Pope Benedict On Music And The Liturgy

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Amppax' timestamp='1306931947' post='2248640']
I think from now on i'm just going to skip everything else in these debates, and go right to what you write.
[/quote]
That's basically where I'm at.

[dUSt]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1306919242' post='2248622']
there are two things that we can get out of the gospels: one is worship, one is instruction. when the gospels are chanted, it is an act of worship as much as the veneration of a beautiful icon. we are worshipping the Lord by contemplating His actions in the gospel in their painted form or their sung form; just as we paint them in art to worship the Lord in that art form, we chant them to worship the Lord in that art form. when they are recited, it is generally a form of didactic instruction.

now of course we can worship/contemplate them while they're being recited, and we can be instructed while they're being chanted, but generally the veil of latin being placed over something in the liturgy of the Latin Church evokes a particular spirit and atmosphere of worship. it's a type of worship you can't get any other way other than by having a sacred language, and it's a great treasure for the Church. worship in English isn't worse, but it is definitely different, and the Latin Church would be impoverished greatly if it lost the particular way of worshipping in the Latin language. Latin Catholics should not shun that particular type of worshipping completely, and I would recommend making every effort to enter into that type of worship that has colored our Church for centuries producing so many saints, at least occassionally. the chanting of the gospel in latin is an experience that when properly approached cannot be found in any other setting. it's not the same when it's chanted in English. Not to say it's better or worse chanted in Latin or English (though I would say it is better chanted than recited, since it emphasizes God-centered worship rather than people-centered instruction, and I think the people-centered instruction should be reserved as much as possible for the homily only)

I think the general preference for reciting the gospel reflects the general preference in the modern liturgy for being didactic and instructive, and that has hurt the atmosphere of worship that should be in the liturgy. instruction is people-centered, that is a good thing but it's more proper in the homily than in the liturgy (or "in the rest of the liturgy" if you want to include the homily as part of the liturgy... I tend to agree with the view that it is something which is outside the liturgy in some sense).
[/quote]

[Nihil Obstat]

I liked the part where Al agreed with me.
At all times we should be striving for participation in the Holy Mass, but participation doesn't mean 'doing stuff'. Active participation (participatio actuosa) is achieved when we are united in worship with the Holy Church. It is not necessary that we are outwardly moving or 'doing' anything, though the external *gestures* such as kneeling and standing and sitting help us towards active participation. Speaking strictly though, a blind deaf paralytic can participate actively as well as anybody can. We unite ourselves with prayer and worship. That is the meaning of active participation. Anything short of that- the participation which tries to give everyone a job- is shallow and falls far short of what is actually meant.

[size="2"]"Every age has participated in the liturgy through baptism, as members of the Church and part of the mystical body of Christ. All ages have shared in the right and duty of actuosa participatio. [...] One cannot say that because the medieval period developed a chant that was largely the possession of monastic choirs, the congregations who listened were not actively participating. Perhaps not according to post-Vatican II standards, but one must carefully avoid the error of judging the past by the present and applying to former times criteria that seem valuable in our own times. Because Palestrina's polyphonic Masses require the singing of trained choirs, can one assume that non-choir members in the renaissance period were deprived of an active participation in the liturgy? No age could permit such a thing to happen and thus be deprived of the primary source of the spiritual life. The sixteenth-century baptized Roman did participate through listening along with other activites, as no doubt an eighteenth-century Austrian did when he heard a Mozart Mass performed by a choir and orchestra."

"Important too for any participation in the liturgy is the elevation of the spirit of the worshipper. Ultimately, liturgy is prayer, the supreme prayer of adoration, thanksgiving, petition and reparation. Prayer is the raising of the heart and the mind to God as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. The means to achieve such elevation of the spirit in prayer onvolve all the activities of the human person, both spirit and body. Such means produce true actuosa participatio. Thus beauty, whether it appeals to the sight, the ear, the imagination or any of the senses, is an important element in achieving participation. The architectural splendor of a great church or the sound of great music, or the solemnity of ceremonial movement by ministers clothed in precious vestments, or the beauty of the proclaimed word - all can effect a true and salutary participation in one who himself has not sung a note or taken a step. But he is not a mere spectator as some would say; he is actively participating because of his baptismal character and the grace stirred up in him by what he is seeing and hearing, thinking and praying."[/size]


We, as Latin Catholics, consider Gregorian chant to be specifically well suited to calling the faithful to worship. Therefore it stands to reason that chanting the Gospel in the Gregorian style is an eminently robust method of inspiring [i]the real meaning of[/i] active participation in the souls of the faithful.

[zalzan]

Once again, Nihil, your espousing a distorted and spurios understanding of the Liturgy not at all in line with whole corpus of Church teaching, especially current Church teaching,and including Dogmatic teaching vs your continual reliance on St. Pius X's pastoral instructions.

Here is another quote from Ratzinger-Benedict on the same topic, Latin in the liturgy, which you excluded from the excerpt you posted.

Here it is:

[quote]
The Church has set up two further road markers. In its inner character, liturgical music must correspond to the demands of the great liturgical texts — the [i]Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei[/i]. That does not mean, as I have already said, that it may be only text music. But it finds in the inner direction of these texts a pointer for its own message.

The second road marker is the reference to Gregorian chant and to Palestrina. Again, this reference does not mean that all Church music must be an imitation of this music. On this point, there were in fact many constrictions in the renewal of Church music in the last century and also in the papal documents based on it. Correctly understood, this simply says that norms are given here that provide an orientation. But what may arise through the creative appropriation of such an orientation is not to be established in advance.

The question remains: Humanly speaking, can one hope that new creative possibilities are still open? And how is that to happen? The first question is really quite easy to answer. For if this image of man is inexhaustible in opposition to the other one, then it also opens up ever new possibilities for the artistic message, and does so all the more, the more vividly it determines the spirit of an age. But here lies the difficulty for the second question.

In our times, faith has to a large extent stepped down as a publicly formative force. How is it to become creative? Has it not everywhere been repressed into a subculture? To this one could reply that we are apparently standing before a new blossoming of faith in Africa, Asia, and Latin America from which new cultural forms may sprout forth.

But even in the Western world the word "subculture" should not frighten us. In the cultural crisis we are experiencing, it is only from islands of spiritual composure that new cultural purification and unification can break forth. Where new outbursts of faith take place in living communities, one also sees how a new Christian culture is formed, how the community experience inspires and opens ways we could not see before. Furthermore, F. Doppelbauer has correctly pointed to the fact that liturgical music frequently and not coincidentally bears the character of a late work and presupposes a previously acquired maturity.

Here it is important that there be the antechambers of popular piety and its music as well as spiritual music in the wider sense which should always stand in a fruitful exchange with liturgical music: they are fructified and purified by it on the one hand, but they also prepare new forms of liturgical music. From their freer forms there can then mature what can enter into the common possession of the universal liturgy of the Church. Here then is also the realm in which the group can try its creativity in the hope that something will grow out of it that one day may belong to the whole.[/quote]

I frankly find it sad, the lengths you go to promote your distorted, Type-A, pharisaical views, whose only end is control and form over grace and substance. It does a disservice to the church and is a stumbling block to the faithful who are reading these forums, despite your good intentions. In this excerpt we clearly see that Ratzinger is nowhere near imposing such a rigid application of latin or gregorian chant as you would suggest. Again, you cannot pick and choose which parts of Church teaching you want..you have to look at the whole. Church teaching, and also Ratzinger-Pope Benedicts writings have layers and are carefully composed, and often contain modifying sections that in essence contain the pastoral or practical applications of the principles they contain. This is why you see the words "treasure" and "heritage" in with reference to liturgical music, as opposed to "dogma" or "bound." In the seond paragraph above, he effectively addresses your continual citing of Pope St. Pius X. The latter's pastoral instructions are not to "establish in advance" what may arise through the creative appropriation of our liturgical heritage. He goes on to further broaden this notion of creative and cultural interaction with the liturgy, and even specifically states that Gregorian chant does not have to be our model. This is the beauty of Church teaching; it gives us clear guideposts, but is ever open to the renewing, creating Holy Spirit.

Edited June 8, 2011 by dUSt
Edited for formatting.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='zalzan' timestamp='1307541238' post='2251233']
Once again, Nihil, your espousing a distorted and spurios understanding of the Liturgy not at all in line with whole corpus of Church teaching, especially current Church teaching,and including Dogmatic teaching vs your continual reliance on St. Pius X's pastoral instructions.

Here is another quote from Ratzinger-Benedict on the same topic, Latin in the liturgy, which you excluded from the excerpt you posted.

Here it is:



I frankly find it sad, the lengths you go to promote your distorted, Type-A, pharisaical views, whose only end is control and form over grace and substance. It does a disservice to the church and is a stumbling block to the faithful who are reading these forums, despite your good intentions. In this excerpt we clearly see that Ratzinger is nowhere near imposing such a rigid application of latin or gregorian chant as you would suggest. Again, you cannot pick and choose which parts of Church teaching you want..you have to look at the whole. Church teaching, and also Ratzinger-Pope Benedicts writings have layers and are carefully composed, and often contain modifying sections that in essence contain the pastoral or practical applications of the principles they contain. This is why you see the words "treasure" and "heritage" in with reference to liturgical music, as opposed to "dogma" or "bound." In the seond paragraph above, he effectively addresses your continual citing of Pope St. Pius X. The latter's pastoral instructions are not to "establish in advance" what may arise through the creative appropriation of our liturgical heritage. He goes on to further broaden this notion of creative and cultural interaction with the liturgy, and even specifically states that Gregorian chant does not have to be our model. This is the beauty of Church teaching; it gives us clear guideposts, but is ever open to the renewing, creating Holy Spirit.
[/quote]
That is ridiculous. Church teaching firmly establishes that Gregorian chant is *the* supreme model for music in the Latin Church. You simply have no leg to stand on theologically, and your characterization of my understanding of the Liturgy as "spurious" is completely unsubstantiated.
Go troll somewhere else.

[Aloysius]

there are a few things being discussed here in a huge jumbled mess, so perhaps I can dig my hands in and separate them a bit, because they each need to be dealt with seperately or else one ends up objecting to chanting the propers of the mass by saying that they can't understand Latin and Gregorian notation is too constricting.

[b]one question being asked is: should there be hymns/songs, or the liturgical propers of the day's mass?[/b]
the biggest problem that arose in the 19th and 20th century liturgies, IMO, is the replacing of the propers with other hymns and songs. It is something that Vatican II was trying to correct by its exortation to make Gregorian chant have pride of place. while some hymns have their places here and there, there should be a huge emphasis on the proper antiphons of the day, so that the whole Roman Church is praying the same prayer, in keeping with that day's feast. even Bugnini himself, architecht of the novus ordo mass, said that there should be propers sung instead of hymns. he said that it was CHEATING the people to replace the propers. much of the movement to insist upon chant is founded upon this chief goal: bring back the LITURGY, stop replacing parts of the liturgy with other songs. we have been deprived of the antiphons of the mass, the common prayers of the Church, because someone thinks Haugan and Haas know how to better express the sentiments of the day than those prayerful antiphons do.

"Thus texts must be those of the Mass, not others, and[b] singing means singing the Mass [u]not just singing during Mass[/u][/b]" -Bugnini's Consillium

this is not absolute, I suppose; I think it's okay to have a hymn/song here and there, preferably limited only to the opening and closing hymns, IMO. though I'd prefer to banish all songs for the noble simplicity of a Byzantine Liturgy, in which they sing their actual propers, than to have it overrun by hymns the way it is now. but we must learn to sing the mass rather than sing during mass.

[b]one question being asked is: should there be plainchant or hymns or songs?[/b]
plainchant is rooted in the deepest depths of our religion, and it is intricately connected to the scriptures themselves. there are different types of plainchant, it was once suggested that Gregorian plainchant had a direct connection to biblical plainchant, though that is now disputed. Whatever the historical roots of particular Gregorian chant, the psalms are made for some type of chant. it is intregal to our religion for MORE than 2000 years, coming out of the Hebrew tradition... chant echoed in the temple when Our Blessed Mother lived there as a child, chanted prayers surrounded the Apostles and Our Lord Himself when they attended temple. but more than being only connected to the scriptures themselves (which is good enough reason), it is connected to the liturgical texts as well. the scriptures are written for chant (especially the psalms), the liturgy is written for chant. now, as Vatican II reminds us, the Roman Liturgy is specifically written for Gregorian Chant (or Gregorian Chant for the Roman Liturgy), so it should have pride of place; but there are ancient types of plainchant that could be explored in the music of the mass... mozarabic, ambrosian, celtic, etc... and perhaps particular African chants or Asian chants. chant ensures that we're praying the prayers of the Church, not just replacing the prayers of the Church with a song.

[b]
one question being asked is: should there be gregorian plainchant, and should it be in Latin?[/b]
Vatican II acknowledges that the Roman Liturgy is particularly suited for Gregorian Chant, as the two were written for each other, so it is to have pride of place. But it is possible to adapt English to it, of course, and it is also possible to have different types of chant in the liturgy. As to the question of Latin, I dealt with that in my earlier posts on this thread, as I said: Latin chant is a particular type of praying that is the heritage of our Church, you will not receive the same type of prayer any other way, so if you shun it completely you shun a precious gem of Roman Catholic spirituality, and I can only imagine the amazing riches that you would be missing out on. not that it must be your exclusive type of liturgical prayer, but I would suggest to everyone that they please do try to delve into it at least some times.

Edited June 9, 2011 by Aloysius