Catholic musicians gathered to blog about liturgy and life
Apparently a pop singer wore this gown for a television appearance this past week.
The designer is one Michael Cinco, a Filipino, and the images he used are drawn from and inspired by the windows of Paris’s Sainte Chapelle:
The ad orientem kerfuffle, in the wake of Cardinal Sarah’s address, has if nothing else, shown how passionately people on all sides of the matter care about Liturgy.
And this is only right, (as the Eucharistic Liturgy, the fons et culmen of our Faith will, after all, save the world.)
At First Things, Leroy Huizenga, Chair of Human and Divine Sciences at the University of Mary in Bismarck, wants to
remind readers that the issue of ad orientem posture isn’t merely a minor matter of moment for fastidious liturgical nerds, as if the Mass were a mere matter of aesthetics [for] liturgy breaks the bounds of the sanctuary and affects all that we do and indeed the wider culture as it brings God’s people to God. The cultivation of culture—first, among Catholics themselves, and then outwards from there—depends on a proper cultus, a liturgy in which God is sought and found.
He has a good summation of the current state of affairs and links to some of the most worthwhile commentary to be found on Those Interwebs.
One must rise before the sun to give you thanks, and must pray to you at the dawning of the light.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
Then he led me to the gate facing east, and there was the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east! His voice was like the roar of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory. The vision I saw was like the vision I had seen when he came to destroy the city and like the vision I had seen by the river Chebar—I fell on my face. The glory of the LORD entered the temple by way of the gate facing east. Then the spirit lifted me up and brought me to the inner court. And there the glory of the LORD filled the temple! I heard someone speaking to me from the temple, but the man was standing beside me. The voice said to me: Son of man, do you see the place for my throne, and the place for the soles of my feet? Here I will dwell among the Israelites forever.
Our readers will be interested to know that Registration for the Southeastern Sacred Music Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee is ongoing through this Sunday night, July 17.
The conference is a project of the Southeastern chapter of the Church Music Association of America, and features CMAA leaders among its faculty, including Dr. Jennifer Donelson, Andrew Leung, and Bruce Ludwick.
The conference is hosted at the magnificent Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul on July 22-23 (Friday and Saturday), and includes instruction in the following areas:
Full details, registration, and contact info may be obtained at the Southeastern Sacred Music Conference website.
Amidst all the discussion of Ad orientem, many may not have caught a small but important musical note last week. In his Sacra Liturgia address of July 5, Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect, Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, his Eminence spoke at length of the need to reexamine conciliar and papal teachings. Returning our focus to God, and our profound need to worship him, there was a beautiful reflection on Sacred music:
…we must sing the liturgy, we must sing the liturgical texts, respecting the liturgical traditions of the Church and rejoicing in the treasury of sacred music that is ours, most especially that music proper to the Roman rite, Gregorian chant. We must sing sacred liturgical music not merely religious music, or worse, profane songs.
