine does not have a counterpart anywhere else in the world. The most venerable house is Klosterneuberg.

But what is Klosterneuberg like today? While vocations are drying up all over the German-speaking world, this abbey continues to receive novices, and many stay. The monastery has gained notoriety in part because of a daring project in which several American priests and seminarians entered the community with the hope of one day establishing a foundation in the US. Very soon three confreres will make that dream a reality thanks to the patronage of the Bishop of Rockville Center, New York. And so the deep roots of Austrian canonical life will find their way to America, which will benefit from the rich history and spirituality of a form of life which many Americans will fall in love with!

Klosterneuberg remains a house of serious religious observance, but within its own tradition. While from the outside it may seem very wealthy and free, its canons are expected to participate in the life of the house and in the numerous apostolates of the community. The entire Liturgy of the Hours is chanted daily, conventual Mass is for all, and the life of the monastery continues much as it always has. But it also is a house for adults, for men whose spirituality does not need to be propped up by the structures of religious life.

For me, Klosterneuberg represents the past of Austria: its glorious imperial history, its intricate and fascinating development throughout the Second Milennium, its famous characters whose stories need to be told outside of the monastery walls. It also represents the future of Austria, and quite possibly, of many other places as well. Ours is an age in which the clerical life desperately needs reform. Priests hunger after a life which gives them the spiritual support they need to do their ministry and save their own souls, but with the freedom and flexibility to respond to the needs of the Church of today. While many people in the Church are experimenting with various movements or novel hybrid forms of religious life, Klosterneuberg offers a very rooted serious tradition which has weathered the post-conciliar years substantially intact. Where other religious communities abandoned their charism and faltered, the Austrian canonical life was able to remain authentically Catholic and authentically religious without sacrificing its essence or its power. The fact that it is a community which is growing when so many others are not indicates something beautiful is going on for God there.

So where is the present of Austria then? Readers of Chant Café will hopefully recognize the name of the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz. This abbey, also a venerable ancient monastic foundation of the Common Observance of the Cistercian Order, is the most flourishing and vibrant religious community in the German-speaking world. The abbey is known for its recent Chant CD. And, watch for a new CD, which has just been issued. entitled Vesperae. It is the reconstruction of Baroque Vespers with Cistercian chant and music from Abbey composer Alberich Mazak (1609-1661).

The Abbey is justly known for its chant. The community of eighty monks, of whom forty or so are resident in the house, sing all of the offices and Mass together. A peculiarity of the Abbey which makes its known in Englihs-speaking circles as a “Reform of the Reform” place is its liturgy. During the Second Vatican Council, an extraordinary man was the head of the community. Abbot Karl Braunstorfer was a peritus at the Second Vatican Council. When the Council urged the reform of the religious life and the Latin liturgical tradition, Abt Karl guided his community through the transition in a spirit of the hermeneutic of continuity. He and the abbey were often criticized bitterly for the way in which they went about this, most notably Franz Cardinal Koenig, the Cardinal of Vienna, who wondered aloud during a pastoral visit whether the Second Vatican Council had ever reached the Abbey. In retrospect, many can now see that the prayerful and resourceful abbot perhaps incarnated the true spirit of the Council more than he has been given credit for.

The Abbey is also home to the Higher School for Philosophy and Theology, and has become a much sought after place of study for orthodox Catholic theology in the German speaking world.

The Latin Ordinary Form is celebrated every day, and the Latin Cistercian Liturgia Horarum, with its two week Psalter Cycle, was produced from within the house. Large antiphonaries for the new liturgy have been produced. All of these new liturgical books have been produced with an eye to beauty, durability, and tradition. One can feel confident that St Bernard, were he to end up at Heiligenkreuz, would find himself very much at home.

The monks are known for their liturgy and their chant, and the abbey church is frequently full of visitors. I have never seen another large monastery church full for the daytime hours of the Office! I had the great grace to be invited to choir practice on Sunday morning. One assumes that monks famous for their CDs would not need choir practice, and it was comforting to see the Prior, who is also the Music Director for the Abbey, encouraging the monks to follow the proper rhythm for the chant and to not drag it or fall flat.

I cannot tell you the emotion I had to sit in the choir stalls and concelebrate Mass. But one thing will always stay with me, even greater than the perfect chant and the superb hospitality. As I came back from the altar after distributing Holy Communion, I saw many of the monks in their choir stalls in prayer. Scapulars and cucullae drawn over their heads, many were prostrate on the floor. Yet there was nothing showy or piously over-devotional about their prayer. The silent witness of those monks in adoration of the God whom they had just received spoke volumes about the proskynesis proper to the worship of the Almighty and Triune God. Music dissipated into a silence where heaven was opened, not by an aesthetic experience, but a moment of grace.

I was surprised to be greeted by a young monk at breakfast, “Oh, I have read your articles on Chant Café” even before I could stammer out a bad German Guten Morgen. So the blogosphere where Catholics come to share their love of liturgy and life has penetrated the walls of the most beautiful cloister of Central Europe. What the monks might not know, is that it is their witness which gives those us from without the cloister wall the courage to share with everyone our love of a common faith.

For more information, check out:

Klosterneuberg at http://newsite.augustiniancanons.org/

Heiligenkreuz at http://stift-heiligenkreuz.org/English.english.0.html