Catholic musicians gathered to blog about liturgy and life
Dr. Thomas Fielding, organist and director of music at St. Augustine Cathedral in Kalamazoo, will be performing tonight at the Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Lewiston, Maine, to help dedicate a new console for that beautiful church’s impressive Casavant. For those unable to attend the event, here is a recent conposition of Dr. Fielding’s, his Versets on the Veni Creator:
One of my hobbies is listening in on the conversations of frustrated young Catholics. They have a lot of hopes for the Church moving forward, and like young people everywhere they have beautifully high ideals.
These are some of the characteristics of the Church of the future many young Catholics would like to see going forward.
Young people constantly complain that their opportunities for reverence are often opposed and even thwarted by adults. Why is this? Often, ironically, reverence is thwarted by adults claiming that they are trying to attract young people. Irreverence, bad art, and erroneous teaching do not do that.
Anyone paying attention to the young Church will notice that beauty is the growth industry of Catholicism. Moving forward, the way to appeal to the young is to keep faith with the past, reclaiming the lost art of liturgy.
O mother Anne, rejoice!
O mother blest, applaud:
Your daughter has been born today:
The Mother of our God.
The Virgin Mary born!
A new parental bliss!
Rejoice, rejoice with Joachim
For such a babe as this!
Your daughter is the first
Of blessings we receive,
Renewing earth whose early dawn
Was cursed because of Eve.
And so we give you praise,
And banners raise today,
And ask that through your holy prayers
Our sins be washed away.
To God the Father, praise,
And glory to the Son,
And honor to the Spirit bright:
Blest Trinity in One.
In thinking about some of the current astonishing happenings in the Church, I’ve found a couple of C.S. Lewis’ books to be very useful. Obviously he is not a Catholic saint, much less a doctor, and we can find a great deal of helpful teaching in the fathers and doctors of the Church as well.
However there are two points that Lewis discusses as well as anyone, and both have excellent fictional treatments in his space trilogy, written for adults at the time of World War II.
In the third book of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, Lewis writes about a battle between angelic and demonic powers, in which human beings have meaningful parts to play. One of the ways in which the human characters help the evil powers, somewhat unwittingly, is by being too concerned with human acceptance, a phenomenon also explored by Lewis in his essay The Inner Ring. What happens in the book is a prioritization of politics over truth, of acceptance and careerism over professional and personal ethics, that open individuals to compromise and collusion with evil almost before they know that the collusion is happening.
In the second book, Perelandra, which Lewis said was “worth twenty Screwtapes,” we listen in on the temptation of another planet’s Eve. Will she be tempted to disobey God’s command, or won’t she? The tempter, who is a human being fully and voluntarily given over to evil, patiently tries to convince the beautiful woman with all the gifts of unfallen humanity that she will be much more noble and heroic, if only she disobeys God’s command. He says, “Your deepest will, at present, is to obey Him–to be always as you are now, only His beast or His very young child. The way out of that is hard. It was made hard that only the very great, the very wise, the very courageous should dare to walk in it, to go on–on out of this smallness in which you now live–through the dark wave of His forbidding, into the real life, Deep Life, with all its joy and splendour and hardness.”
That is a temptation indeed. Go out of God’s will, it seems to say, and you will find yourself. Discard the simplicity of trust in the God Who makes known His will, grant it no continuity with your life from now on, and you will be noble and adventurous. It’s a siren call that seems–only seems–to be calling to what is best in humanity. It often promises to make humanity better. But it is deadly poison, if swallowed.
Moreover, one can imagine a world where these two impulses are combined. Dissent from revealed truth, one might imagine, could be the way into an exclusive club.
I suppose it starts with little things: little lies, little improprieties, little sophistries in research, little slanders. Perhaps excellent meals and delicious drinks are involved. Perhaps too many drinks, and too much wasted time, and quite a lot of gossip.
Fortunately for us as Catholics, there is always a way back. Lewis’ tempter is unrealistic: although he is not yet dead, he already has the final judgment upon him. It is not that way with us. In fact giving up on the falsely glittering brass ring of rebellion is easy–as easy as a child running home to his father. “Unless you become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
In omitting the propers of the Mass, as many parishes do, we miss out on liturgical opportunities to sing to Jesus Christ, our Bridegroom with the intimacy appropriate to our commitment and devotion.
Consider three of today’s antiphons in the Ordinary Form.
Introit: Have mercy on me, O Lord
for I cry to you all the day long.
O Lord, you are good and forgiving,
full of mercy to all who call to you.
Offertory: Deign, O Lord, to rescue me. Let all be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life.
Communion: Domine, memorabor iustitiæ tuæ solius: Deus, docuisti me a iuventute mea, et usque in senectam et senium, Deus, ne derelinquas me. (I will proclaim your righteous deeds, yours alone. Since my youth, God, you have taught me. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God.)
These and many other proper antiphons, like many of the Psalms themselves, express a personal and constant reliance of the soul upon God Who saves.
It’s almost like breathing, the way God wants us to sing to Him. The propers give us a way to sing according to this intimacy, heart to heart with God, as a community, from the heart of our worshipping Church.
