If you want to be welcoming as a church, it’s important not to use special “insider” language. People don’t want to try things if they don’t know the words.
That’s why yoga, pilates, sushi, açaí berries, and kombucha never really caught on.
The Rationality of Catholicism
Bishop Robert Barron recently issued a clarion call to those working for the spread of the Gospel in an article entitled Apologists, Catechists, and Theologians, Wake Up!
As someone who ticks all of those boxes, plus Church musician, I thought I might offer some thoughts.
- It is true that many fallen-away Catholics’ expressed protests against the faith are easily-answered and superficial fallacies. Not only should those charged with teaching and defending the faith know how to respond well to them, but every Catholic from high school age should know as well. Middle-schoolers ought to be trained in fallacy detection (here is an age-appropriate book with which to begin).
- The use of the internet and mass media by Catholics has been an evangelistic boon for those who find the Catholic outlets. Videos, Catholic radio, EWTN, and internet forums provide opportunities for evangelization that were simply unavailable in previous generations. But these do not engage everyone, even when spread through social media. How can we improve their reach?
- There are 3 major sources from which most people receive their information about the Catholic Church: the news, the Mass, and Catholics they know. People meet Mass-going Catholics all day long at work and in various social situations. The laity ought to be equipped to defend the faith. I know a priest who wears clerics on plane flights with the intention of engaging those he meets–but how many will he meet?
- There is a general crisis of the liberal arts in our culture, to the extent that most people are perfectly willing to hold mutually inconsistent thoughts in mind at the same time. This is a problem for apologetics, which depends on an intellectual coherence which many do not find necessary.
- Unless a Catholic is “hooked in” to forms of evangelization outside the Mass, they are immune to the efforts of apologists, catechists, and theologians. All they have is the Mass. If this is the case, what must the Mass be? And how does it differ from what the Mass is in our day?
- What must homilies be? What are they? Are they sometimes therapeutic, moralistic, deistic? Or do they present the Faith as a unity in its beauty and truth?
- The rituals of the Mass should present supernatural reality in such a way that the mind is led to contemplate divine things. Are they done so, in a way that invites elevation of the mind, or in a casual, rushed, almost embarrassed manner?
- Liturgical music represents the angelic intelligences in the Mass. It engages human minds and emotions and is united with the sacred text. How, precisely, does it engage the mind? Does it give an impression of randomness and puerility? Is it elevating in any way? Is it actually united to the sacred text?
Our entire heaven will be an exercise in “kneeling theology” (logikan latreian), for which most Catholics are almost entirely unequipped. This is indeed a crisis, and one which bishops will hopefully continue to invite all of their helpers to address.
On Liturgical Customaries for Seminaries: An Example of Mutual Enrichment from the Anglican Patrimony
 |
| Easter Vigil from Nashotah House https://www.facebook.com/NashotahHouse/photos/a.10152325659500956.1073741839.87975035955/10152325673045956/?type=3&theater |
One of the more rarified genres of liturgical arcana from the first part of the last century was the category of books in English for seminarians that introduced them to the complex world of Mass, Divine Office and devotions within the context of a spiritual and theological ethos. It is clear that, as younger seminarians struggled to learn Latin, and comprehensive education in classical languages became thinner, seminarians needed a guide to absorb the Roman liturgical tradition as immediately and effectively as possible. This entire genre of literature disappeared almost completely after Vatican II, as seminaries rode the wave of incessant liturgical experimentation that crashed upon the rest of the Church. As I think about those books, I am reminded of Hyacinthe Cormier’s Instructions for Novices of the Dominican Order. This genre of literature explained, in what seems to us now to be mind-numbing detail, all of the observances of the daily life of a cleric or religious. But these works did so with the knowledge that developing the habit of external observances does have its effect on the soul. While it may be true that the habit does not make the monk, there is a wisdom, which has unfortunately passed on, that what we do with the body does give a form to the soul, and can lead it, with proper dispositions of the soul formed by the development of the intellect, to virtue and to holiness.
I am told that nowadays some seminaries have attempted more precise handbooks of behavior in church and seminary, general rules of life. I have not seen any of them myself. In my day in the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary, everything from etiquette at table to liturgical decorum and expectations of clerical dress were all kind of an oral tradition that was passed from superiors to seminarians in the form of peer pressure to conform, rather than in any manual.
While it is true that many seminarians now have access to a sound formation in liturgical theology that may have been lacking in some places in a pre-Vatican II Church that exalted rubricism over the reason behind the rubrics, they may not always have very clear instructions as to how to behave in church and how to execute the ceremonies of the Mass. Too many seminaries today find themselves burdened with faculty who are of various opinions about the way everything from Vespers to clerical vests should be done, as well as seminarians, at various stages of intelligence and formation, adding their voices to the din. In many places, an uneasy house “tradition” begins to coalesce as faculty, seminarians and musical staff come to uneasy and highly provisional agreements on how to do things. And then seminarians find themselves at the mercy of formators who are not in agreement among themselves, and then float in and out of houses of formation, leaving behind echoes of struggles over the very things that should be a part of the formative process. In American seminaries, the pretense at giving seminarians a “voice” in matters liturgical then creates another layer of constantly changing expectations of every aspect of the liturgical life of a seminary formation house.
Is there a better way?
I can imagine that few seminary formators in the post-Vatican II Church want to create seminarians to be rubrical automatons, deprived of any pastoral sensitivity that is crucial for any priestly life in actual parishes with real people. But could there be a model for some type of manual which delineates acceptable modes of behavior, while placing them in a spiritual and theological context, which is accessible to seminarians from their first year all the way to Holy Orders, something which could imprint upon them a forma mentis, or an ethos, of a legitimate liturgical spirituality, without becoming a framework for endless griping about every detail of seminary life?
Nashotah House, the premier seminary in the United States associated with the Anglo-Catholic world of Episcopal and continuing Anglican bodies, has produced just such a document. This Customary I think provides a useful framework for Catholic seminaries to produce very much needed similar documents that might guide more fruitful and peaceful discussions of seminary life in the future. While it might be hoped that the USCCB could produce something, there is nothing to preclude individual seminaries from opting to graft onto the Nashotah House Customary structure a similar useful guide for their own use.
One of the interesting things to note is that the document is suffused with the presupposition that the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the standard for the worship of the house. It explains what that looks like in the context of seminary life. At the same time it recognizes that there are other expressions of the Anglican liturgical patrimony which are part of the seminarians’ history and future as well as occasional celebrations within the house (such as the 1928 Prayer Book and the Anglican Missal). Where I think this can be useful is that a Catholic seminary today can make normative the use of the Ordinary Form for corporate worship, without excluding, under common sense parameters, other forms of Catholic worship. As the Nashotah document states, “By permission of the Dean, they may be used for other liturgies, provided that they do not compete with or take students from regularly scheduled community worship.” There is no reason a document for Catholic use could not allow for such flexibility for the full range of Catholic worship while forming seminarians in the ordinary form of the Roman Rite as the normative use of the house.
The Nashotah document evidently is geared towards, not just the celebration of corporate worship in a seminary environment, but also towards the formation of leaders of that worship. Hence there are excellent sections on the use of the voice in leading worship, and the spelled out expectation that “as poor vocal use can be detrimental to the life of ministry, when errors are detected, the Dean or faculty member with oversight of the chapel may direct for remedial exercises to be completed.” In a very useful turn of phrase, we also read the excellent advice: “The assumption of accents, mannerisms not used in everyday speech, or performance-life effects are not tolerated in liturgical ministry.” The document ably delineates realistic expectations of a proper ars celebrandi.
A significant part of the document is dedicated to minutiae of the Anglican liturgical experience, but there is no reason why such could not be replaced by the parallel minutiae of Roman Mass, Office and devotions. There is also a sense in which the visible and audible expressions of progressive solemnity are spelled out. This can be useful in the context of a Catholic seminary, where those expressions often become battles in which the lamentable hermeneutics of rupture vs. continuity are played out. There is in the document a sense that everything has a place and everything is in its place, and is described in detail. The lack of such instruction, written and agreed upon by the consensus of a seminary faculty, often leads, less to spontaneous creativity in the worship environment by discerning individuals, and more to needless conflict in the community.
In Appendix 3 there is a very sound addendum the value of which I think would be seconded by most seminary faculty intent on securing some uniformity in worship, not only for good order, but to a good spiritual end:
A cautionary note on individual, personal ceremonial acts: almost everyone is tempted at one time or another to begin to practice some overt personal, unique, and idiosyncratic ceremonial acts— an extra sign of the cross, a kissing of the fingers, a deeply humble bow, some devout expressive hand movements, a genuflection, etc. While I do not doubt the sincerity of such acts, I vigorously caution against them! If they are being done overtly, then they are being done with the knowledge that they will be observed by others, and in our self-oriented culture, they can only involve a recognition that one will be seen as especially pious and devout. (“I am holier than thou!”) In fact, such actions are spiritually highly dangerous because they risk the judgment of Matthew 6:5 “Do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have their reward.” Better far to add wholly private ceremonies, i.e., making a sign of the cross on the thumb with the forefinger, a tiny cross on the forehead by the thumb covered by the hand, a closing of the eyes and a silent “Maranatha”, etc. The less pious you appear, the more truly pious you will be…in fact.
Earnest seminarians who are wont to ostentatiously adopt what they perceive as pious practices during public worship are often offended by any suggestion that such practices are out of place. Indeed, rebuking seminarians for them has often been a tool of rupture-hermeneutic minded formators to drill out of seminarians anything smacking of “traditional” piety. At the same time though, a clear expectation of what is and what is not appropriate for corporate worship, especially when it conforms to the actual tradition of the Church, is very helpful in forming clerics to an ars celebrandi that truly thinks with the Church.
While this particular document is very particular to the needs of one Anglican seminary community, I think it also represents a common element of both Roman and Anglican patrimony which is crucial to the formation of those who lead corporate liturgical worship: the development of an ars celebrandi that is not only grounded in sound theology and law, but also explained in a practical way for seminarians to develop more than what used to be called priestcraft: instead, a heart for true liturgical worship. It is my devout hope that more seminaries and religious houses may seek to appropriate a very good model for our own times.
Bishop Conley on Beauty, Liturgy, Mystery–and World Youth Day
The sacred liturgy at World Youth Day, organized for English-speakers by Polish and American Dominican friars, was an experience of beauty that touched my heart beyond my expectations. I have long known that sacred liturgy is an experience of wonder, as Pope Francis has described so often: a moment “to enter into the mystery of God, to allow ourselves to be brought to the mystery, and to be in the mystery.”
But in Poland, I experienced thousands of young people entering into the mystery of God, through the power of beautiful liturgy. At World Youth Day, I was reminded how powerfully sacred worship can transform our hearts.
Much more here.
Polyphony and Chant and Latin at Mass — at WYD????
No, not every Mass. But at those “in English”….
I don’t know about you, but it was at a busy time for me, and I’ve never paid much mind to World Youth Days, and any time I did happen to turn on EWTN it sounded like a pop concert or a county fair was going on. It can be depressing. And being depressed by Catholic liturgies makes being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh [me] a reason of that hope which is in [me] more difficult, you know?
But I had forgotten reading this last spring.
Fr David Friel, (whom many of you will know from Colloquium,) has a report over at Corpus Christi Watershed to gladden the heart.
It was revolutionary. I am speaking about the music used at the major English-speaking catechesis sessions…. During the days leading up to the main weekend events with the Holy Father, WYD pilgrims attend morning & afternoon catechesis sessions…. Not surprisingly, one of the largest groups of pilgrims at every WYD comes from the English-speaking world, so there is typically one very large English catechesis center.
Typically, these Masses feature pop concert-style praise & worship led by an on-stage band. This year, however, the preparations for these large-scale liturgies were entrusted to the Dominican Liturgical Centre in Kraków. Fr. Lukasz Misko, OP was invited to serve as Director of Music for the English-language liturgies, and he, in turn, invited fellow-blogger Christopher Mueller to serve as conductor for all of these liturgies (as he announced here). The result was an experience very different from the norm.
Notably, not a single hymn was sung during Mass. Praise & worship songs were used throughout the day at the arena, before and after Mass, but no garden variety metrical hymns or songs were sung during Mass, from the Sign of the Cross to the Final Blessing. This, in itself, is revolutionary.
During the entrance procession, offertory, communion, and recessional, a variety of musical forms were used. Most of the music at these points were responsorial texts written in four parts. A Gregorian alleluia and the Pater noster were chanted each day, and the first piece during communion each day was in Gregorian plainsong. The polyphonic pieces included: Jesu, Rex admirabilis (G.P. Palestrina), Anima Christi (Stefan Stuligrosz), Lift Me Up, O Jesus (Jacek Sykulski), In Te, Domine, speravi (Hans Leo Hassler), Per Crucem Tuam (Piotr Palka), Salve, Mater Misericordiae (arr. Mueller), Adoremus in aeternum (Gregorio Allegri), and Totus tuus (Msgr. Marco Frisina).
The Mass setting used each day was the Missa Orientalis by Jacek Sykulski. This was sung in four parts, and the text (interestingly for the English-language catechesis center) was in Latin.
On the final day of catechesis, Chris and his wife, Constanza, led a breakout session entitled: “How to Promote Polyphony and Chant at Your Parish.” For many of the pilgrims, this was their first experience of chant and polyphony. One hopes that some of them have been energized to learn more and to bring the music of the Church back to their parishes….
This sea change is not insignificant. It means that the project of advocating truly sacred music within the present liturgical movement is bearing practical fruit. Even three years ago, at WYD 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, no one would have expected what transpired at the Mercy Centre in Kraków.
That the Dominican Liturgical Centre was placed in charge of the English-language liturgies is an enormously important step. That Christopher Mueller was selected to serve as conductor is equally important. These surprising choices would not have been possible some years ago. What graced decisions they turned out to be!
Read the rest over there. Me, I’m going to go see what I can scare up on Youtube, etc.
Reason for our hope!
Hymn Tune Introits
As the new parish year is about to begin, I thought I would mention again my recent booklet published by WLP, Hymn Tune Introits: Singing the Sundays of the Liturgical Year.
Many pastors are aware of the benefits of “singing the Mass,” as opposed to simply singing at Mass. The Church opens the Scriptures to us in many ways at the liturgy, not only through the lectigh onary, but with particular generosity through the Propers of the Mass.
Over the last decade the Church in the United States has experienced an historically important publishing explosion in English-language versions of the Propers for use at Mass for the benefit of the People of God. While the Graduale remains the gold standard for singing the Propers, composers such as Paul Ford, Richard Rice, Adam Bartlett, and many others have worked out ways to bring the Proper texts closer to the people, making these wonderfully rich texts available for choir and/or congregational singing. Ben Yanke maintains an enormous database with links of these resources for singing the Propers.
The Hymn Tune Introits go one step further, making the Entrance Antiphon of the day accessible to every congregation in the English-speaking world.
Every congregation knows at least one Long Meter hymn tune. And every text in this entire book can be sung to that tune.
If a parish knows All People That on Earth Do Dwell, they can sing each of these texts to that tune. They work equally well with the tunes for Creator of the Stars of Night, or Jesus Shall Reign. Or On Jordan’s Bank, Lift Up Your Heads, O Sun of Justice, When I Survey–many others. A lack of musical resources is therefore no obstacle for any parish.
Experience shows that the introduction of Propers can be unsettling for congregations, for two reasons. First, it offers something new, which always causes some initial resistance. Secondly, and this is important, it takes away something the congregation is used to. Of course, the point is precisely the opposite: making the riches of the Mass available to the congregation–but it will not be perceived that way initially, and this is the pastoral problem that the Hymn Tune Introits are designed to solve. Congregations that are accustomed to singing a hymn to begin the Mass, and would be unsettled by any chanted Proper, may much more readily make that transition by singing something that sounds just like a familiar hymn.
Imagine it is Sunday morning, and time for Mass to begin. The organ begins to play, the Entrance Procession begins, and as the musical introduction reaches its conclusion, the people think, “Oh, I know that song!” They pick up their worship leaflets and find the Entrance Chant, and without any rehearsal or fumbling they sing it straight through. The ministers have reached the altar, the organist improvises as the altar is venerated, and the priest reaches his chair.
Alternatively, imagine that a parish that is poor, and between organists, is ready to begin Mass. Someone designated as cantor, or the priest, sings out the first line of the Hymn Tune Introit. Once again, everyone “knows this song,” and all join in.
A “contemporary ensemble” of guitar/piano would have equal success.
For too long, the People of God have been deprived of some of their rightful meditations: those provided for them in the Proper texts of the Mass. I’m happy to be involved in some small way in helping to spread this banquet of the Word of God for the nourishment of all.
Rev. Joseph T. Nolan (1921-2016)
[Randolph Nichols offers a recollection of the priest and liturgical writer.]
Given a choice, most of us would ask that death come after a fulness of years untouched by diminishment of mind and spirit. Few are granted that wish, but when it happens for others we rejoice. Upon learning this past Monday that my friend and mentor Fr. Joseph T. Nolan, age 95, had returned to God, feelings of thanksgiving triumphed over sadness. Having just read earlier in the day his latest reflection, entitled “Alive in God and for God” from his daily e-mail journal Thoughts for the Journey, I could only marvel how his life’s passion persisted to the very end.
You may have encountered Fr. Nolan’s English translations of Christus Vincit and Ubi Caritas in the St. Pius X Hymnal, texts later retained in Theodore Marier’s Hymns, Psalms and Spiritual Canticles. As a graduate student he had sung in Marier’s schola at St. Paul Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts before becoming a prominent early advocate of liturgical reform who implemented at various parishes in the mid-West, with his bishop’s consent, many changes that would become the most identifiable features of the post-Second Vatican Council rite.
Fr. Nolan had an interesting career before becoming a priest. Winner of the coveted Fulton prize in debate as a student at Boston College, he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation upon graduation in 1942 and was assigned as an agent in Arkansas. Later he was “invited,” to use his wording, by the FBI to serve as an officer in the navy during World War II. At war’s end he was reassigned to the New York bureau. It was in New York that he met Dorothy Day, an experience that would fuel a desire to become a priest and inform his growth as a theologian. (At the 50th anniversary of his ordination, when asked by a Boston College student why he left the FBI for the priesthood, he replied, “It was easier to get confessions.”) Before solidifying his decision to become a priest, however, he completed a graduate degree in history at Boston College.
 |
| Rev. Joseph T. Nolan, with his mother |
I had a long association with Fr. Nolan. After his seminary training at Conception Abbey in Missouri he became a priest in the diocese of Wichita and was assigned as pastor of three small parishes, one of which was in my home town. When I left for college study in the Northeast, years passed without any further contact until he phoned me one evening at my apartment in Winthrop, Massachusetts (which, by coincidence, was Fr. Nolan’s hometown), asking whether I could play carols for an upcoming Christmas Eve Mass. Being a professional classical pianist who had never touched the keys of a pipe organ, I was understandably hesitant. Fr. Nolan would not take no for an answer: “If you can play Beethoven sonatas you can play Christmas carols.” I didn’t know it then, but my life was about to change, radically. Besides providing the impetus to a career in church music, Fr. Nolan would later hire me as a staff writer for Good News, his homiletic service read by priests throughout the English-speaking world, and would be instrumental in my completing the Master of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School. He would later joke, “You shouldn’t have answered the phone!”
Fr. Nolan remained a diocesan parish priest for only 14 years. Given permission to do graduate work in theology at Harvard, he blossomed as a writer, poet, teacher of theology (Boston College) and popular seminar director on liturgy and preaching. He had a special gift: blessed with a mind capable of grasping complex theological concepts, he could express those ideas in direct, eloquent speech understood by all. Another unusual trait, especially for an academic, was his effusive, passionate conviction of the presence of God. When dining with him you knew the conversation could very likely become one-sided. It wasn’t egotism or self-centeredness, but simply a mind and heart on fire. He was irrepressible because he saw God in everything and everyone. His theology, if I dare compress it into one sentence, stressed the fullness of Eternal Life and the Reign of God as alive and active in the present. In other words, be it only a foretaste, we need not wait until death to experience Resurrected life. It is understandable why in so many of Nolan’s writings he credits art and music, capable as they are of transcending the confines of space and time, as confirmation of this fuller living reality. It is also no surprise that two dedicatees of his autobiography, A Life in Liturgy: Rediscovering the Mass, were Theodore Marier and the Rev. Joseph Collins, the pastor of St. Paul Church during the formative years of its famous choir school.
Make no mistake, Fr. Nolan was a true progressive. To him, the old rite didn’t express the theological fulness of Resurrection faith. When at the end of Mass he said, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” he meant all the social engagement and responsibility those words imply. But he was also acutely aware that the post-Vatican II rite fell short, particularly in music, language (oh, how he could groan over hymn texts) and preaching. Being more sympathetic to the old rite, I would suggest to him that his expectations fell short because most priests simply don’t have his skills to bring off the reformed rite as he envisioned it. Undeterred, he would remind me of the old horrors: the auctioneer’s speed often adopted at Mass, the emphasis on guilt at the neglect of God’s love and mercy, not to mention the disregard of Scripture and the presence of Christ in others as components of Real
Presence. Such back and forth exchanges instilled in me an important lesson that one’s love of tradition must never preclude an openness to criticism, self-examination, and growth.
I will greatly miss Fr. Nolan’s intellectual prodding and irrepressible Christian witness. He kept me honest and there is no adequate way to measure the value of such a friend.
[Randolph Nichols is an organist, pianist, and choir director, and sang in the men’s schola at St. Paul Church in Cambridge.]