"And he, from that time onwards, looked about for an opportunity to betray him"

Today, the Church celebrates Spy Wednesday, so named because this is traditionally the day when Judas betrayed Jesus to the chief priests and began plotting to hand him over to them.  This event is recorded in all of the Synoptic Gospels (St. John only mentions that Satan had entered Judas by Chapter 13).

Spy Wednesday also brings one of my favorite liturgical happenings of the year: the Tenebrae service.  Technically speaking, Tenebrae is celebrated on each day of the Triduum (traditionally very early in the morning, as it encompasses both Matins and Lauds), but most parishes only do it on Wednesday night.  The format of the Tenebrae service is very loose these days, but traditionally, there are set readings for each nocturn of the Matins service.  The first lesson from the first nocturn is the beginning of Lamentations, which I think is among the most beautiful text in all of Holy Scripture:

Alone she dwells, the city erewhile so populous; a widow now, once a queen among the nations; tributary now, that once had provinces at her command. 

Be sure she weeps; there in the darkness her cheeks are wet with tears; of all that courted her, none left to console her, all those lovers grown weary of her, and turned into enemies. 

Cruel the suffering and the bondage of Juda’s exile; that she must needs dwell among the heathen! Nor respite can she find; close at her heels the pursuit, and peril on either hand. 

Desolate, the streets of Sion; no flocking, now, to the assembly; the gateways lie deserted. Sighs priest, and the maidens go in mourning, so bitter the grief that hangs over all.

Exultant, now, her invaders; with her enemies nothing goes amiss. For her many sins, the Lord has brought doom on her, and all her children have gone into exile, driven before the oppressor. 

Fled is her beauty, the Sion that was once so fair; her chieftains have yielded their ground before the pursuer, strengthless as rams that can find no pasture.

The utter desolation present in these words is almost overpowering.  Given that we are about to embark upon the most sorrowful time of the Church year, it is a good time to reflect on these words.

This beautiful text has inspired some breathtaking musical compositions.  For the past two years, we have done the setting by Tallis at the parish where I sing:

Seriously, one of the richest and most profound pieces of music I have ever heard.  I also came across another setting by Victoria on YouTube that also sounds lovely.

And off we go into the Triduum.  In just three days from now, we will be celebrating the Paschal Vigil...hard to believe, isn't it?

Inauguration Irony

The booklet for the upcoming papal inauguration is now available -- as our friends over at the Chant Cafe point out, the irony here is that even though liturgically-minded folks have been stirring up a ruckus since Pope Francis was elected, the upcoming inauguration Mass contains about as much chant as a Mass possibly could.  There isn't really anything in here that I find objectionable.  This probably is due in large part to the presence of Msgr. Marini as Master of Ceremonies and the tremendous work done by Pope Benedict in building a sound liturgical mindset in the Church.

Vatican II: Sacrosanctum Concilium IV

It's high time I finished up with Sacrosanctum Concilium so I can move on to another one of the apostolic constitutions from Vatican II.  Sacrosanctum Concilium has a lot more to say about the rites of the other sacraments, the Divine Office, etc. -- I wish I could devote posts to all of these issues, but like I said, I need to move on.  So, this will be my last post on Sacrosanctum Concilium, and it will focus on the issue nearest and dearest to my heart: sacred music.

Before I dive into that, though, a brief word on the Church calendar (another issue of great interest and concern for me).  Chapter V of Sacrosanctum Concilium sets forth the Council Fathers' thoughts on revision of the calendar.  Much of what they say is uncontroversial (priority of Sundays over the feasts of saints, renewed focus in Lent on penitential practices and baptismal features, etc.).  Only Paragraph 107 deals primarily with revision of the calendar.  It reads, in relevant part:

The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons shall be preserved or restored to suit the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained, so that they duly nourish the piety of the faithful who celebrate the mysteries of Christian redemption, and above all the paschal mystery.

All that talk of preservation and retention sounds great.  I don't see anything in here about wholesale changes to saints' feast days or the elimination of the pre-Lent season of Septuagesimatide, the Octave of Pentecost, or Ember Days.  Yet another example of the liturgical "experts" running amok after the Council.

My sacred music post is getting shorter and shorter as the time gets later and later.  Nothing the Council Fathers state in the chapter on sacred music is particularly jarring or a break with the past -- sacred music should foster unity and solemnity during the liturgy (par. 112) and should be preserved and fostered with choirs and other schools (par. 114 and 115).

Then come the most ignored words in the entire document: "The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services."  I really would like to get posters made of this sentence and mail them out to every music director at every Catholic church.  I would venture that upwards of ninety percent of parishes in this country hear chant maybe once a year (if you count O Come, O Come Emmanuel as chant).  A much higher percentage does not even know that there are other things out there than the "four-hymn sandwich" (consisting of entrance, offertory, communion, and dismissal).  Why have we completely eschewed the Propers of the Mass, which, being Scripture, are vastly better suited to the Holy Mass than even the best hymns?  Why do most parishes ignore the vast treasury of music from the 2,000 year history of the Church (the past 700-800 years of which yielded a great number of works that still survive)?

Additionally, the tripe peddled by David Haas, Marty Haugen, Michael Joncas, etc. is emphatically not what is supposed to be used during Holy Mass.  Sure, some of the songs may be catchy, but that is not the standard by which liturgical music is to be judged.  Sacred music is to edify the mind and heart and add solemnity and reverence, not banality, to the sacred rites.  I don't deny that some of these songs are uplifting and prayerful (once upon a time, I even enjoyed one or two of them), but listen to them during your own prayer time if this is the case.

Sacrosanctum Concilium also states that the pipe organ is "to be held in high esteem," while making provision for the use of other instruments.  These other instruments are permissible "only on condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable, for sacred use, accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful."  Guitar?  Negative.  Percussion?  Negative.  Piano?  Negative.  None of these instruments are dignified or suitable for sacred use, though they are all capable of producing beautiful music.

Fortunately, as the Church and her members become more authentically Catholic, I think that the state of sacred music in this country is on the road to recovery, thanks in large part to great groups like the Church Music Association of America and many fine bishops and priests.

As a postscript to this set of posts, I discovered that the Council Fathers took up the question of whether it would be acceptable to fix the date of Easter on a certain Sunday of the year, thereby making the Sunday cycle unchanging from year to year.  Their final opinion was that they "would not object" to making such a change.  I am relatively indifferent on this topic, but in the end, I am glad that this did not come to fruition -- I believe it is more meaningful to have the date of Easter calculated the same way that it has been for almost 1,700 years.

I will start on either Lumen Gentium or Gaudium et Spes next.

"New" beginnings

I started this blog way back in April 2008 primarily to express my excitement over Pope Benedict's visit to the United States.  As my free time and enthusiasm faded, so did the frequency of my posts -- to the point where I only posted once every couple of years.  Given that this is a resurrection (of sorts) of this blog, I thought it might be nice to engage in some reflection on the origin of the title I chose way back in the day.  So, for the first day of my Lenten blogging project that isn't Ash Wednesday or Valentine's Day, I give you a reflection on the title of this blog.

Ecce nova facio omnia is an excerpt from Revelation 21:5 in the Vulgate.  The full verse is: Et dixit qui sedebat in throno: Ecce nova facio omnia. ("And the one who sat on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new.")

For a larger context, here is Revelation 21:1-7 (in the translation done by Msgr. Ronald Knox, which I highly recommend):

Then I saw a new heaven, and a new earth. The old heaven, the old earth had vanished, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw in my vision that holy city which is the new Jerusalem, being sent down by God from heaven, all clothed in readiness, like a bride who has adorned herself to meet her husband. I heard, too, a voice which cried aloud from the throne, Here is God’s tabernacle pitched among men; he will dwell with them, and they will be his own people, and he will be among them, their own God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, or mourning, or cries of distress, no more sorrow; those old things have passed away. And he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. (These words I was bidden write down, words most sure and true.)  And he said to me, It is over. I am Alpha, I am Omega, the beginning of all things and their end; those who are thirsty shall drink—it is my free gift—out of the spring whose water is life. Who wins the victory? He shall have his share in this; I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Personally, I don't think there is a more beautiful scene in all of Holy Scripture than this one.  Though I had been familiar with this passage for some time prior, it was made especially poignant for me by two experiences I had during college.  The first was when I saw The Passion of the Christ -- in the scene where Jesus is on the way to Golgotha, He falls in front of his Blessed Mother.  While He is on the ground, crushed beneath the weight of the Holy Cross, He looks up at her and says: "See, mother, I make all things new."  Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of this scene that hasn't been removed from YouTube due to copyright restrictions.

I would not normally expect myself to be a fan of this kind of creative license taken with the Passion narrative, but this was an intensely powerful scene for me.  This line can be interpreted on a number of levels, but the most emotional for me was the comfort Our Lord gave to His Blessed Mother in her sorrow.  It was by His actions right there, more than at any other time, that He truly did make all things new by sanctifying the world with his blessed Passion and precious death and opening the way for us to attain that "new heaven" seen by St. John.

The second poignant experience I had with this passage from Revelation was when I first sang Bainton's And I saw a new heaven:

(If you make it all the way to the end, you'll notice that the lyrics end right before verse 5 and therefore do not include "Behold, I make all things new."  I still think it is a fantastic piece of music.)

It may be a bit selfish, but one of the main reasons I love this piece of music is that the tenor line contains the most beautiful line in the piece (starting around 2:45) -- "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

This is not necessarily a blog about renewal per se, but the kind of renewal brought about by Our Lord's suffering, death, and ultimate triumph over the grave is of utmost importance to the Christian life.  In writing on issues relevant to the Church in the modern world, I hope to highlight areas where Our Lord continues to make all things new.

Music in the Church

I'm sure you can deduce on which side of the aisle I fall, but I was surprised to read this fairly balanced Washington Post article:

Catholics don't argue about abortion or the death penalty nearly as much as they argue about what music is sung (or not sung, or used to be sung) at their local Sunday Mass. It was ever thus -- at least since the 1960s, when Sister first shortened her habit, strummed a G7 chord and, to hear some Catholics tell it, all heck broke loose.

Among his more fastidious devotees, Pope Benedict XVI is valued most for the fact that he is not Casey Kasem, and Mass is no place for a hit parade, and church is most relevant when it is serious. (The point of this trip is just that: G et serious.) Do not hold your breath waiting for "One Bread, One Body" -- a '70s liturgical hit at most American parishes -- to be performed at His Holiness's mega-Mass tomorrow at Nationals Park.

But don't listen for too many sacred hits of the 10th century either. While Benedict understands the deep power of ritual, and loves little more than a Gregorian chant, what he and 46,000 others will be singing (or not singing) tomorrow will be a sort of compromise, neither modern nor traditional, but a little of everything. As soon as tomorrow's Mass playlist hit the Web, the new traditionalists were fuming on blogs and comment threads. (The pre-show includes African hymns, a "celebratory merengue" and some Mozart; the Mass itself includes a gospel-style Kyrie, some traditional Latin chants and several new interpretations of standard hymns.)

Like devout record store clerks, American Catholics are still having a sort of Stones-vs.-Beatles debate about what the classics really are.

Imagine a bizarro world where all the 25-year-olds want Mozart and all the 60-year-olds want adult-contemporary. The kids think the adults are too wild. The backlash against "Kumbaya Catholicism" has anyone under 40 allegedly clamoring for the Tridentine Mass in Latin, while the old folks are most sentimental about Casual Sunday (even more rockin', the Saturday vigil Mass), and still cling to what's evolved from the lite-rock guitar liturgies of the 1970s. The result, for most parishes, has been decades of Masses in which no one is entirely satisfied, and very few enjoy the music enough to sing along.

"The great majority [of Catholics] are totally inert at Mass," says Thomas Day, 65, a humanities and music professor at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. Day wrote a book called "Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste," which is often cited by those who'd like to see a return to Mass music that is to them more sacred. "Most Catholics have either forgotten or never knew traditional music," Day says.

The great enemy in the Benedict era? Why, somehow, it's Sister and her guitar.

Although everyone says rock Mass is long dead, there are parishioners still complaining about it. There are faded, nearly gone memories of singing nuns and hippie laity and teenage guitarmies at the altar of love; or faded stories of pop phenomena like Sister Janet Mead, the now 70-year-old Australian nun who discofied "The Lord's Prayer" and charted gold on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1974 (and who then released an album of an entire rock Mass).

It's been a long time since anyone at church was singing the hosanna from "Jesus Christ Superstar" or Cat Stevens's "Morning Has Broken" at the offertory. Even the vast catalogue of the St. Louis Jesuits -- the stalwart, lite-rock ballads heard in almost any Mass for the past few decades ("One Bread, One Body"; "Be Not Afraid"; "For You Are My God") -- has come under assault.

It's "Day by Day" -- out, and Agnus Dei -- in. Younger priests now go to weekend-long workshops to brush up on their Gregorian chants, or to learn the lost seminary art of singing the entire Mass in Latin, English or both.

"You know, just today I received a publication from a mainline Catholic music organization, and there are aspects of it that seem like the musical version of the AARP quarterly, if you know what I mean," says Jeffrey Tucker, 44, a choir director who lives in Auburn, Ala., and is the managing editor of Sacred Music, a journal of the Church Music Association of America. "There is no question that we are talking about a generational issue here. The young priests and the young people just can't seem to get 'hep' to the whole 1970s thing, and the old people just don't understand why."

Tucker encounters this all the time, and blogs about it frequently. At a recent conference, a jazz pianist confided to Tucker that he'd been playing at church, but there was a new, young pastor who had taken over and "he said, 'You know what that means.' [And] I said, 'Well, I'm not entirely sure.' So he added, surprised that he would have to clarify, 'That means he wants Gregorian chant!' " In one of his many blog posts at New Liturgical Movement, Tucker characterized most Catholic church parishes as ruled by a "hard-core" group that "is fanatically attached to music of the 1970s and fears even the slightest hint of solemnity, warning darkly that the new priest is going to take the parish into a new Dark Age."

In news stories with a "conservative Catholics" angle, the church's most faithful frequently mention the nightmare of Mass as it was in the decades after the Second Vatican Council. Loaded words like "hippie" and "total mess" and "Brady Bunch" get thrown around. There are stories of suburban churches built in mod, saucer-shaped architecture. ("Lots of guitars and banjoes," a 32-year-old Catholic man moaned to The Post's Metro section the other day, recalling the church scene of his youth. "I felt uncomfortable about it constantly.")

So really it's a retro movement, but instead of "I Love the '80s" (or '70s or '60s), it's "I Love the 1000s [Up Until 1963]," with Benedict encouraging Catholics toward rediscovering the beauty of the old way. He is on record as thinking of rock music as "anti-Christian," and once fretted (according to his memoirs) over Bob Dylan's appearance with Pope John Paul II in 1997. Benedict canceled a Vatican Christmas concert in 2006, fearing it far too pop in nature. He also shuns guitars in church. (Sister has been in big trouble lately. The pope doesn't like her music, isn't so wild about some of her politics, and when it comes to her role in priestly matters, don't even go there.)

Tucker says the music debates going on in parishes nationwide present a more serious issue for American Catholics, "having to do with what is appropriate at liturgy, what is timeless, what is sacred -- but the [young vs. old] demographic element is very difficult to deny."

In defense of guitar Mass, was it really so bad? It was the soundtrack of a lot of social justice efforts. The St. Louis Jesuits stuff conjures up, for many, memories of food banks and felt banners, of youth group carwashes and, more nobly, martyred nuns and priests in Central America. Maybe that was the problem for some churchgoers? The groovier music really was of its time, and came with an agenda?

"What about silence?" wonders Day, the music professor, 18 years after he wrote "Why Catholics Can't Sing."

If he has any prescriptive at all for Mass music, he says, "it would be to cool it. Pick plain, simple music. Plain, square hymns with reasonable accompaniment. And listen to silence occasionally."