Faculty Profile: Edward Schaefer
So many materials are online these days that it is easy to get the impression that the chant movement was born anew some five years ago. But you know how things actually work: there is no real new birth of an artistic/liturgical movement. Nothing comes into being out of nothing. These things grows slowly over time, from infancy to maturity, and this involves countless unnamed people plus a handful and heroes and heroines.
Edward Schaefer is one of those heroes. He has been running his own workshops since the 1980s. Even more strikingly, his work foreshadowed the forthcoming Missal. He wrote out an entire Missal in the ordinary form in English with the sung text, and got it approved for liturgical use. For all these year, it has been the only printed resource for the sung Mass in English! He did all of this pretty much working alone, and solely because as a musician and a Catholic he had a passion for the sung liturgy. Now, others have caught up to him and this is about to become the norm in our liturgical materials. But it took Schaefer to lead the way.
As a long-time professor at Gonzaga and now Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, University of Florida College of Fine Arts, he is obviously a chant expert (having studied directly under Dom Cardine) also a legendary conductor of polyphony. Those who have sung under his leadership praise his leadership and musicianship. He is also a tremendously intelligent person with an obvious fire for the faith. He is also a pleasure to work with. His enthusiasm is palpable and he is deeply grateful for an opportunity to spread the word.
It’s fun to be with him at the Sacred Music Colloquium because of his excitement over being there, which is obvious from his broad smile and light step. He has so much to teach, and I’m pleased report that this year, he will have his own polyphony choir that will sing the mighty Byrd Mass for Four Voices, and also teach a long series on semiology – coursework that even faculty members are looking forward to.
I should add that he is also the author of Catholic Music Through the Ages, which is on my reading list and probably should be on yours. We are all tremendously honored that such a scholar and gentlemen will be joining us this year.
Wonderful video about the Norbertines new CD
View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.
What We Think We Know That Is Wrong
A director of music at a Catholic parish, obviously of long experience, sent me a list he has been keeping of things that people believe that are not so.
1. It is possible to fully understand the Mass.
1a. Having Mass entirely in the vernacular facilitates this complete comprehension.
1b. The more Latin we use, the less we can comprehend the Mass, unless we know Latin.
2. Mass is really about the words.
3. We must determine the popular musical taste of young people and incorporate these styles into the Mass, or young people will eventually leave the church.
3a. Young people overwhelmingly prefer contemporary popular music in church.
3b. Likewise, young children are only capable of grasping music written specifically for them.
3c. Family Masses, primarily addressed to children, facilitate catechesis. Such Masses do not, however, demonstrate to adults that religion is primarily for children.
4. Hymns and songs are integral to the Mass. Mass with music, but with no hymns or songs, is unthinkable.
5. The main way to determine a hymn or song’s suitability for Mass is to examine the text.
5a. Therefore, since all versions of the Mass Ordinary have the same approved text in English, any setting is inherently suitable for Mass.
6. Changing texts to prayers, readings and hymns can be helpful, or is at least harmless; people won’t even notice, and would say something if they did.
7. Laypeople live essentially stable lives, and look to the church to be surprising and innovative, especially in the liturgy.
8. Most women prefer gender-neutral language when referring to God. The younger the woman, the more this is true. References to God as “he” or “Father” are scandalous or unintelligible to the non-religious.
9. A small group of vocal parishioners likely represents the views of the majority.
10. People can sing tunes and especially rhythms rooted in popular music easily and naturally. Popular music is much easier to sing than classical music.
11. Members of ethnic minorities are grateful to us when we incorporate into Mass musical styles we associate with them.
11a. In cultures other than our own, especially in Latin America, the distinction between sacred and secular music is non-existent.
12. Having a single Mass in multiple vernacular languages is a way to please everyone, even those who speak only one of the languages. This leads to unity.
12a. Any use of liturgical Latin, on the other hand, is extremely divisive.
13. Church music shares many important characteristics with Broadway music from the 1980s and early 90s.
14. All chant sounds the same to untrained ears.
14a. All chant is in Latin.
14b. All chant is equally difficult and esoteric.
14c. Exception: The funeral Sanctus and Agnus Dei are the only pieces of chant that untrained laypeople are capable of singing.
14d. Chant is most appropriate for penitential times (like Lent) and least suitable for joyful times (like Easter).
15. The assembled parishioners, along with the priest, perform the primary actions of the Mass, and are also the Mass’s primary audience. This principle drives every liturgical or musical decision.
16. God is indifferent to the particulars of our worship.
17. People in the pews will never, never, never sing in Latin and they resent you teaching them how.
18. The most natural and appropriate opening is a rousing hymn or song for the procession.
19. The best metric to gauge participation in the Mass is the assembly’s singing. The louder the singing, the greater the participation.
19a. People who don’t sing at Mass lack enthusiasm or devotion.
19b. No responsibility can be laid on the accompanist or music director if a congregation is not singing.
20. The church provides us the Mass in the form of a rubrical skeleton, onto which we map our choices of songs, service music, and locally-designed elements. This is how we do liturgy.
20a. The two main sources for doing liturgy are personal preferences — what most of us like — and the lectionary readings for the day.
21. Unaccompanied, unamplified polyphonic music sung by unseen singers in a choir loft is more a performance than worship.
21a. Conversely, a band with an electric keyboard, two guitars, bass guitar, flute, and three singers on microphones near the altar is more worship than a performance.
22. People will sing more at weddings and funerals if you use Mass of Creation.
23. All authoritarianism in Catholic liturgy originates in Rome.
24. The Second Vatican Council fundamentally changed the church, and especially the liturgy.
25. The liturgical changes following the Second Vatican Council have led to an increase in understanding of the Mass, and therefore a general rise in Catholic practice.
25a. To question these changes is to question the Council.
Priestly Personality and Ecclesial Communion
Many of us have experienced five or six parishes in the same city that often seem like different religions.
It is part of the ecclesiastical topography of many a mid-sized town in America. Many of the priests in these parishes are extraordinarily gifted, intelligent, and, each in his own way, very Catholic. There is some good natured ribbing between them, and occasionally some tension, but nothing serious. But many of the laity have migrated between these parishes for years, and not a few of them define themselves by the churchmanship of their pastor. The attempts of the clergy to blunt the more acute excesses of their fans and detractors have not been very successful. To some, this may seem like a snapshot of post-Vatican II Catholicism, it shows the creativity and diversity of the Catholic community. For others, it is a manifestation of the decomposition of unity within the American church.
At any rate, it is certainly different than American Catholicism in the 1950s. Then, people defined themselves by what parish they attended because that was the church closest to them. Curates transferred to and fro, and the Pastors remained for decades, fixed as the stars in the sky. In all of them, Low Mass was celebrated every day in Latin and at very few was a High Mass celebrated occasionally, usually with the Curate singing the Requiem from the gallery, because a pious donor upped the Mass stipend by 100%.
It must be said that the current dramatically different situation has been a natural outgrowth of what has happened to American Catholicism in the last forty years. Each parish and priest’s “style” responds to a real or a perceived need in the Church. Some choose one or the other for reverence, preaching, orthodox catechesis, social justice, convenience, good music: a whole constellation of reasons. Before, the clergy and their people would hop from parish to parish once a year for the Forty Hours Devotion. Now, clergy and their people feel more at their ease in a Jewish synagogue, Islamic mosque, or Unitarian meeting than the Catholic church down the street, because it doesn’t feel like home.
To some extent, this situation has come about because those needs are real ones, and no one parish could hope to respond to how people thought those needs should be met. But it also is a direct outgrowth of the whole concept of liturgical style, and how that style often masks (or unmasks) theology. Now, in this town I do not think that any of the priests want this situation to obtain or to continue.
But again, if we are to renew our parishes, not along sectarian lines, but along the way of reform and restoration that is part and parcel of Catholic Tradition, we have to go back to basics.
The concept of the active participation of the faithful is one of the great landmarks of Vatican II’s teaching on the liturgy, and has been enthusiastically welcomed by clergy and faithful alike. What has not been as happily accepted is the same Council’s clear distinction between the baptismal priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood of Holy Orders. In fact, they have often been posited as mutually exclusive. The hierarchical nature of the Church (and, may I say it, the monarchical episcopate and the infallible papacy) have been obscured by a vague sense that Vatican II desired a certain, or a radical, democratization, of the Church’s life.
Some thinkers have posited specific changes of the Liturgical Reform for creating this situation. It is not the scope of this essay to deny or validate that claim. I am sure, however, that there has been a loss of sight of what the liturgy actually is, and in consequence, it has made the liturgy, and the parishes where it is celebrated, susceptible to monopolization by the person of the celebrant or of those who plan the liturgy in a way unprecedented in Catholic history.
It has been repeated that the liturgy has a vertical and a horizontal dimension, and that the two will exist in uneasy tension until the liturgical consummation of all things at the end of the world. The post-conciliar Catholic experience has privileged the concept of community and the meal aspect of the Mass. It may be true that experience of the Mass before the Council did not incarnate those aspects of Catholic life as well as it could have. But it is also important to see that those two aspects can never be separated from two other important aspects: the concept of transcendence and the sacrificial aspect of the Mass.
As soon as the concept of community is inserted into the discussion, the question becomes: Whose community? An authentically Catholic understanding of community comes from Baptism. By Baptism, we become part of the community of faith that is the Church, the Body of Christ, and are part of a hierarchical communion of holy people, places and things. Because of that, we are linked to the community of the universal Church as well as the community of the time and place where we are called to live and witness to the faith. Community has often been interpreted in our time in a narrow way: community is restricted to those with whom I choose to have community. My socio-economic status, political leanings, theological opinions, linguistic limitations all become factors in how I define community, even if I am trying to escape or transcend them all. Community in a ecclesial communion is replaced by community in a self-defining clique. All of a sudden, people are no longer just Catholics. They are liberal/conservative, Latin/English, Tridentine/Novus Ordo, traditional/charismatic. Such a perversion of community can happen where community is interpreted in varying ways.
The next question becomes: What kind of meal? Each one of us has experienced a wide variety of ways of eating. Formal state banquets, family TV dinners, fast food in a drive-through, fun barbeques, and the parish pot-luck. In each one, who does what, how and what one cooks, and how it is served is important. When the Mass is restricted to a meal, all of these questions take center stage. When this happens against the backdrop of a narrow vision of community, then struggles ensue as to who determines the community and the meal.
The only way to avoid the disunity which comes from privileging community and meal as horizontal aspects of the liturgy is to place them in the context of their vertical correlatives. By transcendence, we realize first and foremost that the Mass is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ to His Father in the Holy Ghost on the Cross, a sacrifice which is renewed in a very specific ritual form which both manifests and produces the hierarchial communion of the Church. When transcendence is foremost, community becomes the Church produced by the Eucharist, not by the community. By sacrifice, we realize that the fruits of that sacrifice are given under the sacramental veils of bread and wine, and that the ritual re-enactment of the Mass is not principally about re-creating a first-century meal in Palestine, but about connecting heaven and earth.
When community and meal are not balanced by transcendence and sacrifice, a priest, and by extension his parish, loses sight of what it means to be a priest. The cultic (as well as ministerial) liturgical role of the priest, defined by sacrifice and the sacred, is reduced to one aspect of the priestly reality, that of giving human support to people. The Catholic sacramental view of the priesthood is replaced by a Protestant view of ministry, and that in turn by a secular view of humanist employment. When these things are not balanced, a parish begins to see its identity no longer as formed by the reality they celebrate, each one in his own way, but as something they create each one according to his own arbitrary principles.
When this is translated into the liturgy, the priest becomes the presider who acts as a witness to what the community does. What the community does in this case still refers to God, but what is offered to God is a sacrifice of praise, and what is received is the good feeling that comes from the sacrifice of praise. In such an optic, the presence of God is clearly within the community. Any attempt to assert another type of presence, or a cultic transcendent liturgy is vehemently rejected. Yet Catholic teaching, even after Vatican II and the Ordinary Form of the Mass, has never denied that the Mass is a true sacrifice and the priest is a true sacrificial priest. In this optic, the direction, or orientation of the sacrifice, is on the sacrifice itself. Thus, it is on the Altar of Sacrifice, the Sacrifice which is made clear symbolically on the Crucifix joined to the Altar of Sacrifice, and really in the gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ when they are on the Altar of Sacrifice and given in Holy Communion.
The distinctly priestly character of the sacred liturgy does not, however, mean that the lay faithful are reduced to mere spectators of a re-enacted ritual that produces a sacrament which is their only participation in it. While the priest, standing in persona Christi capitis, truly celebrates the sacrifice according to the ritual form the Church has prescribed, the faithful participate in a very real way. They do not participate by way of doing particular actions in accord with how their community has democratically voted them into be done.
Because by Baptism, they are the Body of Christ, the entire Church is transcendentally and mystically present at the Sacrifice because the Body is completely united to the Head. The liturgy, therefore, is a corporate action in which the ministerial priest in his hierarchical and cultic function re-enacts in persona Christi capitis the sacrifice which has made the Body attached to that Head what it is, by its being in union with the Trinity.
This view of the liturgy is hardly clericalist. While a priest is necessary for the Mass, the faithful are by right of their being a royal priesthood just as necessary for the Mass because they are the Body of Christ. It is a nobler function for the laity, because it is not tied to mere human ways of doing. It stems from what the laity are as elevated by grace to unity with the divine. If the laity understand the dignity of their vocation within the liturgy, then they will cease to be preoccupied with the ways in which they can do things to give them a sense of purpose and praise. They will realize that they are the Body of Christ and all of their actions have meaning only insofar as they are in conformity with the Christ of which they are image and likeness.
Before any tinkering with rites and words of the Mass will produce renewal in the Church, clergy and laity must once again rediscover what, or rather who, the Mass really is.
When we lose sight of this, the clergy are sorely tempted to view their work in the vineyard as “their” ministry, and the laity follow. Priests with larger than life personalities and the parishes formed by them see themselves as “us” and others as “them.” A liturgy created and sustained by man, be it the priest or the liturgy committee or a panel of experts, will inevitably cut off those who identify with one particular community and its meal, from the Church and her Sacrifice.
We are now witnessing in our own time gifted and bright clergy who prefer the liturgy and the community they have created to the Sacrifice of the Church and communion with the Church created by that Sacrifice. They feel they have to choose between the Catholic Church and the community they have created. Others have rejected the corrected translation of the English Mass or papal instructions on the liturgy because they do not conform to the narrow community they have invented in their own minds. Priests separate God from His Church, charism from institution, because they cannot reconcile the liturgy of their hopes and dreams with the liturgy of a Church which is not theirs to create, but theirs to serve.
These are all false choices. The restoration of peace in the Church can come only when priests and people abandon the idols of their own making and return to a liturgy which is not about them, but entirely about the worship of God. The only choice a Catholic can ever make is to worship Him in spirit and truth. That has nothing to do with priestly personalities, styles of liturgy, or actions and reactions.
Baptismal Preparation Based on the Liturgy and Its Possibilities
I was looking through the pictures of a friend of mine on Facebook the other day and saw something that disturbed me. There were pictures of a group of people sitting around a swimming pool in an apartment complex, with a fully clothed man in the middle, motioning for one of the onlookers to come in. It seemed like any number of FB pics of swimming pools. But the caption beneath it read simply, Baptism. The friend who posted the picture is a sincere Christian, a member of one of these emerging house church communities that are the reaction to the megachurch phenomenon in the evangelical world. For those unfamiliar with this kind of religion, it seems be very much Calvin on justification, Wesley on personal holiness, Jars of Clay on music, and post-modern in its approach to religious practice. At any rate, the picture was very different than the FB pics of the Extraordinary Form Baptism of my youngest godson.
The way that a Catholic approaches Baptism is obviously going to be different than the way an Emerger (what else does one call them?) would. For the Emerger, Baptism is an outward sign that expresses an internal conversion of a believer towards Jesus Christ. Water is a symbol, nothing more, and the reality that Baptism symbolizes could be had just as well without the water, but in obedience to the LORD’s command, water is used as an external symbol of what is going on internally. Precisely because it is just a symbol, then it makes just as much sense for Baptism to take place in an apartment complex swimming pool as it is does in the Baptistery of St John Lateran in Rome. There is no accompanying ritual or ceremony. On the contrary, it is a highly casual affair even if the conversion that it symbolizes is very deep and sincere. If there is anything sacred about the Baptism, the sacred is Jesus Christ Himself who saves the sinner through that conversion.
Catholic belief in Baptism is very different. But I wonder if, you gave the average Catholic the above description of Baptism according to the Emergers and asked if it were Catholic teaching, they would say yes. In reality, for the Catholic Church, the sacralization of the world and human flesh by its union with the Divinity in Jesus Christ means that there can be such a thing as sacraments, in which outward signs produce what they signify: as the water cleanses the body, the action of the creature water accompanied by the action of the Spirit cleanses the soul. But Baptism is not just a sacrament of Regeneration. It is also one of Initiation. Baptism does not only appropriate, as it were, the merits of the Redemption wrought by Jesus. It grafts its recipient onto Jesus Christ, inserts him in the life of the Trinity, and makes him a member of the Body of Christ, the Church. Precisely because it is not a symbol, Catholic Baptism is celebrated in a way different than that of the Emergers.
Of course, when there is an emergency, all bets are off. I have baptized infants in incubators using the Trinitarian formula and no accompanying ceremonies or prayers, when time was of the essence. But generally, Catholic Baptism happens first of all in a church. Why? When I went to the Holy Land, I saw Protestants baptizing believers in the Jordan River. We Catholics renewed our Baptismal Promises at the River, but it would never have occurred to us to baptize anyone there. Surely the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized is as if not more sacred than the faux marble font in Our Lady of Suburbia in Peripheria, Illinois?
As Catholics, we are members of the Church Universal. But the Church also is very local. According to canon law, the Pastor has a right to baptize his flock. Catholics belong to a Parish, a local manifestation, as it were, of the Church Universal. The relationship that a Catholic has to Church Universal, his Pastor and his Parish is different than that of an Emerger. For the latter, the Church Universal is the Church of the individual soul, and the Pastor is merely a witness, as it were, to help the believer on the Way. For a Catholic, there are bonds of communion which bind the believer to a real community, which exists in Heaven and Purgatory as much as it does on Earth, and a community which is very particular, with a particular sub-grouping of the faithful and a particular shepherd. That is why Baptism generally takes place in the parish church at the parish font, in the same place where the sub-grouping, so to speak, also celebrates the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Communion. Baptism is ordered to all of the other sacraments, and particularly to the Eucharist.
The sacred in Baptism extends to more than just the church and the parish. It extends to all of the rites and ceremonies which accompany the sacramental action. The water itself is natural water, but is set apart, made holy, by the prayers of the Church. These consecratory prayers give God’s natural creation back to Him in thanksgiving, as it were, and in return are given back to the Church as a means for supernatural re-creation. The blessing of the water, the consecration of the oil of catechumens and chrism, the exorcisms, and the rites of clothing the neophyte in the white garment and handing him a lit candle are not just explicative rites. They are not just pious traditions which some people call sacramentals. They all actually “do” something, as they are intimately united with the action of the sacrament of Baptism. Whether the Baptism takes place in the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, or the Byzantine or Maronite Rite, the Church vests her newly baptized not with a customary rite of passage, but with a sumptuous wedding feast to Christ filled with the richest of symbolic and real fare.
The reason that I present here such a stark comparison of two very different conceptions of Baptism is not as an exercise in comparative religion. It is because I wonder to what extent many who present their children or themselves for Baptism in Catholic churches have an essentially Emerging theology of Baptism, combined with respect for the external visuals of the rite as pious tradition.
A pastoral problem the Catholic Church is grappling with is this: if the largest religious group in the US is Catholics, the second is lapsed Catholics. Statistics are beginning to indicate that our ability to retain Catholics is decreasing even as the number of Catholics increases. And how many of those who were baptized as Catholics have migrated to ecclesiastical communities of the Emerging type, especially in Latin America?
We can argue all day long as to the reasons for this phenomenon. We can blame secularism, the American consumerist mentality of religion, the sex abuse scandal in the Church, the lack of valid marriages, the unwillingness of many to accept the Church’s teachings on family life, and so on. But where the rubber hits the road is Baptism. It is time to stop the blame game and go back to where it all starts.
There are two extreme policies about administering the sacrament of Baptism in our day. One, which we may cite as more evangelical, states that Baptism should only be administered to the children of serious Catholics who know their faith, and have been prepared by a rigorous preparation akin to the catechumenate. They point to the Patristic era, with its comparable stinginess about baptisizing people, as an example. The other, which we may cite as traditionalist, looks at the famous relic of the arm of St Francis Xavier who baptized everyone in sight to free them from the possibility of eternal hellfire, and seeks to baptize every human being in arm’s length. Both policies are being seen in our parishes today, along with the policy that “we just baptize anyone who asks because it is our custom.”
I would like to propose that we need to re-think these policies in light of what is going on in the Church and the world today. If Our LORD stated, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” then it is clear that we are supposed to baptize everyone we can. But that Baptism is also connected with a life of discipleship. Baptism is the beginning of discipleship, not only for the child or adult convert who is plunged into the saving waters, but often for the parents and godparents as well.
I think it is less important whom we baptize than that the person who is baptized, or their family, is catechized well. How many times in our parishes does Baptismal preparation consist of some agonizing paperwork, a 1970s video about Christian initiation, and a poorly expressed dress code for the baptizee, all done in 45 minutes by a parish volunteer? How many times do we reject families who have not darkened the door of their parish church, failing to seize a moment to bring them to faith, and then make our faithful families jump through endless hoops to get their sixth or seventh baby baptized?
In the Extraordinary Form, Baptism begins with the simple question, “What do you seek of the Church of God?” The answer is, “Faith.” When anyone comes to our doors seeking Baptism, it is because, in some way, they want faith. They may also come to our doors for all kinds of less than authentic reasons (they hate the priest in the neighboring parish, they want to do less paperwork, because Grandma will disinherit me if I don’t baptize the baby), but when they are there, we have a sacred duty to transmit to them the faith.
The liturgical rites of Baptism already give the structure for a meaningful catechesis, not only on the sacrament itself, but the entire Christian life. Somehow I think that a 45 minute video presentation by a parish volunteer does not do justice to the evangelizing possibilities for the faith and for people’s lives that the Baptismal liturgy can offer. The questions that the rite asks of the parents can be the springboard for lively discussion and explanation of what it means to live as a Catholic. The Creed can be the occasion for explaining what we believe and why we believe it, something many parents were never taught.
Many pastors worry about the fact that of the children who are presented for Baptism, few return for Holy Communion, even fewer for Confirmation, and fewer still for Marriage. The sacramental economy seems to be breaking down. We can make the Church smaller and purer by admitting to the sacraments only those who measure up to our exacting standards. We can make it larger and broader by watering down the meaning of the sacraments and producing more uncatechized semi-pagans. Or we can roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done. Engage every person who comes for Baptism as if they were sent by God, which they have been, to learn the Faith in its entirety. Maybe, if we do that, the downward spiral of Catholic faith and practice might begin to turn around? If Christian faith and practice begins with Baptism, then Baptism has to be where we assure, not just a bare minimum, but a comprehensive introduction to faith and practice.
The relationship between music committees and publishers is just a bit too close
An excellent piece by Damian Thompson appears today in which he reports on article that is not online by Joseph Cullen, the director of the London Symphony Chorus. He quotes Cullen: “There is a glaring lack of sympathy for the heritage which should be the bedrock of worthy sacred music in today’s Church and it is hard to discern any attention to the 1967 instruction Musicam Sacram, the Instruction on Music in the Liturgy.”
Cullen draws attention to a relationship between music committees and publishers who extract copyright fees – a relationship that would be regarded as corrupt in any other field.