Don't you like the Mass of Vatican II?

Dear Rev. Know it all,

Boy, am I glad you are not my pastor. You sound like a joyless puritan with all this stuff about Mass not being Catholic enough. What’s wrong with “the consolation and instruction of the people,” even if Luther said it? The Second Vatican Council gave us the new liturgy. Or wasn’t the Council Catholic enough for you?

Yours,

Kent Zingwell

Dear Kent,

I did hear something about a council that was held perhaps forty-five or fifty years ago (1962-1965). In fact, I have actually read some of the documents that the Council produced. Allow me to quote one in particular, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy “SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM” published on Dec. 4, 1963;

Article 116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.

Well then, let’s look Article 30. 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.

Here’s some more interesting reading from the Council.: Article 120. In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man's mind to God and to higher things. But other instruments also may be admitted for use in divine worship, with the knowledge and consent of the competent territorial authority, as laid down in Art. 22, 52, 37, and 40. This may be done, however, only on condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable, for sacred use, accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful. And here’s some more interesting stuff: Article 36. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

I know that by quoting all these arcane passages I seem like some pathetic old coot who’s trying to jam the tooth paste back into the tube, but I think you miss my meaning. I may be a pathetic old coot, but not one who is opposed to the work of the Holy Spirit in the Second Vatican Council. The liturgy as we have it now has nothing to do with the Second Vatican council. In fact, the liturgy that most people assume is the “Mass of Vatican Two” is in direct defiance of that great and inspired Council. Inspired by a rebellious clergy, the better part of a billion people have ended up thumbing their noses at the work of the Council. That is my sorrow. The promise of my youth has been betrayed. Much of the Council has never been implemented. Instead, we Latin rite Catholics now have an essentially Protestant framework for the Eucharist. Four hymns written by third rate musicians have replaced psalms written by the Spirit of God.

Why did we do this? I remember it well. The council urged greater participation on the part of the congregation (Article 54 steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them. ) The adolescents who ran seminary choirs and folk groups, most of whom were flunking Latin class anyway, were not about to obey this mandate. They also ignored another part of the document Article 50. The rite of the Mass is to be revised in such a way that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested, and that devout and active participation by the faithful may be more easily achieved.Mass. It just felt better. In other words, the chanted Mass parts are an organic whole, united spiritually and musically. The Mass is not an “order of service” with a list of loosely related hymns. But, four hymns with catchy tunes were easier to learn than chant and the sixties were all about “easy.” So, four man-made hymns replaced God- breathed Psalms and hymns made sacred by the test of time. We stopped singing the Mass and started singing at

I can just hear you say, “There you go again. What have you got against feeling good? Haven’t you read article 48? (The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ's faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed by God's word and be nourished at the table of the Lord's body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves; through Christ the Mediator [38], they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally God may be all in all.)

When we read those words, “the faithful should take part...with...full collaboration.” Many priests thought “lay concelebrants.” This is certainly not what the Council Fathers had in mind. It was a false interpretation made by anti-clerical clergy. The above text reinforces the sacrificial understanding that makes the Catholic Mass Catholic. Read the fine print. “Not ONLY through the hands of the priest, BUT ALSO, with him they should learn to offer themselves .” The priest is not replaced. The faithful should remember that they join themselves to Christ on the cross as does the priest when he celebrates Mass. Mass is not a spectator event, nor an entertainment. It is the sacrifice in which “I make up in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ,” as St. Paul puts it.

The heart of Catholic worship is the real presence. When we hear the phrase “real presence” we are tempted to think that it means simply that the whole Christ is really present in the form of bread and wine. It certainly means this, but, believe it or not, it means still more.

When I was a much younger man, I was at a very difficult parish. I went through seminary after the beginning of the council and was a very thoroughly “Vatican Two Catholic” by which I mean, not the council, but the council ignored. I remembered the “old” Mass from my childhood and its beautiful music, and when I heard that there was a Latin in parish not far from me, I thought it might be interesting to attend. On a hot summer day that had been unusually trying, and being in the need of a spiritual “uplift” I decided to drive down to the parish where the old Mass was offered for their 12:30 High (sung) Mass. I was quite disappointed. There was no choir, no beautiful old hymns. There was an old priest facing a wall mumbling in a language I could barely hear, much less understand. I said to the Lord, “I’m not having much of an experience here.” That small voice inside answered, “Oh, you came for an experience. I thought you came to worship Me.”Touché! Convicted of my own sinful narcissism that I had mistaken for “spirituality,” I knelt and worshiped. And then, I had an experience! I realized that God, the Son of God was REALLY present, in His body, blood, soul and divinity. That tired old priest was not responsible for my feelings. I wasn’t required to feel anything. Whether I felt it or not, it was real and I knelt and bowed my head, worshiping the God who made me, the Savior who loved me. I understood worship as I had never understood it before. It was not about my consolation and instruction. It was about my Lord. It was the Real Presence that accompanied Max Kolbe and Edith Stein to the gray death camps. It was the Real Presence that sustained Mother Teresa and Therese of Liseux when they felt nothing yet remained faithful. It was the Real Presence, not just the felt presence that sustained John on the lonely island of Patmos, and strengthened Peter and Paul as they faced the Roman executioners. In this sad time of virtual reality and arm chair lives, it is still the Real Presence that makes a person Catholic.

Yours,

Reverend Know-it-all

But I like "joyful" music at Mass

Dear Rev. Know it all,

What do you mean that Mass has become a kind of hybrid with American Protestantism? Will you ever cheer up? You’ve been listening to that dreary chant so long that it appears to have hardened your brains. Remember as St. Augustine said, “the Christian is an alleluia from head to foot.” The Mass is supposed to be joyful. The Christian is supposed to be joyful. I want music at Mass that makes me joyful and chant just doesn’t fit the bill.

Yours,

Ms. Joy Buzzer

Dear Miss Buzzer,

You sound like you got your theology from the back of a shampoo bottle. “Lather, Rinse, Repeat.” A nice hairdo may involve bubbles and lather, but the Sacrifice of the Mass does not. The joy of the Lord is not exactly the same as the joy the world offers. The joy of the Christian is caused by the nearness of the Lord, and not by how catchy the tune is.

First of all, put things into context. St Augustine may have said it, but when he said alleluia, he was chanting it in Hebrew. Alleluia means “Praise the Lord.” It is Hebrew and it has always been chanted until recent times. The very quote you use makes my point. The word “Hallelujah” was not in the common language. It was retained in the Catholic Liturgy of which St. Augustine was a priest and bishop in order to tie the Christian worship to their Hebrew past. It was kept in a “sacred language” precisely to express the universality of the Church. Remember that “Catholic” is the Greek word for “Universal.” We are members of a universal Church and, while it is appropriate to speak to local culture, we cease to be Catholic by definition when we make the Mass so local as to be unidentifiable. It becomes mine, not ours. I want to be a member of the Church that Jesus founded through the ministry of the Apostles, a Universal Church. Universality, that is Catholicism, means that the Church extended not only through space, but also time. The Church I belong to is part of an unbroken chain of worship.

In the church in the village where my family comes from in the old country, there is a baptismal fount. It is carved from a block of sandstone, and is so worn with time that it is almost impossible to tell what the carvings and decoration on it are. It goes back, I assume to the 1200's when the church was built. When I first saw it and touched it, I realized I was touching something that generations of my ancestors had touched. It was a vehicle by which they had reached through time in order to bring me to Christ and Christ to me. By my Baptism and my participation in the Mass, I was more profoundly united to them than I was even by my genetic and cultural inheritance. Well, I suppose we should throw it out and get a new one, one that made sense, one that has words on it we can read. Don’t you understand that there is a language that speaks more powerfully than words? Just because something isn’t easily decipherable doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be understood. The inheritance of 3,000 or 4,000 years shouldn’t be thrown away just because it leaves me cold. Perhaps the fault is mine, not the fault of the inheritance.

Fr. Martin Luther decided to rewrite the Catholic Mass, to declare that it was not a sacrifice. It simply became a re-enactment of the Lord’s supper, a sort of stage play, aimed at the audience, not the ultimate act of worship. "The cult (i.e. Mass) was formerly meant to render homage to God; henceforth it shall be directed to man in order to console him and enlighten him. Whereas the sacrifice formerly held pride of place, henceforth the most important will be the sermon.” (Luther quoted by Léon Christiani, Du luthéranisme au protestantisme (1910), p. 312)

The course was thus set for the modern world in which the value of a religious service had nothing really to do with the worship of God. Rather it has everything to do with the well being of the participant. It is about me, not about God. In that sense it is the worship of me, not of God. It is modern man distilled. Man, not God, is the measure of all things. Though I may feel just wonderful about the whole service, I have not stepped into the unending stream of history. I have not stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai nor entered Solomon’s Temple. I have not trod Calvary’s holy ground nor drank from the cup which the Savior drank. I have not wept for joy at the empty tomb, nor felt the fire of Pentecost. I’ve been to a Church service and I guess it was okay and now I’m going out to breakfast.

We live in a disposable society. We have plastic plates and plastic forks and plastic shoes and plastic cars and plastic music and on and on. It is all disposable, as are we. We are drowning in a sea of plastic. Give me something made of rock. Give me the Catholic Mass.

Rev. Know-it-all

Isn't all music suitable for Mass?

Dear Rev. Know it all,
My pastor is trying to introduce more Gregorian chant into the Mass. I hate it. It’s boring. I like music that makes me feel something. Chant is so dreary and depressing. One of the great things the Vatican Council did was that it did away with the old chant and encouraged people to use more expressive modern music like Ray Repp and the St. Louis Jesuits. Shouldn’t Mass be joyful?
Yours,
Harold E. Lujah

Dear Hal,( May I call you Hal?)
So, the Vatican Council did away with Gregorian chant? Here’s a video you might find interesting, http://musicfortheliturgy.org/video/sacred_vs_secular.htm. What pray, tell, is new about the music you mentioned? The St. Louis Jesuits wrote their stuff from 1964 to 1974, almost fifty years ago. I remember it well. We would have relevant music, music that the young could relate to. It would fill the churches with youth and vitality. Didn’t anyone notice that in 1964 the churches were full? Well that worked out real well.
Now, in Europe and America we have churches sparsely filled with grey heads that think fifty-year-old music is contemporary. Got any more good ideas? Have you never heard that one who is married to the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower?
One can occasionally force an adolescent to go to church if the child is allowed to wear shorts and a T-shirt, but chances are he finds nothing interesting or special going on. It is just that old music that grandma thinks is so modern.
And then there’s the stirring lyrics “Sons of God, hear his holy word. Gather round the table of the Lord. Eat His body, drink his blood and we’ll sing a song of love, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu Hallelu-u-u-u yah” and “Halelu, Hallelu, everybody sing Hallelu The Lord is risen, it is true everybody sing Hallelu.” and “Come dance in the forest, come bump into trees...” Or something like that. What majestic poetry. Who could possibly prefer Gregorian chant to this stuff?
What is Gregorian chant, anyway? The name Gregorian derives from Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), to whom tradition ascribes the codification of Roman chant. It is first called Gregorian chant at a later date, perhaps by Pope Leo IV (847-855) (cantus St. Gregorii.) Pope Gregory did not invent the music called by his name, but he seems to have helped standardize it. It was added to and developed over the years, but it most certainly is a style of music that reaches further back into distant antiquity. Here are some excerpts from an article, “Crossing the Sacred Bridge”, “The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, and as a sign of mourning both for its destruction and for the Israelite exile, the rabbis issued a prohibition against making music with instruments. The voice, which always had been the main instrument of prayer, became the only one. The music itself was monophonic – with no harmony – as it is to this day in the Middle East.
"Although Gregorian chant has been influenced by other factors, it collects and preserves the Church’s ancient modal prayer, and that tradition was learned and copied from Hebrew prayer modes and traditions.” “...The early Christians were Jews..... They lived during the time when synagogues were being established and Jewish prayer services developed. When the Second Temple was destroyed there already were more than 300 synagogues in Jerusalem. Just as Jews had morning, afternoon, and evening services, the early Christians, too, were told to pray in the morning and afternoon, at approximately the same time..... Such Church fathers as St. John Chrysostom, 400 CE) knew that customs and liturgical practices had been transmitted from Jews to Christians.... While the roots of early Christian music surely must be sought in the entire ancient eastern world, it clearly originated in the liturgical singing of Levitical and lay cantors who had come to Rome from Jerusalem.” I myself have an interesting recording called the “Sacred Bridge” by the Boston Camarata in which is recorded Psalm 114 using both a Christian psalm tone sung in Latin and a Jewish psalm tone from the Sephardic tradition, sung in Hebrew. The melodies are not similar, they are exactly the same! They presumably come from a common source.
Why am I telling you all this? It’s almost as boring as Gregorian chant itself. Because: these are melodies and styles of music that Jesus and His disciples would have recognized. When you chant you are entering something much bigger than yourself. You are entering the very temple to offer sacrifice to God. Herein lies the problem. Modern people, don’t believe anything is bigger than ourselves. We have big skies and great plains and purple mountains’ majesty and super-sized everything. We are the top of the food chain. We drive Humvees. The liturgical movement of the 60's 70's and 80's largely caved in to that modern spirit, the primacy of ME. Some practitioners of our new and improved liturgy put the emphasis on the satisfied customer, not on something beautiful for God. It is a fine thing to stir the soul and uplift the mind and heart, but it is not the first thing. Worship is the first thing, and worship means “to bow down before.” (in the New Testament “proskynein”) Does the liturgy exalt God or does it exalt me and my personal tastes?
Admittedly, we are removed from the Catholic understanding of worship by at least one generation. But the tradition is far from dead. In its simplicity, chant should allow everyone present to join in worship. It should be remembered that “he who sings prays twice.” How can people join in if you are going to insist on this weird music? I’ve had a lot of complaints that people can’t join in because they aren’t used to it and don’t understand it, especially if there is Latin involved. It’s foreign to them. It will take a lot of work to become Catholic again, and we will have to emphasize repetition and simplicity, not novelty. But, I still believe that it is wrong to simply give in to the sentimentalism of modern life and to forsake worship because it is hard to climb Calvary. We have to find our way back to Catholic worship.
What most of us do in church now is just not catholic, by which I mean universal. It is a kind of hybrid with American Protestantism. It emphasizes the local over the universal. It may enrich a particular community or particular people, by whom I mean “me,” but it doesn’t bind the Church together in space and time. It is fine to have elements of worship that resonate with a local community, but it is a beautiful thing that a Catholic can travel to a distant land and find fellowship with the Lord and His Bride in a song known to him in his native place. How wonderful that I can sing a song that was known to my ancestors and will be known to those who come after me. As the Psalm has it “Behold how good and how pleasant when brethren dwell as one. It is like oil running down the beard of Aaron.” Remember that Aaron was the first Levitical priest and the unity of worship is compared in the Psalm to his priestly anointing. How sweet it must be to the Lord to hear a song rise up from the earth that has been sung since the ark traveled in the desert, a melody that was known to our Lord and our Blessed Mother, a song chanted by Peter and Paul as they faced their executions at the hands of Nero’s henchmen, a song sung for generations, a song of love that unites believers throughout time and space.
Naaahh! Give me something I can hum, something more interesting. If I like it, surely God must like it. I want to get something out of it, not put something into it. I want to come into church and hear some snappy tune. Nothing that challenges. I want no mystery nor wonder. I gotta see what’s going on. Has it occurred to you that there is nothing going on inside the church that isn’t going on outside the church so why bother to go in? You can watch it at home on TV if you want. Modern liturgy leaves nothing to one’s imagination or sense of wonder. It is, in most cases, as banal and boring as television. For forty years we have wandered in a liturgical desert trying to convince ourselves that it was a garden, and still, we think that “if it’s just a little snappier,” a touch more “pizzaz”, that will bring them in. Keep doing what you’ve done for forty years and you’ll get what you’ve gotten for forty years. Time to stop playing to the crowd. It hasn’t worked. Oh, if you still want to be entertained at church, I know a church in the northwest suburbs that has a food court. They broadcast the service into the food court. You can have a latte while hearing really good music and swell preaching. If that’s what you want, then go for it.
Rev. Know-it-all