Can Liturgical Music Be Saved?

By PATRICK O'HANNIGAN on 6.17.13 @ 6:07AM


Reassessing the quarrel between the power ballad and the hymn.


Remember the power ballad? It was a subgenre of rock music pioneered by Boston in 1976 and Styx a year later. From near-symphonic beginnings in “More Than a Feeling” and “Come Sail Away,” the power ballad elbowed its way to prominence in the early Eighties.

Tom Scholz of Boston and Dennis DeYoung of Styx welded songwriting craftsmanship to imaginative orchestration and “wall of sound” microphone placements, mixing electric and acoustic guitars in tunes that did more than build to crescendos. Artists like Bonnie Tyler and REO Speedwagon then parlayed their own examples of the form into successful recording careers.

Power ballad pioneers play now in places like state fairs. But when the power ballad fell out of fashion, it found a home among the “praise bands” of “Christian Rock.” Where power ballads go, praise bands follow. That unabashedly Christian lyrics can be heard on FM radio is a good thing, but that power ballads also enabled praise bands to displace so many church choirs ought to give us pause. Power ballads are not hymns. That is precisely the problem with singing them during church services, even — perhaps especially— services aimed at younger people.

Praise bands replaced many traditional choirs in part because church musicians were not always conscious of their own assumptions. They listened to car radios while driving to rehearsals. Like everyone else, they smiled at the playful grunge of “Spirit in the Sky” and the crypto-Christian bonhomie of “Get Together.” Hook-laden songs on the FM dial were more fun to play than old-timey hymns that required little or no instrumental accompaniment, and so garage bands at every conceivable talent level reasoned that only cranks would be critical of Sunday services enlivened by rock, jazz, and reggae rhythms.

Yet inattention and sloppy theology did not by themselves expand the reach of the power ballad into formal worship. When the folk revival of the Sixties brought “Kumbaya” out from the campfire circle and into the sanctuary, the mavens of mainstream culture noticed, mounting productions of Jesus Christ, Superstar andGodspell to critical acclaim. Christian influence was part of the musical mix of the time, even if only as a foil for other things. Eventually the coming of “arena rock” pushed folk musicians back into Greenwich Village and the coffee house circuit influenced by that iconic neighborhood. As folk music lost ground to rock groups playing for larger audiences, the praise band subculture saw an opening and sprinted for it with instruments in tow. Musicians who had previously played sweltering summer concerts under revival tents realized that they could play in church, which was a better place to gig than anything outdoors because it had air conditioning.

Praise bands took longer to find acceptance in Catholic parishes, but find it they did, when “Guitar Masses” became a chew toy in the perennial argument between traditionalists and progressives. The praise band influence might have been more decisive in the pews had it not been for a pair of distinctively Catholic attributes: First, the doctrine of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist emphasizes reverence in Catholic worship to a greater degree than is usually cultivated by Protestant assemblies. Second (and also by design), the Catholic Church is incapable of rapid change. Despite those constraints, praise band and power ballad influence made itself felt.

People who never used works like “immanence” and “transcendence” nevertheless realized that Jesus-among-us thinking had outpaced Jesus-beyond-us thinking, and composers smitten with concepts like “inculturation” and the “spirit of Vatican II” did what they could to shoehorn new music into the liturgy of the church, with decidedly mixed results. What Anthony Esolen once called “the necessary hypocrisy of small talk” was raised to the status of a liturgical act. Meanwhile, among Christians of all confessions, advances in technology spawned by arena rock also created cheap amplifiers that could fill a room with sound.

Architecture was part of the same populist impulse. By the time power ballads entered worship service, narrow naves were outdated. Instead, church designers experimented with forms borrowed from theater-in-the-round, turning what had been Gothic, Baroque, Neo-Classical and even Shaker-inspired construction into Sydney Opera House knockoffs or boxy-looking warehouses. With churches built more wide than high in apparent reparation for the triumphalism of the Middle Ages, it was easy to fit a drum kit and a Hammond organ up near the pulpit. Choirs that had led the congregation from the back moved forward also, but by then the instrumentalists had claimed all the good spots.

Rocking for Jesus was easier than reworking gems like “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.” In self-consciously “seeker friendly” congregations, bias against traditional hymnody was justified on the grounds of meeting potential churchgoers where they were emotionally. That rationale for praise band dominance meant that worship leaders were unwittingly abrogating to themselves an outreach that belonged to the Holy Spirit, but anyone who questioned the bias toward concertizing was more likely to win a sympathetic hearing among “high church” Christians than among people wary of all things liturgical. Even in denominations whose musical patrimony reached back centuries, praise band adherents defended the making of “joyful noise” and the recycling of secular style by noting that King David danced before the Lord. King David’s dance became an argument ender, despite the fact that treating it that way meant overlooking the differences between, for example, a Passover meal and what the Second Book of Samuel describes as an epic procession involving thousands of Israelites who were transporting the Ark of God to Jerusalem.

The developments sketched above emboldened pastors whose emphasis on “relevance” catapulted anything old into the memory bin. Yet the tussle between hymns and power ballads is not now as one-sided as it seemed a few years ago, when I first cobbled a few thoughts on the subject together. Praise bands and power ballads no longer have the last word, because choirs are starting to reclaim lost ground.

Among Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI was instrumental to this reversal of fortunes. As an accomplished pianist with a fondness for Mozart and the other greats of the Western canon, one of the things that Pope Benedict offered in his quietly formidable way was a theological and musical critique of modernity. Leaning perceptively on his 2000 book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Australian theologian Tracey Rowland has written about Pope Benedict’s impatience with “parish tea party liturgies” and “utility music.” Then-Cardinal Ratzinger also decried “the obscuring of the sacred by the operatic” and “the threat of invasion by the virtuoso mentality.” Liturgical music, in his judgment, should “arouse the voice of the cosmos and, by glorifying the creator, elicit the glory of the cosmos itself, making it also glorious, beautiful, habitable and beloved.” This exalted view of liturgical music sits well beyond the emotive range of most power ballads, and it is warmly recommended to the faithful because “Next to the saints, the art which the church has produced is the only real apologia for her history.”

Motivation for excellence has seldom been phrased so pithily. Following that example and the pope’s ringing July 2007 reaffirmation of the continuing validity of the Mass in Latin, Catholic writers are more willing to question the songs on Sunday morning playlists. Jeffrey Tucker wrote about the dangers of catering to musical fads. Marc Barnes regaled readers of his column with “Five Reasons to Kill Christian Music,” by which he meant not the work of Palestrina, but the power ballad dragooned into worship duty. The first reason that Barnes offered was all but unassailable in its logic: writing “Christian” songs has the regrettable effect of reducing Christianity to a modifying adjective. Barnes was also caustic enough to say that “If your music is bad, and you’re praying that God will do something great with it, stop praying and make better music.” On an academic note, the University of Saint Anselmo created a master’s-level course in liturgical music, complete with kind words for Gregorian chant, earlier this year.

It would be foolish to believe that tee shirts have yielded everywhere to choir robes, cruel to suggest that the praise band is going the way of the eight-track tape, and dangerous to forget that mediocre hymns can dilute faith every bit as effectively as Sunday morning trysts between a big voice and Fender Stratocaster. Concert-grade lighting and mixing boards are still part of the worship landscape in larger evangelical congregations. Yet smart pastors no longer shepherd their flocks in terms of equations like “memorable sermon + rocking band = full collection plate,” and for that we can all be thankful. The hymns will rise again, and great power ballads can still be heard when “Needtobreathe” comes to town, or older rockers play to a full house at the casino up the road.

A selection of quotations from His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke’s June 28th address: “Liturgical Law in the Mission of the Church”:-

“The difference in the approach to the Sacred Liturgy from my first days in the seminary in the Fall of 1962 to the time of the post-Conciliar reforms was, to say the least, extreme, if not violent.”

“The post-conciliar period and accompanying euphoria manifested a general disdain for the Church’s perennial discipline.”

“Given the radical reform of the liturgical ties, a certain antinomian mentality easily led to a great deal of liturgical experimentation which was completely divorced from the discipline which had formerly governed the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy.”

“The right understanding of the Sacred Liturgy is, in fact, the key to the understanding of every dimension of life. That right understanding is safeguarded by the law, the discipline, which safeguards, first, the relationship of man with God.”

“Clearly, unless man recognizes and respects the ius divinum [the divine right / the right relationship between God and His creation, especially man] in what pertains to the Sacred Liturgy, he fails to recognize and respect the truth about creation and, above all, about himself. The failure to recognize and respect the ius divinum leads to idolatry, as the story of the Golden Calf demonstrates.”

“Only by observing and honouring the divine right that God be known, adored, and served as He desires and commands does man find his happiness in this life and in the life to come.”

“[The Sacred Liturgy cannot] be reduced to the activity of any individual, not even a priest, but must be governed, with respect for the divine right, by the law of the Church, by the supreme authority, that is, by the Roman Pontiff and by the Bishops in communion with him.”

“Sadly, after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, but certainly not because of the teaching of the Council, many abuses in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy took place.”

“The right attention to liturgical norms does not constitute a sort of legalism or rubricism, but an act of profound respect and love for our Lord who has given us the gift of divine worship, an act of profound love which has, as its irreplaceable foundation, the respect for the divine right.”

Vesperæ Solemnes, Te Deum, Benediction

Sacra Liturgia 2013 Speaker Updates: Bishop Peter Elliot & Dom Alcuin Reid

Some highlights from Bishop Peter Elliott’s June 26th address: “Ars Celebrandi in the Sacred Liturgy”:-

“We cannot expect an ars celebrandi from clergy who do not know, or have never read, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Yet this is a widespread problem today.”

“The publication of a more accurate and richer English translation of the Mass is having salutary effects in the Anglophone world.”

“Celebrating Mass and the Sacraments is an “art”, which requires what all artists need: experience, discipline and practice open to a willingness to develop and refine skills.”

“The ‘art of proper celebration’ should never become too specialized, that is, an elite exercise for only a few people, which is the case with so much ‘art’ in Western societies. I prefer to understand the art of celebrating in terms of “craft”, something accessible to all of us, whether we think we are ‘liturgically minded’ or not.”

“My ideal is that the priest should be a good liturgical craftsman, an artisan of the worship of God.”

“A skilled celebrant with a recollected demeanour never gives the patronizing impression that he is giving lessons to his people. He has humbly absorbed that wider, guiding principle the Eucharist as Sacrifice and Sacrament takes absolute priority over the liturgy.”

“Some celebrants have as much style as an unskilled butcher. [Such] priests may have great inner faith, but who can tell from their clumsy or casual behaviour? [Drawing] on the need to integrate internal faith and external actions, consistent behaviour and attending to matters of detail is important, as any good craftsman knows.”

“While ‘style’ is important, I add a word of caution. The good celebrant avoids an artificial style. He is not trying to play a role in a theatre.”

“Clergy feel inadequate because they must compete with the world’s skilled communicators. Bishops can develop a better ars praedicandi among clergy and seminarians through providing practical workshops, animated by the grace of encouragement.”

“[Celebrants should] never imagine that sound must always surround the assembly or otherwise the people will become bored. This is when the devil of ‘entertainment’ takes control.”

“When I am about to celebrate Confirmation in some parishes, I think I am in a cinema, such is the noisy effect of secularization among our people in my country.”

“[The usus antiquior of the 16th century] provided precise and binding rubrics to control abuses and rein in the poor celebration of Mass and the Sacraments. The priest in the village, the chaplain at court, the monk in the abbey, the friar in the city, they all knew exactly what was expected of them: ‘Read the black and do the Red’.”

“Mass can be celebrated well in an ugly church, but the church remains ugly and the people deserve a better place for the Eucharist.”

“Catholic worship calls for a spacious and beautiful sanctuary, not cluttered up with useless furnishings or irrelevant decorations or distracting slogans.”

“I would invite every priest to take a long look at the altar of his church… Is this altar beautiful? Does it speak to us of God, his sacrifice and banquet?”

“In celebrating the divine mysteries well, any priest who is committed to the ars celebrandi is called to be a loving pastor. He gives glory to God as he seeks to nourish Christ’s faithful day by day.”

Some highlights from Dom Alcuin Reid’s address: “Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation”, 27th June:-

“Without participatio actuosa [conscious and actual participation in the liturgy], liturgical renewal and reform is at risk.”

“It is my concern that in rushing to ensure that everyone ‘participates’, and in the haste to reform rites to facilitate this, we have perhaps not attended to this precondition for participatio actuosa, for a real and fruitful connection with Christ at work in the Sacred Liturgy.”

“Participatio actuosa and liturgical formation are inseparable. [Both] are essential if we are to read the rest of Sacrosanctum Concilium and its consequent principles and policies correctly.”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not about the clergy: rather, their liturgical actions and comportment serve to reflect the beauty and splendour of Christ made present through their sacred ministry.”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not an exercise in self-exaltation or indulgence on the part of the clergy, but their humble ministration of Christ in and to our world.”

“The liturgy is not one optional spiritual practice amongst others, or a peculiar method of devotion promoted by seemingly obsessive people called ‘liturgists’. It is normative for Christian life.”

“[The spirit of the liturgy] is more easily ‘caught’ than ‘taught’: caught by hands joined in a way only used for prayer, by knees bent in adoration, by voices raised in the discipline of the Church’s chant…”

“It is a great sign of hope that now ‘the question of the liturgy’ is very much in the minds of younger clergy and seminarians, and is increasingly a concern for seminary and diocesan liturgical formators.”

“Liturgical minimalism is the enemy of the spirit of the liturgy and is a cancer to true liturgical formation.”

“In the Church’s wisdom and tradition, the sung liturgy is the norm – a truth our Eastern brethren have never forgotten. Yet for centuries, the liturgical formation of far too many has been grounded in the read liturgy, the missa lecta or low Mass.”

“If our parishes never celebrated the Divine Office liturgically, in all its richness, how will our people imbue the spirit and power of the liturgy?”

“The Sacred Liturgy is not primarily a missionary or catechetical tool. It is the Church’s worship of almighty God, not a means of propaganda. We do violence to its nature and perhaps even to Christ when we make use of it as a direct instrument of evangelisation.”

Some highlights from Prof. Tracey Rowland’s address: “The Usus Antiquior and the New Evangelisation”

June 26th, 2013: -



“I want to argue that the usus antiquior is an antidote to the ruthless attacks on memory and tradition and high culture, typical of the culture of modernity, and that it satisfies the desire of the post-modern generations to be embedded within a coherent, non-fragmented tradition that is open to the transcendent.”

“The project of the 1960s generation was one of transposing a high sacral language into the vernacular of a low mundane culture, with the result that something sacred became more mundane, and when the sacred becomes mundane, it becomes boring.”

“In wrapping the faith in the forms of the contemporary culture and generally correlating the liturgy to the norms of the mass culture, the 1960s generation of pastoral strategists unwittingly fostered a crisis in liturgical theory and practice.”

“[The 1960s generation] dismantled a high Catholic culture by removing its cornerstone and they left subsequent generations of Catholics in a state of cultural poverty, confusion and boredom.”
“A Catholic who is ignorant of [the usus antiquior] is like a student who majors in English literature but is unfamiliar with Shakespeare.”

“It may be argued that [the] usus antiquior was the one thing that could bring the warring European tribes [of the 20th century] together.”

“[Benedict XVI] compared the pastoral strategy of bringing God down to the level of the people with the Hebrew’s worship of the golden calf and he described this practice as nothing less than a form of apostasy.”

“It would be a major advance if those responsible for liturgical decisions could at least get the message that modernity has not been fashionable since the 1960s.”

“Elements of Catholic culture which were suppressed by the 1960s generation of pastoral leaders are being rediscovered by younger Catholics who treat them like treasures found in their grandmother’s attic.”

“Catholics of the post-modern generations want to know how the Church looked, how the faith was practiced, when there was a coherent Catholic culture.”

“The whole structure of the usus antiquior engenders a deeper sense that there is a sacrifice, not a mere meal… There is really no greater antidote to secularism and what Pope Francis calls a ‘self-referential Christianity’ than a reflection on martyrdom and the sacrifice of Calvary and the Roman Canon sustains a person’s reflection on this reality.”

In an era when globalisation is regarded as a good thing and governments spend millions of dollars of tax-payers’ money to keep alive the memory of minority languages and pre-modern social practices like Morris dancing, the Church should not be ashamed of her own cultural treasures.”

“The usus antiquior should be a standard element of the cultural capital of all Latin Rite Catholics since is so effectively resists secularism and satisfies the post-modern hunger for coherent order, beauty and an experience of self-transcendence.”

“I believe that the proponents of the usus antiquior are often their own worst enemies and foster practices and attitudes which deter many Catholics from attending Masses according to this Form.”

“The obsession with dissecting every minute detail of the event is a symptom of what Joseph Ratzinger called the problem of aestheticism.”

“If pastoral pragmatism and its inherent philistinism is a problem at one end of the spectrum, aestheticism seems to be the problem at the other end of the spectrum.”

“Ordinary Catholics do not want to feel as though in attending the usus antiquior they are making a political stand against the Second Vatican Council.”

“The more [ordinary] people feel as though a whole raft of theo-political baggage comes with attendance at the usus antiquior Masses, the less likely they are to avail themselves of the opportunity to attend them.”

“To evangelise post-modern people [the Christian narrative] has to appear to be something starkly different from the secular culture they imbibe which is a culture parasitic upon the Christian tradition but completely decadent.”

Vatican Rentboy and Satanism Claims Revealed by Paedophile Priest Don Patrizio Poggi

Serving and former priests hired rentboys for sex in churches from pimp who sold consecrated hosts to satanists, says defrocked clergyman.


By UMBERTO BACCHI: June 27, 2013 



The Vatican has denied Don Patrizio Poggi’s allegations over the existence of an underage prostitution ring (Reuters)



Italian investigators have opened an inquiry into claims by a convicted paedophile priest that an underage prostitution ring has been operating inside the Holy Roman Church with clergymen hiring rentboys for sex inside churches.



Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, told Italian authorities that a former Carabinieri pimped boys for nine clergymen.

Poggi, who served a five-year sentence for abusing teenage boys while he was a parish priest at the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, said he made the allegations to "protect the Holy Church and the Christian community."

The boys were chosen because they were starving and desperate, he claimed, according to Il Messaggero newspaper.


The former policeman used to recruit the boys, mostly eastern European immigrants, outside a gay bar named Twink near Rome's Termini train station. He reportedly sat in his Fiat Panda - marked "Emergency Blood" to avoid parking fines - to make his selection.



He was helped in the recruitment process by a friend who ran a modelling agency. He lured underage boys into prostitution through "false work offers for modelling and acting roles", Poggi said.

The agent also looked for rentboys at gay discos, saunas and gyms across Rome. An accountant was also said to be involved.

The boys were paid €150-€500 (£130-£425) to perform sex acts in church premises across the capital.

Poggi also accused the former Carabinieri of selling consecrated hosts for satanic rites.

Poggi reportedly presented documentary and photographic evidence to police in the company of two senior Vatican clergymen who vouched for his credibility.

Poggi identified the nine clergymen, including two senior church officials and a religion lecturer. Three people have been placed under formal investigation.

The allegations were rejected by the Vatican. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, head of the Catholic Vicariate of Rome, said the priest made false claims out of a desire for vengeance and personal resentment.

The Vatican refused to reinstate Poggi after he served his term.

"The cardinal expresses his full confidence in the magistracy and declares himself full convinced that this slander will be demolished, demonstrating Poggi's claims to be untrue," Vallini said.

"God will hold everyone accountable for their deeds."

“When I die, there will be no one left to sing for me.” A reflection on A Washington Post Article on the Vanishing of Europe By: Msgr. Charles Pope

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

We have discussed on this blog numerous times before the coming demographic implosion, especially among Europeans as a result of declining birthrates. It is a matter of some debate how serious the problem is, even among those living in Europe. And not being a denizen of Europe I am not able to play the prophet.

But one thing is clear, the birth rates are so low among traditional inhabitants of Europe, English, French, German, and Italian among others that it would seem the Europe as we have known it is aborting and contracepting itself out of existence. These ethnicities, races, and national identities are largely being replaced by Muslim immigrants. This much seems quite clear.

What is unclear, however, is the degree to which the Muslim immigrants will adopt European ways, to include smaller family sizes, European ways of thinking and living. It is largely assumed here in America the Muslims who Emigrate to Europe bring with them an unassailable attachment to Muslim culture, understood in its most radical and anti-western demeanor.

This assumption is not necessarily yet demonstrated by good, solid sociological or demographic data. Some argue that Muslim immigrants are largely adopting European ways, others argue that the opposite is true.

Further, some argue that the French are beginning to turn the birthrate problem around and are now above replacement level. This too, remains to be seen, particularly as to whether it will be maintained going forward.

In many ways, the jury is still out regarding Europe and its future.

An article appeared in the Washington Post today, on the very front page, which sets forth the demographic issue in Portugal. And there, according to the article, seems to exist a kind of worst-case scenario. The article describes the increasing results of what can only be described as a cultural suicide of the Portuguese through abortion and contraception leading to very low birthrates. But there also seems to be little economic incentive for people to immigrate and prop up the numbers. It seems very few are interested in taking the places of the diminishing and dying Portuguese.

The result, according to the article, is economic implosion as well as a sociological nightmare wherein few younger people exist to care for the older ones and in many parts of Portugal it seems that no one will be left to bury the dead.

Yes, it is the worst of both worlds: declining birthrates along with no immigrants to fill the gap.

Ronald Regan once received some heat from conservative Americans during the immigration debates of his administration. Inclined to grant amnesty to those here illegally, he observed that if our population is not increasing in America, neither will our economy grow. He was right, but certainly went against the prevailing orthodoxy which tends to see the economic pie as a fixed set of resources that must be divided among ever larger numbers at the table.

But this does not seem to be absolutely the case. It would seem that increasing populations also bring with them some of their own assets. Economies are generated by demand, and the supply, which we have in some abundance, grows to meet it. Growing populations, at least in the more affluent West, dotend to grow the economy as well.

I am no economist and will admit there are matters to debate here, but my own experience shows an increasing population in this country has, in fact, generated a growing economy for the most part.

But, as the example of Portugal shows, it would seem that a declining population, does not leave more with a fewer at the table, but results in less for everyone. Lowering of the economic tide eventually grounds all boats.

Consider some excerpts from the Washington Post article on Portugal today:

For an enterprise in the business of welcoming life, the birthing ward in Portugal’s largest maternity hospital is eerily quiet….Elsewhere in the hospital, signs of Europe’s crisis within a crisis are everywhere. Serving a country that was battling a low birthrate even before the region’s economy fell off a cliff, Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital delivered about 7,000 babies a year until recently. But…the number of births crashed last year to 4,500, leading the hospital to mothball an entire wing and slash 20 percent of the staff.

The recent decline in births across Portugal — a 14 percent drop since 2008 — has been so acute that in an increasingly childless country, 239 schools are shutting down this year and sales of products such as baby diapers and children’s shampoos are plummeting….At the same time, in the fast-graying interior, gas stations and motels are being converted into nursing homes.

Portugal is at the forefront of Europe’s latest baby bust, one that is shortening the fuse on a time bomb of social costs in some of the world’s most rapidly aging societies….

Europe has faced a gradual decline in birthrates since the 1960s…a modest rebound during the 2000s….has now gone into reverse.

The baby shortage, economists say, is set to pile on the woe for a swath of the continent that may already be facing a decade or more of economic fallout from the debt crisis that started in 2009.

A reckoning accelerates. By 2030, the retired population in Portugal, for instance, is expected to surge by 27.4 percent, with those older than 65 predicted to make up nearly one in every four residents. With fewer future workers and taxpayers being born, however, the Portuguese are confronting what could be an accelerated fiscal reckoning to provide for their aging population.

[Some] experts predict that the population loss ahead could be beyond even the worst-case predictions….That has many here bemoaning the “disappearance” of a nation and asking: Who will be left to support a dying country of old men and women?

Seniors living at the home, such as Maria Jesus Rodrigues, 87, relish the contact with children. “We used to have children everywhere when I was young. We never thought about the economic side; we just had them,”

Rodrigues…burst into a local folk song. “I have to sing now,” she crooned, “because when I die, there will be no one left to sing for me.”

These are excerpts, the full story is here: Crisis in the Cradle

Hence it would seem that Portugal is in very serious shape, inheriting the worst of both worlds. Low birthrates and no immigrants. There was a time, when Catholic Portugal teamed with large families.

In a way, there is a judgment of God upon the whole West, In effect God seems to be saying, “If you don’t love life you don’t have to have it.”

Large sections of Portugal may simply go into an unpopulated an abandoned status (until some economic incentive returns for others to move and live there).

Other large sections of Europe, once Christian, seemed destined to become Muslim Caliphates. That of course presumes that the Muslim immigrants retain their identity and their love for large families, and do not adopt decadent Western ways.

All that remains to be seen, but it does seem clear that the Europe we have known is passing from our sight. Pope Benedict spoke of the lights going out all over Europe. He certainly had the faith in mind, but as an article like this shows, it is not only the Christian faith which is diminishing in Europe, but even European as we’ve known them maybe endangered and simply disappearing.

The Church has always been right about contraception and abortion. These paraded in as devilish lives which promised “reproductive freedom” and prosperity. But in fact, they only ushered in what they’re really all about: death.

Here is a video from heady and arrogant times. I like Star Trek, but this clip is very emblematic of an era and the thinking that has led us down some very tragic paths. Captain Kirk speaks right out of the mentality of the mid 1960s.

Five Ways to Ruin the Mass

JUNE 18, 2013

by Jeffrey Tucker


We are getting ever closer to an improved liturgy in the English-speaking world. The new Missal gives us a more dignified language that more closely reflects the Latin standard. The hippy-dippy rupturism of the past is finally giving way to a more settled and solemn appreciation of the intrinsic majesty of the Roman rite.

A new generation of celebrants is moving past the politicized agendas of the past toward embracing the true spirit of the liturgy. Maybe it hasn’t happened in your parish but the trend is clear: better music, better vestments, better postures and rubrics.

And yet, we all know that things are not what they should be. It is an interesting experiment to travel and attend Sunday Mass at a random parish. You might find wonderful things. Or you might find something else entirely. Having experienced many of the latter, and talking with many other people about their experiences, I here list the top five ways in which the presentation of the liturgy can ruin the liturgical experience.

1. Improvisation of the Liturgical Texts
The problem of celebrants who make up their own words on the spot, in hopes of making the liturgy more chatty and familiar, continues to be a serious annoyance. It is obviously illicit to do so. Celebrants are permitted to break to explain parts of the Mass or provide other special instructions. But they are not permitted to replace liturgical texts with something that they dreamed up on the spot.

This abuse is extremely disorienting and draws undue attention to the personality and personal views of the priest rather than to the theology and ritual prescribed by the Church. It is also ridiculously presumptuous for any one person to imagine that he has a better idea than the liturgical text formed from 2,000 years of tradition.

I have my own theory on why it is so common for celebrants to just make things up on the spot. The older Missal translation dating from 1970 and onward was so casual, chatty, and plain that it encouraged the priest to enter into this world of casual communication. The formality just wasn’t there to encourage a more sober, careful, and accurate presentation. Also, many improvisers just had a sense that the text needed fixing of some sort.

This has changed with the new Missal, and this is all to the good. The new translation is very dignified and requires careful focus. But the habit of riffing around on the prayers remains among many priests.

This is truly tragic for everyone sitting in the pews. If the texts can just be ignored, why shouldn’t the faithful themselves feel free to take what they want and otherwise discard core teachings of the faith? This whole practices encourages a general disrespect for the ritual and even the faith itself.

2. Politicized and Newsy Prayer of the Faithful
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says of the prayer of the faithful: “The intentions announced should be sober, be composed with a wise liberty and in few words, and they should be expressive of the prayer of the entire community.”

“Wise liberty” seems to be in short supply however. Sometimes these prayers seem like last month’s newspaper, calling to mind events that left the 48-hour news cycle long ago. Or they can seem subtly manipulative, trying to get us to think and believe things about the controversies of the day that are actually more in dispute than the prayer would indicate. A particular annoyance to me are the prayers that are crafted to straddle some kind of triangulating political position that has nothing to do with the liturgy or doctrine or morals.

Most parishes today use pre-printed prayers from private publishers. Some are better than others. The best ones are brief and stick to the formula: prayers for the Church, for public authorities and the salvation of the whole world, for those burdened, and for the local community. The worst ones lead the whole liturgy astray in very distracting ways.

3. Extended and Chatty Sign of the Peace
The rite of peace has a long tradition in the Roman Rite dating to the earliest centuries. It was mostly restricted to the clergy. There are arguments and disputes about whether extending it to the congregation is a revival of a lost tradition or an innovation. Regardless, this much we do know: it is not supposed to be a micro-social hour that encourages people to mill around as if at a cocktail party.

The Missal plainly says that the extension to the congregation is optional. The requirement of the rite is fulfilled in the sanctuary alone. Therefore, if there is an invitation to have the people offer a sign of peace, it should be short. The General Instruction says: “it is appropriate that each person, in a sober manner, offer the sign of peace only to those who are nearest.”

But even this is vague. What is nearest? What if you are the only person in your section of the pew? Do you walk, wave, or just ignore people? And note that no rubric specifies the handshake as the appropriate gesture. We do that just because this is our cultural custom. But is the handshake really liturgical?

In general, this whole part of the Mass invites confusion and awkwardness, and no matter how much we try to solemnize it, it still has more of the feeling of a civic or social activity than a truly liturgical one. At best it is a distraction. At worst, it can result in hurt feelings and all around confusion.

4. Replacing Sung Propers with Something Else
Since the earliest centuries, the liturgy assigned particular scriptural texts to particular liturgical days. This happens at the entrance, the music between readings, the offertory, and the communion. The instructions are very clear: the assigned chant is to be sung. If something else was sung, the words were still said by the priest. And so it was in most countries from the 7th century until quite recently.

Today, the Mass propers are mostly replaced by something else, usually a hymn with words made up by some lyricist. Quite often the results have nothing to do with the liturgy at all. It’s actually remarkable when you think about it. Choirs busy themselves with replacing crucial parts of the liturgy. They just drop them completely. Mostly they do this with no awareness of what they are doing.

How many choirs know that their processional hymn is displacing the assigned entrance? How many know that there is a real antiphon assigned at the offertory and that it is not just a time for the choir to sing its favorite number? How many have read the repeated urgings in the General Instruction to sing the assigned chant or at least use the text in the official choir books rather than just choose a random song loosely based on the theme of the season?

To be sure, this is technically permissible to do, but, truly, this approach “cheats the faithful,” as the Vatican wrote in an instruction in 1969. The propers of the Mass are crucial. They are from scripture. Their Gregorian originals are stunningly evocative of the liturgical spirit and even define it. Even if sung in English or in choral style, the propers are part of the Mass. It should always be seen as regrettable when something else replaces them.

The General Instruction says “Nor is it lawful to replace the readings and Responsorial Psalm, which contain the Word of God, with other, non‐biblical texts.” That’s pretty definitive. But the same rationale should apply to the entrance, offertory, and communion chants as well.

Composed hymns with non-scriptural texts don’t need to be thrown out completely. They can be sung and always will be. But the real liturgical work of the choir is found in the Mass propers. That’s their primary responsibility. There are resources newly available that make it possible for any choir to do the right thing.

5. Percussion
In the first millennium, instruments were not part of the sung Mass, but as time went on, the organ was gradually admitted. By the 17th and 18th centuries, whole orchestras were used in certain locations. Even today you can find places where orchestral Masses are used that include tympani and other percussion instruments.

Most likely, that is not the context in which percussion instruments are used in your parish.

Today we hear conga drums, trap sets, bongos, and other drums played not in the style of Monteverdi processions, or Masses by Haydn or Mozart. Instead we hear them just as we would hear them in a bar or dance hall.

They are used just as they are in the secular world: to keep a beat, to make the music groovy, to inspired us to kind of do a bit of a dance. That’s the association of percussion we have in our culture. It is not a sacred association. The association is entirely profane. There’s a role for that. But Church is not the place and Mass is not the time.

And keep in mind: the piano is a percussion instrument. It has been traditionally banned in Church because it has non-liturgical associations. In today’s anything-goes environment, it is tolerated even by the liturgical regulations. But it is always a regrettable choice. The whole point of liturgical music is to lift our eyes and hearts to heaven, not drag us down to the dance floor.

One final point on this matter: you will notice that many of the songs in the conventional songbooks for Mass today seem to long for a drum-set backup. That’s because their style is borrowed from commercial jingles, TV show theme songs, power ballads from the 1970s, and so on. I don’t entirely blame choirs who choose drums to help out to make this style make more sense. What really needs to change is the whole approach here. Liturgical music has several critical marks: it uses the liturgical text, it grows out of the chant tradition, and sends a cultural signal that this is a sacred action in a sacred place.

Conclusion
A liturgy in which all five errors are committed is going to look and feel very different from one in which all five errors are completely avoided. The former will be random and unhistorical. The latter will be…more like Catholic Mass. It really is up to the pastors, musicians, and leaders in a parish to permit the voice of the liturgy to speak and sing without being impeded by these interventions, which really serve to distract from the beautiful miracle before our eyes.


The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.




By Jeffrey Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is managing editor of Sacred Music and publications editor of the Church Music Association of America. He also runs the Chant Cafe Blog. Jeffrey@chantcafe.com

Anibale Bugnini, prime architect of the Novus Ordo, also wanted to wreck the Rosary

March 25, 2013

Posted by tantamergo 

But Paul VI would not let him.

Some time ago, my wife bought Bugnini’s gloating, bloated Reform of the Liturgy at a used book giveaway. She read little bits, became totally disgusted by the man’s preening superiority, monumental ego, and his constant disdain for the 1500+ year old Roman Rite. So, she put it down. But, I picked it up the other day, and in just reading a little tiny bit, found in pp. 874-876 (Bugnini, he loved to talk) that the man who placed such enormous emphasis on “noble simplicity,” eliminating “useless repetitions” and “historical accretions,” also desired to utterly destroy the Rosary. How did he plan on doing that?

First, he was going to limit the Our Father to once at the beginning of the Rosary. Gone would be the Pater Nosters at the beginning of each decade. A “public version” of the Rosary would contain only one decade of Hail Marys/Ave Marias. Not only did he have the incredible gumption to gut a prayer prayed by millions that the Tradition tells us was given directly to St. Dominic Guzman by the Blessed Mother Herself, but he was going to wreck the Hail Mary by removing the “non-biblical” parts. That is to say, everything from “Holy Mary Mother of God” on would be eliminated, so you’d be left with Hail Mary Full of Grace the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb (the word Jesus at the end of this 2nd half of the Rosary would also be eliminated from most Hail Mary’s) and that’s it, 10 times, in the very hip and mod Rosary of Bugnini. That’s not entirely true, Bugnini – intruding himself into the private prayer lives of billions of Catholics (over time) and modifying one of the cherished, sacred, and efficacious prayers the Church has ever had, if not THE most efficacious, would allow for ONE recitation of the Holy Mary Mother of God part in each decade. So very generous of him.

That “public Rosary” – the traditional Rosary having been such an aggravation to the protestants Bugnini did everything possible to appease (with no discernible success) – would have been utterly unrecognizable as the same prayer, as only one decade of the truncated Hail Mary above would be present, with the rest replaced by passages from Scripture, hymns (and you can guess what kind of happy clappy crap he would come up with), and excerpts from the writings of various modernist exegetes.

Paul VI was actually somewhat sympathetic to the whole notion, but felt that the umbrage of the faithful would be too great to bear. Bugnini reported on p. 876 that Paul VI replied: “The faithful would conclude that ‘the Pope has changed the Rosary,’ and the psychological effect would be disastrous…” Amazing that Paul VI would say that regarding the Rosary, but somehow did not see that he was doing exactly the same thing with regard to the Mass.

I am utterly, utterly stupified by the monumental arrogance it would take to say “Hmmm….. that prayer Catholics have been saying for 700+ years, it’s really deficient, and it certainly isn’t ‘ecumenical.’ It really needs to be updated and changed.” Can you believe that? Isn’t that simply incredible, that a mid-level Vatican functionary would arrogate to himself the right to change a timeless, glorious prayer? He couldn’t even point to VII as cover in this case, as the Council never even remotely approached saying anything about attacking and wreckovating such constant prayer traditions. Thank God.


For some reason, all the above makes me feel compelled to post the following:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

Vice what it replaced:

Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this unspotted host, which I, Thy unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my innumerable sins, offenses, negligences, and for all here present: as also for all faithful Christians, both living and dead, that it may avail both me and them for salvation unto everlasting life. Amen.

I don’t think Our Lady would have been pleased with Bugnini’s update.

Jimmy Carter has met the enemies, and they are Catholics

Says Catholicism essentially teaches that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

June 24, 2013 04:10 EST

By Carl E. Olson



Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, wearing a baseball cap, addresses students and invited guests at St. Genevieve High School in Panorama City, Calif., in October 2010. (CNS photo)
Situating comments on religion and related matters made by the 39th President of the United States could, without much effort, turn into a grim, surreal drinking game. Hyperbole? Gulp! Historical falsehood? Gulp? Vapid pontification? Gulp! Catholic-bashing? Gulp, glug, choke!Dan Brown has nothing on Mr. Carter, who writes and thinks with about the same level of theological and historical erudition as the best-selling mangler of words from New Hampshire.


My low esteem for Carter's often loopy opinions are clearly outlined in this 2009 post; I won't revisit every detail here. Suffice to say, Carter has become a sort of Hans Küng of liberal Baptists (without any of Küng's impressive intellectual background), coming out of the woodwork from time to time to utter some ridiculous broadside against the Catholic Church and other "conservative" Christian bodies. Meanwhile, the usual media suspects bow low in homage to a man whose failures as POTUS were matched, with sad robustness, by his many years of sticking up for nearly every murderous despot and vicious thug to stomp upon and across the international stage.

Carter's recent interview with TIME magazine is more of the same. Speaking about religion and equal rights for women, Carter hones in immediately on that most dastardly, violent, bloody, and oppressive religion of our time—the one that has (brace yourselves!) kept women from being priests and deacons:

Well, religion can be, and I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think. As you may or may not know, the Southern Baptist Convention back now about 13 years ago in Orlando, voted that women were inferior and had to be subservient to their husbands, and ordained that a woman could not be a deacon or a pastor or a chaplain or even a teacher in a classroom in some seminaries where men are in the classroom, boys are in the classroom. So my wife and I withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because of that.

But I now go to a more moderate church in Plains, a small church, it’s part of the Cooperative Baptist fellowship, and we have a male and a female pastor, and we have women and have men who are deacons. My wife happens to be one of the deacons.

So some of the Baptists are making progress, along with Methodists.

What I wrote three years ago works just as well today as it did then, and saves me the trouble of wasting too much effort on such rot:

In all honesty, I wouldn't bother with all of the political stuff (as important as it is), except there is something deeply disturbing about a man of such importance and influence being so willing to verbally aid and abet thugs while trashing the motives and character of those who believe, as Catholics do, that only certain men are chosen by God to be priests. It's truly repulsive, intimating that women not being able to be Catholic (or Orthodox) priests is the same as beating, raping, torturing, and even killing women. I have long found Carter to hold views and say things that are deeply revolting (both morally and intellectually), but this tops it all. And since when did Billy Graham—a nice man but hardly a theological heavyweight—become the in-house theologian for the Magisterium of Jimmy Carter? The level of sheer arrogance in Carter's statement is mind-boggling.

An irony, of course, is that Carter is simply engaging in a crude form of sola scriptura, albeit one that is not fundamentalist Protestant in nature, but openly fundamentalist secularist. But Carter also resorts to the sort of unsubstantiated falsehoods (well, of course, since falsehoods cannot be substantiated!) that make both theologians and historians tear at their hair, as there were no female priests, bishops, or apostles in the early Church. But this form of argumentation is hardly new for Carter, who seems to enjoy misrepresenting the beliefs, motives, and actions of "conservative" Christians.

I then pointed out another one of Carter's favorite bits of reality-challenge chaff: pro-lifers don't really care about babies once they are born. "Then why are there so many Christian adoption agencies?" I asked, "Why do so many Christians pursue adoption, even while the costs skyrocket and red tape nearly chokes many agencies and programs to death? And why is it that abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood show little or no interest in adoptions?"

But, back to the recent interview: what does it indicate about Carter that when the topic of the religious oppression of women comes up, he first mentions, immediately and at length, the Catholic Church? Why not also the Eastern Orthodox Churches, who hold to the same doctrinal position as do Catholics? And what of Jewish groups that won't allow women to be rabbis? And what of Islam? As it turns out, Carter does eventually mention Islam, saying:

In the Islamic world that varies widely depending on what the regime is in the capital. Sometimes they try to impose very strict law, misquoting I think the major points of the Qur’an, and they ordain that a woman is inferior inherently. Ten year old girls can be forced to marry against their wishes, and that women can be treated as slaves in a marriage, and that a woman can’t drive an automobile, some countries don’t let women vote, like Saudi Arabia. ...

It is much worse in some of the third world countries where genital cutting is condoned and girls are forced to marry when they are as young as 8 or 10 years old and they have no voice in who their husband might be or when they get married. And you see the extreme case with Al Qaeda and particularly with the Taliban in Afghanistan. So these are the kind of things that permeate society in a very general way and it afflicts almost every single community in America and almost throughout the world. There is a sense that women are not quite equal to men both politically and economically and in religious terms.
They "try to impose very strict law"? Try? As in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen, to name a few of the obvious examples?


Even more disturbing, however, is the lax implication (due to laziness? or something worse?) that the sort of violent, oppressive, and deadly actions against women occurring on a regular basis in many Islamic countries are merely different in degree, not in essential character, from what is found in countries such as America and in religions such as Catholicism. Again, the strange thing about Carter's approach is how it is an illogical combination of a fundamentalist sort of sola scriptura and a deeply ideological form of modern feminism. He assumes the Bible has the final say on these matters—he appeals to the writings of Paul to support women's ordination—but then interprets Scripture using feminist assumptions about male authority (bad, all bad!) and the development of doctrine (also bad!) which undermine his first assumption.

This is especially the case when he states, quite incorrectly, that "after about the third century when men took over control of the Catholic Church, then they began to ordain that women had to play an inferior position, not be a priest." Nevermind that the Church was only just starting to get around to sorting out and establishing, in local synods, the canon of the New Testament. This is no better than when Jehovah's Witnesses claim the New Testament actually dismisses any belief in the Trinity while also claiming, with nary a flinch or a pause, to accept the authority of that same collection of 27 books, even though said canon was named and defined by the very Church ("one, holy, catholic, and apostolic") they insist was the lying, heretical source of the dread dogam of the Trinity.


And, finally, there is the fairly obvious fact that Carter has apparently never bothered to seriously study or understand why the Catholic, Orthodox, and Ancient Oriental Churches do not ordain women. Or why it is, to take it a step further, that those churches believe in apostolic succession and believe that the Eucharist is the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. In short, Carter is not only not theologically savvy, he's apparently lazy and even bigoted, if we understand bigotry as a rigid, reactionary intolerance that will not, for various reasons (ideology, notably), allow the opposition's arguments to be considered, let alone tolerated.Gulp, gulp, glug!



About the Author

Carl E. Olson

Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight.

In Defence of Bugnini

Sacrosanctum Concilium

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Ben Trovato's blog has had a couple of thought provoking posts about the Liturgy recently. Arising from a comment on a posting on Cardinal Heenan's comments on the new Rite of Mass, he produced a secondwhich looked more closely at what is perhaps the most frequently raised criticsm of the new Rite by those attached to the former Rite, that is that there is less emphasis on the sacrifical action of the Mass, and less emphasis on the Real Presence.

In a separate part of the thicket, I have been following the Society of St Gregory's forum, in particular recently a discussion about the musical settings of the new translation of the Mass which the musicians who are members of the Society are using. Two things stand out clearly: first, that their love of the Liturgy and their wish to beautify it in music are as strong as those of any member of the LMS; and second that they stand hard and fast in the tradition of Bugnini and the Consilium, as rooted in Pope Paul's New Mass, as the LMS members are in Pope John's Old Mass.

A narrative has been developing, in the context of the Pope's wishes to better situate our understanding of Vatican II in the context of the tradition of the Church, which suggests that the Council did not want the changes which Mgr Bugnini and his Consilium produced: that they were a bunch of adventurers playing fast and loose with some desires for cautious and judicious change expressed by the Bishops in the Council. Chasing down a comment in Bugnini's Reform Of The Liturgy to make a point in a comment on Ben's blog, I realised that he actually felt confident that his Reform was rooted entirely within the express wishes of the Council fathers, and cited Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Apostolic Constitution on the Liturgy solemnly proclaimed at the Couincil, as his source.

Reading it (it's here), you can see why he thought he might have a point.

Here are three extracts:

"To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence."

"Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters. These norms being observed, it is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used; their decrees are to be approved, that is, confirmed, by the Apostolic See. And, whenever it seems to be called for, this authority is to consult with bishops of neighboring regions which have the same language."

"Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples' way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit. Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics."

My point is not that Clown Masses or Easter Bunny Masses are somehow validated, but that the overwhelming majority (2147 for, 4 against) of Bishops at the Council in 1963 believed that radical change in the form of the Roman Rite and in the way that lay people participated in it was necessary, and gave Bugnini a framework in which to develop this new form. We can't pretend that he was some sort of Militant Tendency entryist, an ecclesiastical Derek Hatton burrowing within to change by stealth what everybody wants to hold fast to, other than by denying that he was doing what a couple of thousand Bishops, including, as far as I can tell, all of what might be thought of as the diehard traditionalists.

I don't think that the Michael Davies argument - that a small group of peritideliberately conspired to make Sacrosanctum Concilium sufficiently vague to allow them to do as they wished subsequently - holds either: it's quite clear, for example, from the extract above, that vernacular readings were intended to be a first step, and that its use could be extended wherever the local authorities wanted.

All of which suggests that these waters are deep, even if they aren't still, and that any resolution is a long way off, assuming that "resolution" means that some sort of thesis and antithesis need to be synthesised. Meanwhile, the Bishop Davies who has recently turned over a major church in his diocese to the Traditional Rite is going to be welcomed to a Confirmation celebration in another of his parishes by a guitar group which writes its own settings of the Mass and hopes to get him at least to tap a toe. Is that really what two forms of the Roman Rite should mean?

http://ttonys-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sacrosanctum-concilium.html

The enigma of Archbishop Bugnini

Liturgy Disaster, or the case of the Bugnini Dossier


The enigma of Archbishop Bugnini
by Michael Davies
How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of arbishop Bugnini

Australian Catholicism's one million "lost": a sociological analysis - B.A. Santamaria


Michael Davies is an English convert to Catholicism and a prolific writer on liturgical issues, including his trilogy 'Liturgical revolution.' He examines the role of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, a major architect of the Catholic Church's liturgical changes since Vatican II.

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Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who died in Rome on 3 July 1982, was described in an obituary in The Times as "one of the most unusual figures in the Vatican's diplomatic service." It would be more than euphemistic to describe the Archbishop's career as simply "unusual". There can be no doubt at all that the entire ethos of Catholicism within the Roman Rite has been changed profoundly by the liturgical revolution which has followed the Second Vatican Council.

As Father Kenneth Baker SJ remarked in his editorial in the February 1979 issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review: "We have been overwhelmed with changes in the Church at all levels, but it is the liturgical revolution which touches all of us intimately and immediately."

Commentators from every shade of theological opinion have argued that we have undergone a revolution rather than a reform since the Council. Professor Peter L. Berger, a Lutheran sociologist, insists that no other term will do, adding: "If a thoroughly malicious sociologist, bent on injuring the Catholic community as much as possible had been an adviser to the Church, he could hardly have done a better job."

Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand expressed himself in even more forthright terms: "Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better."

Major Conquest

Archbishop Bugnini was the most influential figure in the implementation of this liturgical revolution, which he described in 1974 as "a major conquest of the Catholic Church."


Let's pray for the church, the Holy Father, and the Tradition

The Archbishop was born in Civitella de Lego, Italy, in 1912. He was ordained into the Congregation for the Missions (Vincentians) in 1936, did parish work for ten years, in 1947 he became active in the field of specialised liturgical studies, was appointed Secretary to Pope Pius Xll's Commission for Liturgical Reform in 1948, a Consultor to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1956; and in 1957 he was appointed Professor of Sacred Liturgy in the Lateran University.

In 1960 Father Bugnini was placed in a position which enabled him to exert a decisive influence on the future of the Catholic Liturgy: he was appointed Secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. He was the moving spirit behind the drafting of the preparatory schema, the draft document which was to be placed before the Council Fathers for discussion. It was referred to as the "Bugnini schema" by his admirers, and was accepted by a plenary session of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission in a vote taken on 13 January 1962.


The Liturgy Constitution for which the Council Fathers eventually voted was substantially identical to the draft schema which Father Bugnini had steered successfully through the Preparatory Commission in the face of considerable misgivings on the part of Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, President of the Commission.

The First Exile

Within a few weeks of Father Bugnini's triumph his supporters were stunned when he was summarily dismissed from his chair at the Lateran University and from the secretaryship of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission. In his posthumous La Riforma Liturgica, Archbishop Bugnini blames Cardinal Arcadio Larraona for this action, which, he claims, was unjust and based on unsubstantiated allegations. "The first exile of P. Bugnini" he commented, (p.41).


St Francis of Sales, pray for us.

The dismissal of a figure as influential as Father Bugnini could not have taken place without the approval of Pope John XXIII, and, although the reasons have never been disclosed, they must have been of a very serious nature. Father Bugnini was the only secretary of a preparatory commission who was not confirmed as secretary of the conciliar commission. Cardinals Lercaro and Bea intervened with the Pope on his behalf, without success.

The Liturgy Constitution, based loosely on the Bugnini schema, contained much generalised and, in places ambiguous terminology. Those who had the power to interpret it were certain to have considerable scope for reading their own ideas into the conciliar text. Cardinal Heenan of Westminster mentioned in his autobiography A Crown of Thorns that the Council Fathers were given the opportunity of discussing only general principles:

"Subsequent changes were more radical than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the decree on the Liturgy. His sermon at the end of the first session shows that Pope John did not suspect what was being planned by the liturgical experts." The Cardinal could hardly have been more explicit.

The experts (periti) who had drafted the text intended to use the ambiguous terminology they had inserted in a manner that the Pope and the Bishops did not even suspect. The English Cardinal warned the Council Fathers of the manner in which the periti could draft texts capable "of both an orthodox and modernistic interpretation." He told them that he feared the periti, and dreaded the possibility of their obtaining the power to interpret the Council to the world. "God forbid that this should happen!" he exclaimed, but happen it did.


The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was the first document passed by the Council Fathers (4 December 1963), and the commission to implement it (the Consilium) had been established in 1964.

Triumphant Return

In a gesture which it is very hard to understand, Pope Paul Vl appointed to the key post of Secretary the very man his predecessor had dismissed from the same position on the Preparatory Commission, Father Annibale Bugnini. Father Bugnini was now in a unique and powerful position to interpret the Liturgy Constitution in precisely the manner he had intended when he masterminded its drafting.

In theory, the Consilium was no more than an advisory body, and the reforms it devised had to be approved by the appropriate Roman Congregation. In his Apostolic Constitution, Sacrum Rituum Congregatio (8 May 1969), Pope Paul Vl ended the existence of the Consilium as a separate body and incorporated it into the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. Father Bugnini was appointed Secretary to the Congregation, and became more powerful than ever. He was now in the most influential position possible to consolidate and extend the revolution behind which he had been the moving spirit and principle of continuity. Nominal heads of the Consilium and congregations came and went, Cardinals Lercaro, Gut, Tabera, Knox, but Father Bugnini always remained. His services were rewarded by his consecration as an Archbishop in 1972.

Second Exile

In 1974 he felt able to make his celebrated boast that the reform of the liturgy had been a "major conquest of the Catholic Church". He also announced in the same year that his reform was about to enter into its final stage: "The adaptation or 'incarnation' of the Roman form of the liturgy into the, usages and mentality of each individual Church." In India this "incarnation" has reached the extent of making the Mass in some centres appear more reminiscent of Hindu rites than the Christian Sacrifice.

Then, in July 1975, at the very moment when his power had reached its zenith, Archbishop Bugnini was summarily dismissed from his post to the dismay of liberal Catholics throughout the world. Not only was he dismissed but his entire Congregation was dissolved and merged with the Congregation for the Sacraments.

Desmond O'Grady expressed the outrage felt by liberals when he wrote in the 30 August 1972 issue of The Tablet: "Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who as Secretary of the abolished Congregation for Divine Worship, was the key figure in the Church's liturgical reform, is not a member of the new congregation. Nor, despite his lengthy experience, was he consulted in the planning of it. He heard of its creation while on holiday in Fiuggi ... the abrupt way in which this was done does not augur well for the Bugnini line of encouragement for reform in collaboration with local hierarchies ... Mgr Bugnini conceived the next ten years' work as concerned principally with the incorporation of local usages into the liturgy ... He represented the continuity of the post-conciliar liturgical reform."

The 15 January 1976 issue of L'Osservatore Romano announced that Archbishop Bugnini had been appointed Apostolic Pro Nuncio in Iran. This was his second and final exile.

Conspirator Or Victim?

Rumours soon began to circulate that the Archbishop had been exiled to Iran because the Pope had been given evidence proving him to be a Freemason. This accusation was made public in April 1976 by Tito Casini, one of Italy's leading Catholic writers. The accusation was repeated in other journals, and gained credence as the months passed and the Vatican did not intervene to deny the allegations. (Of course, whether or not Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason, in a sense, is a side issue compared with the central issue - the nature and purpose of his liturgical innovations.)

As I wished to comment on the allegation in my book Pope John's Council, I made a very careful investigation of the facts, and I published them in that book and in far greater detail in Chapter XXIV of its sequel, Pope Paul's New Mass, where all the necessary documentation to substantiate this article is available. This prompted a somewhat violent attack upon me by the Archbishop in a letter published in the May issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, in which he claimed that I was a calumniator, and that I had colleagues who were "calumniators by profession".



St. Paul of Tarsus, pray for us.

I found this attack rather surprising as I alleged no more in Pope John's Council than Archbishop Bugnini subsequently admitted in La Riforma Liturgica. I have never claimed to have proof that Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason. What I have claimed is that Pope Paul Vl dismissed him because he believed him to be a Freemason - the distinction is an important one. It is possible that the evidence was not genuine and that the Pope was deceived.

Dossier

The sequence of events was as follows. A Roman priest of the very highest reputation came into possession of what he considered to be evidence proving Mgr Bugnini to be a Mason. He had this information placed in the hands of Pope Paul Vl by a cardinal, with a warning that if action were not taken at once he would be bound in conscience to make the matter public. The dismissal and exile of the Archbishop followed.

In La Riforma Liturgica, Mgr Bugnini states that he has never known for certain what induced the Pope to take such a drastic and unexpected decision, even after "having understandably knocked at a good many doors at all levels in the distressing situation that prevailed" (p. 100). He did discover that "a very high-ranking cardinal, who was not at all enthusiastic about the liturgical reform, disclosed the existence of a 'dossier', which he himself had seen (or placed) on the Pope's desk, bringing evidence to support the affiliation of Mgr Bugnini to Freemasonry (p.101). This is precisely what I stated in my book, and I have not gone beyond these facts. I will thus repeat that Pope Paul Vl dismissed Archbishop Bugnini because he believed him to be a Mason.

Rumour

The question which then arises is whether the Archbishop was a conspirator or the victim of a conspiracy. He was adamant that it was the latter: "The disclosure was made in great secrecy, but it was known that the rumour was already circulating in the Curia. It was an absurdity, a pernicious slander. This time, in order to attack the purity of the liturgical reform, they tried morally to tarnish the purity of the secretary of the reform" (p.101-102).

Archbishop Bugnini wrote a letter to the Pope on 22 October 1975 denying any involvement with Freemasonry, or any knowledge of its nature or its aims. The Pope did not reply. This is of some significance in view of their close and frequent collaboration from 1964. The great personal esteem that the Pope had felt for the Archbishop is proved by his decision to appoint him as Secretary to the Consilium, and later to the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, despite the action taken against him during the previous pontificate.

Evidence

It is also very significant that the Vatican has never given any reason for the dismissal of Archbishop Bugnini, despite the sensation it caused, and it has never denied the allegations of Masonic affiliation. If no such affiliation had been involved in Mgr Bugnini's dismissal, it would have been outrageous on the part of the Vatican to allow the charge to be made in public without saying so much as a word to exonerate the

Archbishop.

I was able to establish contact with the priest who had arranged for the "Bugnini dossier" to be placed into the hands of Pope Paul Vl, and I urged him to make the evidence public. He replied: "I regret that I am unable to comply with your request. The secret which must surround the denunciation (in consequence of which Mgr Bugnini had to go!) is top secret and such it has to remain. For many reasons. The single fact that the above mentioned Monsignore was immediately dismissed from his post is sufficient. This means that the arguments were more than convincing."

I very much regret that the question of Mgr Bugnini's possible Masonic affiliation was ever raised as it tends to distract attention from the liturgical revolution which he masterminded. The important question is not whether Mgr Bugnini was a Mason but whether the manner in which Mass is celebrated in most parishes today truly raises the minds and hearts of the faithful up to almighty God more effectively than did the pre-conciliar celebrations. The traditional Mass of the Roman Rite is, as Father Faber expressed it, "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven." The very idea that men of the second half of the twentieth century could replace it with something better, is, as Dietrich von Hildebrand has remarked, ludicrous.

Liturgy Destroyed

The liturgical heritage of the Roman Rite may well be the most precious treasure of our entire Western civilisation, something to be cherished and preserved for future generations. The Liturgy Constitution of the Second Vatican Council stated that: "In faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognised rites to be of equal right and dignity, that she wishes to preserve them in future and foster them in every way."


What is left we have to pick up, and start all over...

How has this command of the Council been obeyed? The answer can be obtained from Father Joseph Gelineau SJ, a Council peritus, and an enthusiastic proponent of the postconciliar revolution. In his book Demain la liturgie, he stated with commendable honesty, concerning the Mass as most Catholics know it today: "To tell the truth it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed." Even Archbishop Bugnini would have found it difficult to explain how something can be preserved and fostered by destroying it.

Contents - Jun 1989 - Buy a copy now
Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 2 No 5 (June 1989), p. 17

Posted by Robert Nicodemo
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