VIDEO: This explains the Church in Germany

Germany seems to be the caput malorum omnium in the Church today.  Every weird, heretical, and just plain stupid thing comes from that dark swamp of arrogant confusion.

“But Father! But Father!”, you libs are blubbering “you are the arrogant and confused one here!  Don’t you understand that it was from Germany and those other countries….. like… up there… that we got the spirit of Vatican II which is still blowing through the church like a springtime Pentecost of renewal and change?   YES!  It’s a springtime now, especially with their fighting for the rights of non-… institutionally non-catholics for their rights to the sacraments, which as GERMAN Karl Rahner explained are celebrations of pre-existing realities.   Those were halcyon days that we relive and relive and relive.  But you don’t get any of that because YOU HATE VATICAN II!”

Well… okay, then.

Here is a video compilation (not sure where it came from other than my inbox) of Ash Wednesday in a church in Germany with Card. Woelki, of all people.

Enjoy!

There’s a video of the whole rite… but I couldn’t inflict it.

Anyway, I’m not sure who did this video, but we own him some thanks.

Germany, ladies and gentlemen.  Germany.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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36 Comments

  1. Sawyer says:

    And yet the church was full, showing that people will put up with a lot of stupid stuff at (Ash Wednesday) Mass. I don’t know why people put up with that. Are they numb? I would have left in disgust. And why was there a Kyrie sung on Ash Wednesday? The Penitential Act is omitted during the introductory rites at Ash Wednesday Mass, and the Novus Ordo tends to consider the Kyrie part of the Penitential Act.

  2. Ave Crux says:

    Staggering, this reminds me of someone who’s possessed; either that or mentally ill. It certainly doesn’t seem rational.

    The sounds, the hissing, the screams. It’s quite possible the joke is on them; they may have (unknowingly?) hired a satanist who is making fools of them and calling it art. If you look at the score on the organ, it looks aberrated.

  3. StBensGirl says:

    There are no words. Except maybe “desecration.” Sigh. We need so much help. Poor Germany. I love Germany.

  4. monscarmeli says:

    Having done a little checking, I’m pretty sure that’s the composer at the organ; and the soprano appears to be a regular collaborator with him.
    http://www.dominiksusteck.de/wp/

  5. Matthew says:

    The woman screaming is Irene Kurka
    https://www.irenekurka.de/

  6. Gab says:

    For around 2000 years the Mass was sacred. Why mess with it even more than that lot messed with it in 1969? This latest example of the desecration of the Holy Mass is profoundly disturbing. They do these things to please themselves because the Mass is all about them, it appears. I wonder how many of those priests and bishops still actually pray to Our Lady? And why did they all go along with this mockery? Was there not even one who said “Guys, this is bordering on the sacrilegious”?

  7. Gab says:

    “The woman screaming is Irene Kurka”

    The devil apes everything that is holy and turns it into a mockery. Think of the contrast: a screaming banshee or a Gregorian chant.

  8. liebemama says:

    Not defending the screams, but it was a Mass for artists specifically, not necessarily Catholic artists evidently. There is a tradition for this on Ash Wednesday, hopefully not all this awful. This is not the norm for St. Kunibert! I have also attended a TLM in St. Kunibert.
    I do admit there is a trend here in Germany to include “hip” or “modern” touches to attract young, hip and modern people. Catholics flee and the moderns laugh.

  9. HezzerK says:

    The entire Church in Germany needs an exorcism. Clearly she is possessed by a demon. That was not singing, but sacrilegious demonic mockery of the liturgy. What a disgrace!

  10. Ms. M-S says:

    There’s only one Entity I can imagine actually hissing during Mass.

  11. Ellen says:

    Years ago, I went to a Good Friday service that was almost this bad. The priests processed in, and then sat in the front pews. The rest of the service was all done by lay people. Much miming, dancing, and making it all up as they went.
    I was there for about 10 minutes and then ran out. I think I would run out of this 10 seconds in.

  12. CasaSanBruno says:

    As a newly ordained priest working in Germany in the late 90’s, I was once subjected to something akin to this lunacy. When I asked the parish priest what all that cacophony was about, he replied: “It’s intelligent music.”

    Oh, blessed ignorance….

  13. mysticalrose says:

    I never trust anyone who hisses! Totally demonic.

  14. Titus says:

    Par for the course for contemporary “art” music. It’s a straight line from Debussy to this nonsense, which is the same kind of thing you hear in any concert hall where the music director has managed to con people into coming to hear the work of a contemporary composer. It’s not meant to be beautiful or traditional; quite the opposite.

    [Debussy? This Debussy?

    [Schoenberg, perhaps…]

    [But would you then have to blame Mozart?]

  15. Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda says:

    Look at the silver haired laity.

    There are no young, hip, or modern people present.

  16. Amerikaner says:

    Yep, this stuff all the time. I can’t tell you how often the fam has walked out of Mass and rushed to try to go elsewhere in the hopes of making the obligation at a half decent place. Germany is crap.

  17. At least she sang the Kyrie in Greek.

  18. SanSan says:

    oh, that hurt. how demonic. I’m no longer German and Irish…..just Irish from now on. Mea culpa dear Lord!!!!!!!!!

  19. ppb says:

    Good grief, is this a Catholic Mass or a performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire?” How could anyone think this was appropriate for the sacred liturgy?

  20. RichR says:

    When art becomes this abstract, nothing meaningful is communicated to the observer.

  21. Imrahil says:

    With all due respect, I do not think that Germany or the Church in Germany can be explained by some video (which, for reasons quite different from either “I’m to horrified” or “as a patriot I don’t want to know”, I have not seen yet) apparently containing some liturgical clappy nonsense. Nor can any case of diabolic possession be diagnosed from afar in such a manner, that is if it were compatible with piety to attest such a thing to a local Church as such (as opposed to: a collection from amongst its members).

    In fact, that stands in the way even of knowing the real problems the German Church does have.

    (For starters: the constant and widespread liturgical disobedience concerning the Embolism for just about no reason at all is a actually much greater problem than some occasional clownerie, for example.)

  22. Imrahil says:

    (I mean it is greater in telling more about the state of this local Church, because it actually is widespread, even dominating; although, or because, it is of course of much less weight in itself.)

  23. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Wow. Kurka has an amazing voice, is obviously well-trained, has great technique and execution — but she is using it for this!?!

    There is such a thing as artistic judgment. Maybe this composer is her friend, maybe she gets paid well. But this is crap that should not be endured. Be a real soprano, and demand better.

  24. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Oh, man. This poor chick actually enjoys this kind of junk. She has a podcast all about neue musik. She goes on tours and sings horrible noises for horrible composers. Arghhhhh.composers

    Well, I hope she has a sense of humor when she gets old, and realizes that she wasted her life and talents on a bunch of poor jokes.

  25. Suburbanbanshee says:

    On the bright side, Kurka has an album of songs by St. Hildegard of Bingen, and an album of sung prayers. Does some exceptional a capella work. And some of her neue music buddies are not half bad.

    So she is reaching for something. Pity that this silly stuff is standing in her way.

    It breaks my heart, though. I have a slightly better than average voice, but nothing close to the chops this woman has. She is obviously hard-working and musically ambitious, and she can put a song across. Why is she not using what she’s got?!

  26. FrAnt says:

    When I see things like this I ask myself, “Who approved it, and what was their rationale?”

  27. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Oh, and directing a classically trained singer to sing into a megaphone, much less make noises into one, is an insult. You did not see the organist hissing into a megaphone, I notice. If you want to see oppression and patriarchies, kids, look at how nasty composers and music directors treat their victims.

    So much that is so wrong, all in one video. And so little honor paid to God.

  28. Anneliese says:

    I think this script was written by Mel Brooks.

  29. Well, that made me laugh and then it made me angry. Is this person a witch with all the hissing like a snake and the Amazon bird calls? Good grief. I feel very sorry for our dear Lord and all in Heaven. What a sick and twisted way to begin the Lenten Season. I wonder if while in the Garden of Gethsemane is this one thing Jesus sweat His Most Precious Blood for seeing this coming.

  30. Josephus Corvus says:

    It’s a springtime now….

    Well, it actually is springtime where I am (at least the last two days), and to take the garbage out I need to put on my boots to get through the swamp that my backyard has become. I think this…whatever it is…is the swamp of the Church.

  31. ChrisP says:

    I’m sorry, but I laughed. I honestly first thought the organist had Tourettes and that this was some kind of avant good show for the divorced-remarried luvvies.

    But it’s actually just sad and insulting.

  32. Spinmamma says:

    Amazing voice, but if I wanted to go to a concert featuring contemporary music I would not go to Mass. It directs all attention to the singer, and sounds, and not to worship. Horrible. The congregation was a captive audience and could never participate in such a service, The communion of singing together with the choir is part of the gathering into one –one of the most beautiful spiritual experiences of the Mass.

  33. Semper Gumby says:

    What in tarnation…

    A bullhorn? Good grief, only two things were missing from that video: Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength.

    No doubt Martin Mosebach is not amused.

  34. APX says:

    I was curious about what the actual score looked like so I checked YouTube for it.

    https://youtu.be/5EvLRanQSD4

    Does anyone actually consider this actual music? It sounds like the excreted remains of music, but not music.

  35. Titus says:

    [Debussy? This Debussy?

    I didn’t say it was Debussy, or that it sounded like Debussy. [For a moment there I thought you meant some other Debussy. Sheesh.] But Debussy’s later descent into atonalism (or near-atonalism) was the death knell of Romanticism and established mere innovation as the touchstone of subsequent orchestral and artistic music. Music as a field thus became entropic, decaying further and further away from orderly systems to dissonant ones. Schoenberg was just an oddly commercially successful blip along the way.

    If you want to blame someone earlier, it would probably be Beethoven. Beethoven made beautiful music, but he broke the highly ordered system of Classicism. His music (and Brahms’ and Dvorak’s and Smetena’s, etc.) is still beautiful, of course, because they utilized foundational Classical precepts in building grander melodic structures. But when you lose sight of the Classical moorings that kept Romanticism rooted in tonality, then the whole system falls apart. That’s probably in no small part Debussy’s fault.

    Twentieth-century theology is a similar story: you can be a post-Thomist if you remember your St. Thomas (even if you don’t use him for everything), but when forget him altogether, you wind up wandering off the reservation.

    [Why not just blame Pérotin or Anonymous 4? Pretty edgy stuff!]

  36. Imrahil says:

    Frankly, having seen the video now, it is not nearly as bad as I would have guessed from article and combox.

    You know, the text has actually been sung (as far as I can tell) – which is much! – and the music seems to come from a genuine wish to serve the liturgy… not ridicule it, nor merely use it as background. It does come with the caveats that it a) seems to focus on the “penitential” in “penitential time” and b) uses the means of (more than) modern, experimental music – and them in abundance.

    But ask me to choose between that and the quite established German practice of singing I stand before the with empty hands, o Lord (that is, Ik staa vor U; I don’t know if there’s an English translation, I hope you have been spared) by Huub Oosterhuis, and I’ll choose this here in a heartbeat.

    Which reassures me in what I said before: the occasional artistical experiment is not the problem – at most it is a problem, which is a side-issue and not quite connected to the real problem at all.

    Dear Semper Gumby, Martin Mosebach objects, and perhaps somewhat too much, against the absence of art, the focus on feel-good songs, among other things. (“perhaps too much”: you sometimes get the idea that n his ideas, there is no place for the Low Mass.) I wonder whether he would subject to this even so much. It is, modern or not, at least a peace of what we call E-Musik (that is “earnest music”, i. e. music that is not “entertainmental music” or U-Musik; a rather important difference in German culture): given that Mosebach specifically opposes, not modern, but U-Musik as Church music, he might have more pardon for this style that some might think. Or else he might not; but I’m pretty sure he would make a distinction and see that it is not the same, but at most some other, bad stuff as that which he usually raises his voice against.

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