What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

What to do?

There was a good comment in another entry (it doesn’t matter which).

A seminarian, who will remain anonymous, made some very good points which many might take to heart.  I have in mind especially some of his fellow seminarians.  But this also might apply to some lay people in parishes. 

My emphases and comments.

Comment by Anonymous Seminarian — 15 October 2007 @ 9:23 pm

Personally I have a very deep love for and attachment to the Extraordinary Form. The beauty of the Mass, even a simple Low Mass, is breath-taking and the meaning behind all the words and actions is amazing. As a diocesan seminarian, and (God-willing) future priest, nothing would make me happier than to see a greater overall appreciation for this Mass.

It’s no secret to anyone that in most seminaries it’s taboo to speak openly about your attachment to the Extraordinary Form. Is it because the faculty members are a bunch of raging heretics who would love to snuff out every last bit of Catholicism present in a young seminarian’s heart? Absolutely not.

Unfortunately, at least from my experience, the seminarians who speak openly about their love for the Traditional Latin Mass don’t stop there…it goes deeper. They put on a facade of sorts…they “play” the formation game but secretly distrust it. They avoid going to the community Mass and Divine Office whenever possible. They’re not interested in helping out at community events or fostering a house-hold sense of community period. Rather they are interested solely in developing their “underground traddy cliques” which usually consists of a bunch of guys who do nothing but complain about the terrible situation the Church is in. Is it any wonder to anyone then why talking about the Traditional Mass behind the walls of the seminary has become taboo? More often than not it’s accompanied by an agenda…a prideful agenda that is very contrary to the mind of the Church. As much as I personally absolutely love the Traditional Mass, I too would be concerned with seminarians who demonstrate such tendencies.

In saying this, those of us who love the Traditional Latin Mass have to remember not to make it look as if we have some sort of agenda. ... Sure, we can encourage people to attend and help in any way necessary, but we need to be very careful not to isolate ourselves from the rest of the Church. Our Catholic Church is a very big church with many different people in it…as hard as it may be to live with, not everyone moves to the beat of the same drum. Let’s be firm but gentle in defending our Faith, but when it comes to the Extraordinary vs. Ordinary Rite, let’s be even more gentle. Some people just are not there yet…and they may not be for a long time.

If seminary formation has taught me anything thus far it’s this: we all, especially priests and seminarians, must think with the mind of the Church. We must breathe as She breathes and believe what She believes. To do this requires a tremendous amount of humility…something I think we all can stand a little more of.

I think this was a very good set of observations.   His experience of some seminarians, and the faculty who responds to them and who are charged with forming them, present some food for thought.

At the same time, I think seminarians also have the right to seek the necessary tools they will need in their ministry.  That will include what it take to say the older form of Mass.  That doesn’t give seminarians the right simply to blow off the formation program.  However, since they are in that position, under others who have a great deal of power over their lives, those who are in charge of the program need to be all that much more open and sensitive to the more traditional seminarians who are setting up the the plate in numbers that will only be increasing.

However, I think the thing to take away from this is the need to integrate well in the whole life of a parish (or seminary) and thus the rest of the Church.  

Don’t create a ghetto mentality, or any elitism – even if you are absolutely convinced and can argue confidently that the older form of Mass is superior to the newer.   Don’t be snobs.  Don’t be jerks.   Be careful and exercise thoughtful charity.

I received today some books from Baronius Press.

The titles were from different sections, and included titles like

The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The Way of Perfection

There was also some fiction, Lord of the World, by Robert Hugh Benson, which everyone should read.

They sent Newman’s The Idea of a University.

Etc.

Unfortunately there were no liturgical titles in the shipment.

The hardcovers have a very nice, large type face, which would make them easy to read even when the light wasn’t strong. They have a ribbon. The softcovers are like a trade-paperback size (that is, a little larger, and open easily. They have the same good typeface, making them easy to read.

I am very pleased to have received these books.

I applaud the publishers who provide not only classics of Christian literature, but also the liturgical tools clergy and lay people will be needing as the Holy Father’s Summorum Pontificum is lived more and more.

Check out this thought provoking entry over at Fr. Raymond Blake’s place.

Here is the very interseting post about lay involvement.  The question is raised: Are more people involved in Church now than
fifty years ago?

You know about Rule #4.  

This is timely.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Thoughts with the Lune Valley in Brighton

I had a visit from Fr Paul Harrison
yesterday, blogging is a bit incestuous. Both of us have a bit of an
interest in history. In between having lunch and visiting the Royal
Pavillion we talked quite a lot about lay ministry, with the
overarching question of are more people involved in Church now than
fifty years ago. Both of us have done a bit of research, mine maybe
more on the level of anecdote than Fr Paul’s, who did a MA on Preston
Catholicism.

THRIVING
In
Brighton 50 years ago there were thriving organisations. The Church was
made up of small groups, I am sitting in my office and around me are
old framed photographs of the various sporting groups that used to be
in the parish: the parish swimming team, boxing team, football team
etc. There were obviously plenty of things for young men. In all of
them there is a priest involved, then of course there were four priests
in the parish, what these pictures show is the Church’s involvement
with men, it took them seriously, it knew they were going to be the
future priests and fathers of families, mangers of buisnesses, trade
unionists. Then ordinations in (or at least) from this parish were a
regular thing. There are no records but I am told there was here an
extremely thriving SVP group, that used to visit the slum housing and a
Legion of Mary that used to go parish visiting, from door to door.
There was also the Catholic Evidence Guild, I am not sure if they were
actually "of the parish", or simply preached on the promenade, "in the
parish" during the summer. In the notice books there are references to
The Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, the Scouts, the Agnesians, the
Altar Guild, the Union of Catholic Mothers, The Catholic Police Guild,
the Catholic Nurses Guild etc etc.
There was great optimism, in this
parish in that period a social worker called Mary Garson together with
the parish priest set a group of women to care for those in need, from
this, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Grace and
Compassion, a religious congregation that is thriving in India and
parts of Africa.

The Sisters of Grace and Compassion are still in
Brighton but of the other organisations none of these exist today,
except the SVP, and that seems normal for most parishes. What we have
instead are a few small "faith sharing groups" and lay involvement is
limited to the finances, Extra-Ordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and
readers, in the past there were none of these, there were altar servers
and a very proficient choir that sang chant. The sanctuary ministries
have replaced the apostolic ones.

CHANGING ROLES
There
has been a huge shift of lay involvement; from lay people very
obviously sanctifying the world, directly proclaiming the Word of God
and "doing" the works of mercy, to what we have now; most lay ministry
being centred on the liturgy and within the Church. In practice there
has been a very significant change in Ecclesiology. Some people have
said we have clericalised the laity and laicised the clergy, a bit of a
harsh statement but certainly the main focus of the laity has been the
sanctuary and not the world and possibly the role of priest has changed
from being the sanctifier to being the manger.

VATICAN II
What
has intervened is Vatican II, the Council’s main aim of course was to
engage with the modern world, its teaching is all about empowering
people to evangelise and to proclaim Christ in the world. In Northern
Europe at least this has not happened, on the contrary we have shrunk
as a Church. Our diocesan seminary for example in 1962/3 doubled in
size, now the number of students would still be uncomfortable small
even in the old building.

There are obviously good sociological
reasons for the decline; women working, the television, the decline of
the family, contraception are just a few reason that are put forward.
What we in the Church so often try to avoid is to suggest that the
problem might be the Church herself. Hans Kung, in one of his early,
more orthodox works says, "The Church ceases to be the Church when it
preaches the Church", yet for 50 years it strikes me that that is
precisely what we have been doing. We have been obsessed with liturgy,
with lay-involvement in parish structures, parish councils, the role of
women within the Church, ecumenism, catechesis. All these are important
but only of people who are already "churched", and not directly
concerned with revealing the face of Christ. Fifty years ago every
fifth or sixth entry in our baptism records was a convert, nowadays it
is three, four or five a year, in many parishes none. The
Evangelisation that many believed that would follow the wonderful
documents of the Council just didn’t take place.


POPE
The
Pope in his "The Spirit of the Liturgy" sees the sign of the Church
looking inwards at its celebration of the Liturgy as signifying and
possibly even causing this sense of introversion. The priest facing the
people creates a smug little huddle that looks in on itself. If the
image people are presented with day after day, Sunday after Sunday is
the priest looking at the people over the altar and most especially
prays to God whilst directing his gaze at the congregation, one might
be led to suspect that God is to found there rather than elsewhere,
beyond and above the immediate community.

CATECHESIS
I
am sure that is one factor, another, which was certainly signified by
the change in the Liturgy, is the change in catechesis. In the past, it
wasn’t so much the Church that catechised, or even the school, but the
family. Fr Paul told me about some Traveller families he had prepared
for First Holy Communion, and how well they knew the old catechism.
Mother or Grand-Mother had simply passed on the faith they themselves
had been given, but most families have lost confidence in simply doing
that. The liturgy changed and catechetical emphasis changed, and
parents , I think, lost confidence in passing on their faith. In the
non-literate, self reliant culture of Traveller families that didn’t
happen so much. When I was first ordained, the question, "Do we still
believe in ….?", was applied to the Real Presence, Purgatory, Hell,
Eternal Life, Papal Infallibility, the Catholic Church, Confession, the
Divinity of Christ, the Virginity of Mary, well practically every
aspect of Catholic life.


REDISCOVERY
One
of the things the Pope has been urging us all to do, is the rediscover
the riches of the Vatican Council, get to the texts rather than its
accursed "Spirit". I am convinced that one off the purposes of the
recent Motu Proprio, was just the reconcilliation of the Lefebvrists
but the reconcilliation of today’s church with its past,
reconcilliation with our history and most especially with our theology,
look again at Archbishop Ranjith’s reported recent comment.

(added later)
WHAT ARE LAY PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO DO
The
most important thing for lay people is to live out their baptism,
loving God and their neighbour. Pre-Concilliar theology would lay great
stress on the obligation to "save one’s soul", by receiving the
sacraments worthily, and therefore acting as a leaven within society.
If you were married then the obligation was extended to ensuring the
salvation of one’s children, hence all that pre-concilliar school
building and education.
Any collection of pre-Concilliar parish
sermons certainly do not speak a great deal about sex, as I was told in
the seminary, society was too delicate, Fr Paul sad the closest to it
was "keeping bad company". Being honest, doing a fair days work for a
fair days pay seems to be much more to the point, coming to the aid of
one’s neighbour seems to be very prevalent, which might account for the
high number of Catholic doctors and nurses and the other Catholic
professions.
The motif of the Second Vatican Council was the
Church’s engagement with modern world, it wasn’t something new,
certainly in England and presumably elsewhere it was of tremendous
importance in the pre-Concilliar Church. What is pretty obvious is that
it did not come to birth in the Council Hall but was already up and
running, since the Council it seems to have fallen flat on its face.
In
our diocese there was a plan to build a Church every mile in the city,
and in the countryside a Church every five miles, now the future is
bleak and we are closing or amalgamating Churches wherever we can.
The
problem is not just a lack of vocations to the priesthood and religious
life but a lack of vocations to teaching and even marriage.

Here are links to the last few PODCAzTs.

046 07-10-08 Gregory the Great on when pastors should SPEAK UP; priests and getting your way
045 07-09-28 Augustine on pastors; my Motu Proprio sermon in England; chapel veils
044 07-08-27 St. Monica dies, Augustine weeps; Pope Benedict greets American seminarians
043 07-08-23 Benedict XVI on Mass “toward the Lord” and a prayer by St. Augustine
042 07-08-10 St. Augustine on St. Lawrence and how to be a Christian
041 07-08-09 Ratzinger on liturgical silence; silent Eucharist Prayer
040 07-08-02 Eusebius of Vercelli in exile; my column in The Wanderer on detractors of Summorum Pontificum
039 07-07-27 St. Augustine on Christ the Mediator; “for all” or “for many”?
038 07-07-25 Ratzinger on “active participation”; The Sabine Farm; Merry del Val’s music
037 07-07-18 The position of the altar and the priest’s “back to the people”

These two deal with the issue of the old canard about the old Mass, or the newer, celebrated ad orientem, as having the priest with his back to the people.

043 07-08-23 Benedict XVI on Mass “toward the Lord” and a prayer by St. Augustine
037 07-07-18 The position of the altar and the priest’s “back to the people”

Welcome to another installment of What Does the Prayer Really Sound Like? 

In this audio project I will simply read, and this week sing, the Latin prayers for the upcoming Sunday or feast from the 1962 Missale Romanum.

If priests who are learning to say the older form of Holy Mass can get these prayers in their ears, they will be able to pray them with more confidence. So, priests are my very first concern.  However, these audio projects can be of great help to lay people who attend Holy Mass in the Traditional, or extraordinary form: by listening to them ahead of time, and becoming familiar with the sound of the before attending Mass, they will be more receptive to the content of the prayers and be aided in their full, conscious and active participation.

My pronunciation of Latin is going to betray something of my nationality, of course. Men who have as their mother tongue something other than English will sound a little different.  However, we are told that the standard for the pronunciation of Latin in church is the way it is spoken in Rome.  Since I have spent a lot of time in Rome, you can be pretty sure my accent will not be too far off the mark.

Today we will hear one of the most commonly used Prefaces in 1962 Missale Romanum.  It is used on most of the Green Sundays.  I am talking of course about the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity. Today I will speak it and then sing it in the Ferial Tone, the Solemn Tone (which is the most commonly heard, I think) and the rarely heard Tonus Solemnior.

I deliver them more slowly than I would ordinarily during Mass.  But hopefully the pace will help you hear the words a little more clearly.

If this was useful to you, let your priest friends know this resource is available.  And kindly make a little donation using the donation button on the left side bar of the blog or or by clicking here.  This is a labor of love, but those donations really help.

Pray for me, listen carefully, and practice practice practice.

 

 Preface of the Most Holy Trinity: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Preface for Trinity Sunday

S – Dóminus vobiscum.
R – Et cum spíritu tuo.
S – Sursum corda.
R – Habémus ad Dóminum.

Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutáre, nos tibi semper et
ubíque grátias ágere: Dómine, sancte Pater, omnípotens aetérne Deus:
Qui cum unigénito Fílio tuo, et Spíritu Sancto, unus es Deus, unus es
Dóminus: non in uníus singularitáte persónae, sed in uníus Trinitáte
substántiae. Quod énim de tua glória, revelánte te, crédimus, hoc de
Fílio tuo, hoc de Spíritu Sancto, sine differéntia discretiónis sentímus.
Ut in confessióne verae sempiternaeque Deitátis, et in persónis
propríetas, et in esséntia únitas, et in maiestáte adorétur aequálitas.
Quam láudant Angeli atque Archángeli, Chérubim quoque ac
Séraphim: qui non céssant clamáre cotídie, una voce dicéntes:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus Deus Sábaoth.
Pleni sunt coeli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis.
Benedíctus + qui venit in nómine Dómini.
Hosánna in excélsis.