I feel for priests these days who arrive at a parish that has an established music ministry complete with guitars, speakers and a 'choir' that knows no beautiful old hymns or chant. How do they dismiss them? The solution lies surely in a prescribed music liturgy. We have writhed for long enough in the pews!
--Previous Message--
:
: Well, some of us, anyway. The Eric Sammons
: May 22nd article 9 Things We’ve Lost in the
: Liturgy (Besides Latin) , reads Recently
: I’ve been reading The Hobbit to two of my
: young children. Central to the story is lost
: treasure: Thorin and his fellow dwarves ask
: for Bilbo Baggins’ help in reclaiming their
: trove, which has been captured by the dragon
: Smaug and hidden deep within the Lonely
: Mountain. As I read the book, I can’t help
: but think of our own day’s lost treasure:
: the liturgical patrimony of the Catholic
: Church.
:
: After the Second Vatican Council
: (1962-1965), massive changes were made to
: the liturgy which involved the abandonment
: of many traditional practices. None were
: more noticeable to the average Catholic (and
: even non-Catholic) than the abandonment of
: Latin in favor of the vernacular. Yet there
: have been many other changes, and although
: they are not as noticeable to the casual
: observer as the loss of Latin, they are each
: sadly significant nonetheless.
:
: Now, one might imagine that someone
: lamenting these losses is simply a nostalgic
: child of the 50’s, pining for the Church of
: his youth. However, I was born after Vatican
: II ended, and didn’t even become Catholic
: until the 1990’s. I never even attended the
: “old Mass” until about 10 years ago.
: Further, I came into the Church by way of
: the charismatic renewal, which isn’t exactly
: known for old-school liturgies. And if I’m
: being completely honest, I generally prefer
: a liturgy in English. Yet over the years the
: treasure we’ve lost has become more evident,
: and more painful, to me.
:
: 9 Liturgical Losses
: Here are some of those lost aspects of the
: Roman liturgy from the past 50 years, in no
: particular order:
:
: 1) Ad Orientem
: We no longer celebrate the Mass with the
: priest leading us to the Father. Instead, we
: gaze at each other while proclaiming How
: Great We Art. I can’t imagine a more
: dramatic symbolic divergence than turning
: the priest away from God and towards the
: people he’s supposed to be leading. It’s
: like Moses trying to lead the Chosen People
: to the Promised Land without ever actually
: looking toward Zion.
:
: 2) Altar Rails
: The altar rail was a staple of Catholic
: churches for generations. Then it was tossed
: aside like a Hollywood actor discovered to
: be a conservative. This loss has led to
: secondary losses: the practice of receiving
: communion while kneeling, and the distinct
: separation between the sanctuary and the
: nave. (In fact, most people don’t know what
: a nave is, and call the whole church a
: sanctuary).
:
: 3) Communion on the Tongue
: Although Communion on the tongue is still
: allowed, the vast majority of people receive
: communion in the hand now. I once attended a
: First Communion retreat for one of my
: daughters in which the presenter told the
: children that First Communion meant they had
: grown up, and only babies are fed in the
: mouth. Afterwards, I told my daughter that
: in the eyes of God, we are small children,
: and receiving on the tongue signifies our
: complete dependence on the Lord, like little
: birds receiving food from their mother.
:
: 4) Bowing of the Head at the Name of the
: Three Divine Persons, or Jesus, or Mary
: The first time I ever attended a Latin Mass
: it was an elaborate High Mass with dozens of
: seminarians and priests serving. At every
: mention of the name of Jesus or Mary or the
: Three Divine Persons, every single one of
: them bowed their head in unison. I was
: struck by this gesture of respect, and
: thought to myself, “Now these people have
: respect for the Faith.”
:
: 5) Sacred Music
: To compare today’s Haugen-Haas mess with the
: beautiful musical patrimony of the Church is
: to compare a package of Starbursts with a
: seven-course meal at a five-star restaurant.
: Today’s music is sickly-sweet and leaves you
: empty, while music that stirs the soul and
: lifts the heart heavenward has been
: forgotten.
:
: 6) Sacred Architecture
: For centuries, communities would band
: together to build, at great expense and
: sacrifice, churches worthy of the Almighty
: God. But if you tour the well-off suburbs of
: America, you see Pizza Hut parishes and what
: appear to be abandoned airplane hangers
: posing as Catholic churches. The feast for
: the eyes that are older Catholic churches
: has been replaced with the battle of the
: bland and blander. No longer do you walk
: into a Catholic church and immediately know
: you’re in a sacred place where the Lord is
: worshipped. If you didn’t know beforehand,
: you might think its where you go to get your
: driver’s license renewed.
:
: 7) Use of the Paten When Receiving Communion
: Once communion in the hand became
: commonplace, the simple paten, which the
: altar boy placed under your chin lest any of
: the precious Host fall onto the ground, was
: retired. Yet the paten represented
: something: that we really, truly believed
: that what we were receiving wasn’t a piece
: of bread that could be trampled upon, but
: instead was the Body, Blood, Soul, and
: Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
:
: 8) Altar Boys
: In our culture’s quest to become genderless,
: the Church has felt the need to placate that
: culture as much as possible. Thus
: gender-specific roles, if they were not
: divinely ordained like the priesthood, were
: abolished. The training ground for future
: priests became something we wanted little
: Sarah to do, because “she’d be just as good
: at it as Johnny.” Of course, it was never
: about ability, but instead reflected the
: imaging of the God-man Jesus Christ and the
: essential differences in roles between men
: and women.
:
: 9) Genuflecting at the Final Blessing and
: During the Creed
: Protestants like to joke that there is a lot
: of standing and kneeling at a Catholic Mass.
: And compared to a typical Protestant
: service, they are correct. Yet even that had
: to be streamlined in our efforts to
: “simplify” the liturgy. So ancient practices
: of genuflecting for blessings, or while
: proclaiming the Incarnation during the
: Creed, have been shunted aside. Gone is
: another gesture of reverence to remind us of
: the great mysteries we are celebrating.
:
: Exponential Losses
: Each loss, by itself, might seem a minor
: thing. None of these lost aspects, of
: course, impact the validity of a Mass. The
: Eucharist is still the Eucharist in today’s
: Mass. But each loss – especially when
: combined with all the other ones –
: substantially impact our reverence when
: celebrating the sacred mysteries. They
: impact our subjective reception and
: participation in the graces we receive at
: the Mass.
:
: Also, note that none of these things are
: related to Latin in the Mass. After all,
: almost every one of these aspects of the
: Liturgy we’ve lost are retained in the
: Eastern liturgy, which is usually celebrated
: in the vernacular, and never in Latin.
:
: The reasons that were given for the
: discarding of traditional liturgical
: practices was that it would allow people to
: participate more fully, and would make the
: Mass more palatable to the “common man.” The
: evidence, however, points in the opposite
: direction. “Simplifying” the liturgy has
: made it less special, which has made it less
: attractive to attend. On a Sunday morning,
: when someone has a choice between relaxing
: at home or attending an insipid imitation of
: a bad high school musical, what will the
: common person choose? However, if the option
: were a reverent partaking of heavenly
: mysteries that transports one beyond space
: and time, it might be a far more compelling
: choice than checking out the Sunday news
: shows.
:
: I tend to look at most things in the Church
: through an evangelization lens since I’ve
: been involved in Catholic evangelization for
: decades. I’ve written before that the
: purpose of the Mass is not evangelization
: but the glorification of God. Yet there are
: evangelization consequences to poor
: liturgies (and I mean poor in two senses of
: the word: badly executed and with a poverty
: of reverence). It sends a signal that we
: don’t take this God stuff too seriously, and
: you shouldn’t either. Is this the message we
: want to send to the world?
:
: Catholics should mourn for what has been
: lost in the liturgy in the past generation.
: These losses have contributed to the Church
: losing much of her soul, and in the process,
: losing many of her members as well. Let us
: pray for Bilbos to arise and work tirelessly
: to restore the lost treasure that has been
: buried out of sight for so long. To do so
: might involve fighting dragons, but the
: treasure we are working to unearth is worth
: it.
:
:
:
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