The Importance of the Liturgy in Defending Life

A little girl has been deemed unsuitable for a kidney transplant because she is “mentally retarded” and suffers “brain damage”.

This heartbreaking story is just unbelievable…and yet, believable because of the utter disregard for human life that runs rampant in our society today. Please read the entire article about Amelia.

Here’s an excerpt:

The doctor begins to talk and I listen intently on what he is saying. He has a Peruvian accent and is small, with brown hair, a mustache and is about sixty five years old. He gets about four sentences out (I think it is an introduction) and places two sheets of paper on the table. I can’t take my eyes off the paper. I am afraid to look over at Joe because I suddenly know where the conversation is headed. In the middle of both papers, he highlighted in pink two phrases. Paper number one has the words, “Mentally Retarded” in cotton candy pink right under Hepatitis C. Paper number two has the phrase, “Brain Damage” in the same pink right under HIV. I remind myself to focus and look back at the doctor. I am still smiling.

He says about three more sentences when something sparks in my brain. First it is hazy, foggy, like I am swimming under water. I actually shake my head a little to clear it. And then my brain focuses on what he just said.

I put my hand up. “Stop talking for a minute. Did you just say that Amelia shouldn’t have the transplant done because she is mentally retarded. I am confused. Did you really just say that?”

The tears. Oh, the damn tears. Where did they come from? Niagara Falls. All at once. There was no warning. I couldn’t stop them. There were no tissues in conference room so I use my sleeve and my hands and I keep wiping telling myself to stop it.

I point to the paper and he lets me rant a minute. I can’t stop pointing to the paper. “This phrase. This word. This is why she can’t have the transplant done.”

“Yes.”

…

I am convinced – utterly, to the core of my being – that a major reason for society’s descent into this kind of depravity, this willingness to look at a little child and say she doesn’t deserve to live, is the watering-down of our Catholic faith.

It begins and ends, I think, with the watering-down of the Sacred Liturgy, our Holy Mass, where we worship God and receive the Real Body and Blood of Jesus into our own bodies, uniting ourselves to Christ and becoming more like Him as a result. When we don’t understand this properly, we don’t receive Holy Communion worthily, and we fail to receive the grace intended in the Most Holy Sacrament.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of our life as Catholic Christians,

“[f]or the most holy Eucharist contains the Church’s entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our Passover and living bread. Through his own flesh, now made living and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, he offers life to men”. (Presbyterorum Ordinis, §5)

The Mass, of course, is the “point of contact” that good Catholics must have with their Church. We attend Mass and are supposed to be changed by our contact with the Real Presence of Jesus. Dr. Denis Crouan, in his book The Liturgy after Vatican II (Ignatius Press), suggests that the liturgy can and should have a profound effect on how we live our lives as Christians:

   Rather than explaining the liturgical rites at the very moment they are being performed, people need to learn to live them, so as to understand them in slow stages from within the celebration, in other words, with the eyes of faith and in relation to that which comprises the very heart of every liturgical celebration: the presence of the Lord on the altar.

   This is the way that liturgical rites can also become means of promoting sound social behavior and attitudes that are in keeping with the demands of the Christian life.

   All of this is a good demonstration of the scope that the liturgy is capable of achieving: when all is said and done, if true rites that are correctly performed are effective means of inducing sound behavior, error-filled rites that are arbitrarily constructed always run the risk of becoming vehicles for false, ambiguous behavior…(p. 21; my emphasis)

Sadly, we now have a large percentage of Catholics saying they don’t believe in the Real Presence (according to a 2008 study by CARA). Once we lose faith in the Real Presence of the Lord on the altar, how can we be changed by that Presence? How can we be changed if we are not truly coming into Holy Communion with God?

If we don’t believe in the Real Presence of Jesus, if we don’t treat the Eucharist – the very Body and Blood of the one who is the Resurrection and the Life – with reverence and devotion, could this not result in a failure to understand the sanctity of human life?  And if we are free to re-write liturgical rules for the Mass, why should we not be free to form our consciences according to moral relativism? We end up with groups like “Call to Action” and “Catholics for Choice” – and election-centered groups like “Catholics for Obama” and “Knights for Obama” – people who call themselves Catholic …even when their beliefs do not conform to Church teaching in non-negotiable areas. We end up with Catholic politicians who side-step clear Church teaching by maintaining that they can’t impose their religious views on the general public.

And we end up denying a life-saving organ transplant to a little girl named Amelia.

Yes, the Eucharist is the source and summit of our Catholic Christian life.  Undeniably, though, liturgical abuses have diminished our collective understanding of the truth of this statement.  In point of fact, any abuse detracts from the sacredness of the liturgy and begins to undermine the very sense of the sacred in the minds of the faithful.

The sacred liturgy, “when celebrated well and focused on God, is where the building of the culture of life begins for within the liturgy one experiences and encounters the perfection of the culture of life from the giver of life Himself, God our Creator”, wrote Deborah Morlani in a 2008 post on the NLM blog. This applies to both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Mass. However, it is my belief that the liberalization of the latter is an important aid in combating the cancer of erroneous thinking we’ve seen given voice by self-identified “Catholics” who do not follow the non-negotiable teachings of the Church.

There are aspects of the extraordinary form of the Mass which are lacking in the ordinary form, and which contribute to reverence for the Eucharist: the EF Mass truly highlights the Blessed Sacrament as something more than a symbolic representation of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ through the actions of the priest; it brings to our attention the hierarchy of the Church; and it creates an atmosphere of being set apart from the world by virtue of its ancient character, the use of Gregorian chant, and the use of a “special” language.

Perhaps the extraordinary form of the Mass will begin to revitalize and purify the Novus Ordo. However it happens, we must return to a greater sense of awe and reverence in the Mass. We must return to a strong belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Only then will we, as Catholics, reverse our descent down the slippery slope of moral relativism and once again become a strong moral voice in today’s culture.

And that’s how we will save little girls like Amelia from being abandoned by doctors who doubt her “quality of life” – and her very worth as a human being.

Save the liturgy, save the world.

(The main points of this post are taken from "Abortion, Contraception, and the Liturgy", by Dr. Jay Boyd, which appeared in the October 2009 issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review.)

The Introit

Jeffrey Tucker at The Chant Cafe posted an excellent article on January 12 entitle “The Entrance to the Mass”. It is, in part, a review of a new book on liturgical music (by Jason McFarland,  Announcing the Feast (Liturgical Press, 2011), but it’s an excellent “tutorial” of sorts, in and of itself.  Read the whole article for the full effect – it’s a very compelling case for the importance of the introit.

Mr. Tucker writes:

Every Mass has an appointed entrance chant - and these chants have been largely stable since the end of the first millennium.

…The entrance chant is not there merely to foreshadow the readings of the day; it is there to build a theological and aesthetic foundation for the entire liturgical experience of the particular Mass that is being celebrated.

Instead, though, many parishes select an opening song that merely seeks to put everyone in a good mood – sort of like an ice-breaker at a social gathering.

…A poorly chosen “gathering song” only says to the congregation: hey, don’t worry about it. Nothing here is really different. This is pretty much the same kind of thing that has happened to you all week. This is more of the same: just another meeting, just another thing to do, just another place to be…

If we want Mass to be more like…well…Mass…we will almost certainly do better by using the “appointed chant”– the introit – to properly introduce the liturgy:

It seems that there is wisdom in the Church’s idea to the introit. From the very outset, we hear the words of Christ in the Psalms proclaimed to us. From the Sunday forthcoming: “Let all the earth worship you and praise you, O God. May it sing in praise of your name, Oh Most High.” Then the Psalm verses follow. “Cry out with joy to God, all the earth; O sing to the glory of his name. O render him glorious praise. Say to God, ‘How awesome your deeds!’ “Because of the greatness of your strength, your enemies fawn upon you. Before you all the earth shall bow down, shall sing to you, sing to your name!”

Now imagine this text set to chant so that the text is very clear, proclaimed with confidence. No mixed messages, no yadayada about the community, no dance beats, no forced rhythms. Now, that’s an entrance. Does it produce some degree of discomfort? Probably it does. Thinking about God and eternity tends to do that. But it works as a kind of stimulus to the spiritual mind and to the soul. It gets us on the right track. It prepares us to understand and be changed by what follows. Why would we ever decline to open Mass with this goal in mind?

Jeffrey Tucker’s article has much more to say on this subject, and is well worth reading – please do!

Re-post: Liturgy "By the Book"

This is a "re-run" of a previous post (10/18/11).

Many people in many parishes seem to be under the impression that what goes on at Mass is determined by the Liturgy Committee. Not so!


Here are a few important points about the liturgy:

1. The Catholic Church is not a democracy. There are instructions, mandates, and guidelines that we either must or should follow with regard to the liturgy.

2. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) tells us how to “do” the Mass. It is an instruction, not a suggestion!

3. There are specific guidelines for the music in the Liturgy. We should not look at it as what “we” want for “our parish”, but rather, what the Church has in mind for liturgical music. This applies also to the furnishings and decoration of the church and sanctuary; the GIRM contains a chapter on this.

4. There have been several instructions on music in the liturgy issued from the Vatican. Many of the mandates contained in them have gone by the wayside in the US. This does not excuse us from knowing what we are supposed to do. We can read them for ourselves.

5. Canon law supports the right and the duty of Catholics to request and to be granted an authentic liturgy. We should ask that things be done properly, and we should make known to the proper authorities when things are not done properly. So if a person or group asks for a liturgy that follows the rubrics, their request has canonical authority behind it. Asking for things that are not provided for in the GIRM or other documents, or which are prohibited, carry no weight at all and amount to an attempt to hijack the liturgy for one’s own purposes.

6. Latin is the official language of the Church. Vatican II documents on the liturgy and music stated explicitly that the people should be able “to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 54, #1 – Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy). The "Ordinary" includes the Gloria, Kyrie, Sanctus (Holy holy), and Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). We should all know those, in Latin!

7. As adults in the Church, we should all be actively seeking to grow in our faith. We cannot effectively pass on the faith to our children if we don’t know any more than they do. When we bring the liturgy down to the level of the children, we are not doing them any favors. They will come to see "church" as something "for little kids".

8. The music and the furnishings and décor of any Catholic church – the environment in which we celebrate Mass – should suggest and be conducive to awe and reverence. It's not about creating a "friendly" or "comfortable" atmosphere; our churches should reflect the fact that they are sanctuaries of God - the King of the Universe!

9. Maybe all of this, or most of it, or some of it, is new to you. If you did not know about these things before this, now you have been given the information by this blog post, even if past, current, or future pastors have not so instructed you. What you do with the information is up to you, but we are all held accountable by God to know these things. You can read the General Instruction of the Roman Missal here.

The treasury of our Catholic heritage is rich. It's time to rediscover it!

Nuptial Mass Reflections: The Importance of Music

Wendi’s daughter was married a week or so ago. The nuptial Mass (novus ordo), she maintains, “was the most beautiful Mass I have ever attended.” Now, of course we recognize that she must have been biased, since it was her own daughter’s wedding! But wait…there were reactions from others, as well.



Okay...this isn't actually a photo from
Wendi's daughter's wedding...but beauty is beauty!

Wendi’s friend, Dr. David E. Saunders, served as organist/cantor and chantmaster for the Mass. On his blog A View From the Loft, he wrote:

This will be a Nuptial Mass unlike any I've ever been a part of...

It will involve...a Mass that will feature the actual chanted texts called for by the rite, sung in Latin by a group of musicians dedicated and committed to the restoration of chant in the Mass...No "Here Comes the Bride, Fair Fat and Wide" at this wedding, oh no.

Here, for example, is the text the Church appoints for the entrance (Introit) that will be sung for this Mass:

God is in his holy dwelling place; the God who causes us to dwell together, one at heart, in his house; he himself will give power and strength to his people. (Psalm verse:) Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; and let those who hate him flee before his face.

Powerful stuff to begin the Nuptial Mass. The Church isn't interested in Hallmark card-style sentimental twaddle. This is an important moment in the life of a man and woman who have decided to join their lives in a holy, sacramental vocation; a vocation equal in importance to the Church with that of a priest or religious (nun or monk). Invoking God in this way shifts the focus from "the bride's special day" to a true sacramental celebration, which is the property of the Universal Church and nobody else

Wendi sees an application beyond the nuptial Mass, though – an application to every single Sunday of the year. Here are her reflections, which she posted on her blog Cradle Stories (my emphases):

I was quite serious when I said that my daughter's Nuptial Mass was the most beautiful Mass I have ever attended.  The priest was exactly as a priest should be.  Reverent, but joyful.  The homily was very personalized to my daughter and her husband.  The music was exactly what the music should be.  Chant and Polyphony, well-executed.  No hymns, nothing happy/clappy.

What I wasn't prepared for was the reaction of the other people in attendance.  It rather shocked me and overwhelmed me a little bit to be honest.

There wasn't a reception, just dinner with the immediate families.  During the course of the evening, about 90% of the guests made it a point to come tell me how beautiful the Mass was.  One guest made the comment that she's been to a lot of Catholic weddings in her life and that this one was the most beautiful she had ever been to.

I got that particular phrase quite often..."The most beautiful Mass I've ever been to."
It continued on Sunday.  One parishioner that had attended, stopped me in the hallway to ask if my next daughter (who just became engaged over Christmas) was going to have the same kind of Mass.  When I confirmed that yes she was...this lovely person all but begged me to put an announcement in the bulletin inviting the entire parish.

She went on to say...

"Everyone should experience a Mass like that at least once in their life.  And do you know how many girls of marriageable age are in this parish?  They should see it so they know what they can have for their own weddings."

It was nice to hear and I agree it was extraordinarily beautiful.

However...

The reaction has taken me completely off guard.  I was startled by it.

WHY were so many people having this reaction to a Mass?

Especially those in our parish.

The priest is like that at every mass he offers.  I could somewhat understand the reaction of visiting guests.

Good priests are not terribly common, although as the Blessed John Paul generation comes in they are becoming more so.

But the locals should be used to this.

After some discussion with a number of friends trying to puzzle this out, I finally got it.

It was that the music and the priest matched.
They don't usually.

In many parishes the priest is reverent.

The music on the other hand...Parish music programs have been all but destroyed in the last forty years.

Here's the thing though...We could have that kind of music at every Mass.  It's possible.   

With two exceptions, everyone who sang for my daughter's wedding is a parishioner.  There are a number of others in the pews who have beautiful voices.  So even if the people who sang for the wedding can't come every week, good music is possible.

But people have to be willing to work for it.

Good music doesn't just happen.

The good music happened for my daughter's wedding for a number of reasons and through the efforts of a number of people.

I knew what it could be and I was determined that she should have it.

I have a number of friends and acquaintances, who were extremely generous with their time and talent, coming in the evenings after work or caring for family all day to rehearse the music.  While their spouses generously stayed home doing all the evening things (homework, bathtime, prayer, bedtime etc...) with their children.

So this isn't about me. Or any individual musician.  It's about all of us, working very hard, together, to offer the best of ourselves in the worship of Almighty God in the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Combine that with a reverent priest and you get beauty.  Extraordinary beauty.

I wish we did that every week.  I wish that my daughter's Nuptial Mass didn't stand out.

When a Mass like that is the norm, it will mean that we have the fullness of our religious heritage every week.

Which we should.

I'm realistic and therefore I don't think it will happen anytime in the near future.

But it could.

So, I'll keep supporting the priest and the music director in improving our sacred music program.

I'll keep inviting my friends to come to rehearsals.  It's a time commitment, and everyone is busy (me too).

I think it's worth it.

So I'll keep praying and supporting.

Thanks for reading.

Turning Toward the Lord

Having spent a couple of fun-filled posts looking at some really bad music for some liturgical-disaster-area Masses, let's turn now to an edifying article by Shawn Tribe at The New Liturgical Movement. The article is entitled "'Orienting' The Sacred Liturgy".

Here's the opening paragraph:

Typically when we speak of "orientation" within the sacred liturgy, we naturally turn to a consideration of how the priest and people are situated in relation to the altar -- most especially as traditionally expressed by the shared, common direction of the same. This focus isn't merely a matter of style of course, but rather a consideration of the practical and theological import of this liturgical expression -- not to mention its rootedness in our tradition. The theological aspects have been amply detailed by the likes of Cardinal Ratzinger and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, touching on themes pertaining to the emphasis of meal versus sacrifice, on the priest as the point of focus and the problem of the community as a self-enclosed circle versus a divine focus and orientation wherein the community gathers to worship God, led by the priest who acts in persona Christi.

He goes on to suggest that

…we can extend this to other aspects of the sacred liturgy as well... For example, good and appropriate sacred music (such as Gregorian chant or sacred polyphony for example) also has an "orienting" aspect. It too has the ability to orient us toward the divine and into an attitude and disposition of divine worship.

And not only music, but also the architecture of the church, the vestments used – any aspect of the liturgical arts – can “[t]hrough their beauty, dignity and nobility…likewise orient us and draw us through their beauty toward the divine”.

Well said!  Read the whole article here.

"And Don't Forget the Polka Mass," She Said

You can blame this post on Wendi, who made this comment about yesterday's folk Mass music:

"OOOh and don't forget the polka Mass if you're polish. This is good stuff... I needed to start my diet and this will help. I'll just post a picture of a polka Mass on the fridge. Then I won't go near the thing. :)

So to help Wendi with her dieting, here are a few clips to help us remember that not just ANY music - know matter how "fun" (or funny) it is - will suffice for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.


Alleluia?

Huh?

Oh dear...a complete "Catholic Polka Mass" for shut-ins...?

Remember Folk Mass Music...and Move On!

As Jeffrey Tucker comments on The Chant Cafe, “[t]his page of folk music for Mass should be bookmarked and listened to often, so that we can always remember the mistakes of the past.”

For instance:

Whether you remember these songs with fond nostalgia or churning stomach, there's a point to be made here.

Even if you liked these songs once upon a time, you will probably admit that they are now quite dated. The truth is, the Mass songs many are fond of right now, in 2012, will go the same way as these folk songs. That's because the music choices we have before us in song books like "Journeysongs", "Glory and Praise", "Flor Y Canto" are far from ideal from a liturgical standpoint. They are not "classic" pieces, and they will someday be seen as reflecting a time gone by. They'll be "old-fashioned."

Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony, on the other hand, present to us timeless pieces that will never be "dated".

For instance: