From a priest… I think…
QUAERITUR:
Preparing for a funeral Mass in the near future;
Is it permissible to chant the Dies Irae sequence in a Latin requiem Mass using the ordinary form? Didn’t see it anywhere in the copy of 1979 graduale simplex I have.
Of course you didn’t find the Dies Irae in the Graduale Simplex. You won’t find it in the Novus Ordo Graduale Romanum or the Missale Romanum either. That’s because the brain-trusts of the Concilium with the approval of Paul VI expunged it from the Church’s Novus-Ordoy prayer life. And, since “we are our rites”, over time and the constant use of white vestments and happy happy happy celebration of lives with balloons and weepy eulogies, what were funeral Masses intended to pray for the souls of the dead have morphed into informal canonizations.
Back to the question: Can you use the Dies Irae in a Novus Ordo funeral Mass. The short answer is “Sure!”. The longer short answer is, “Sure! But it might not be licit.” Another little longer answer might be, “Sure, but you might catch hell for it.”
See what I did there?
There is language in the introduction to the Novus Ordo Graduale Romanum – and I’m going on memories that reach back 40 years or so now – that just barely allows for the option of substituting one contextually appropriate chant for another.
There is no question that the Dies Irae is appropriate, though the progressivists will deny that to their death.
However, this is a question not so much of substituting another chant as inserting between the Gradual/Tract and the Gospel.
One can make a case that that is pastorally appropriate. Given the malleable rigidity of the Novus Ordo (whereby a despotic bishop can stretch and bend one option among many legitimate choices to force people into a lockstep uniformity alien to the entire ethos of the Roman Rite because – you know – Befehl ist Befehl – right?) just about anything goes. Sure, yes, of course now on paper it is absurdly claimed that there is one unique expression of the Roman Rite, which everyone knows is a lie. Heck, on Sunday here in Rome just up the street where I live there is a church used by the Congolese. I can’t describe what I heard and saw going on in there and I don’t have a video. It was a unique expression alright.
In fact, quaeritur, how many unique expressions of the Roman Rite can there be until there isn’t a unique expression anymore?
There is the serious issue of what to do in the Novus Ordo when you want to have a classical musical setting of the Requiem… which can be done contrary to to the wishes of Oregon Catholic Press…. which makes me think of something a priest friend sent today…
… I digress.
Mozart’s Requiem has a Dies Irae. It is one of the most important, known bits of his Requiem. So, get the choir and orchestra ready (along with their checks) and then … what?… omit the Dies Irae? That would be just plan stupid. I would argue that if something is just plain stupid – like passing in front of a tabernacle and the Blessed Sacrament and ignoring it – as the Novus Ordo bids – ignore the rubric and do something that makes sense. Ergo, you sing Mozart’s Dies Irae in a Novus Ordo Requiem and you genuflect before the Presence of GOD when you walk in front of the tabernacle.
This was my old mentor Msgr. Schuler’s position all those years after the Council. There was no one who knew the legislation and the intent of the legislation about sacred music better than he. Period. Each year when 2 November came around the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale (still exists) and members of the Minnesota Orchestra did Mozart’s Requiem with the Dies Irae because you just can’t leave it out. That would be stupid. But we are to take seriously some yoyo who claims that it isn’t appropriate and that it is VERBOTEN? That type shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions about ordering soft drinks much less governing sacred liturgical ars celebrandi.
I am reminded of the great scene in the movie Amadeus, about Mozart (sort of). The Emperor forbade ballet in opera at the advice of people who hated Mozart. So, Mozart has a rehearsal without the music for the dancing and the Emperor shows up.
BTW… the Dies Irae can be found in the Novus Ordo liturgical books, but chopped up into pieces in the Liturgy of the Hours. So, technically, it is still in the Novus Ordo and, technically, available for “substitution” purposes in a Requiem.
Those were dark time, dear readers, and we are still suffering the effects. We are especially suffering the effects now because that “we are our rites” principle, that lex orandi – credendi – vivendi principle, takes time to take shape, as Bugnini/Lercaro/understood in one way and Ratzinger/Benedict understood in another.
The liturgical progressivist excludes the Dies Irae and claims he is obeying the Council’s explicit principle for funerals: the burial rites were to express “more clearly the paschal character of Christian death.” That phrase from Sacrosanctum Concilium became one of the master principles for revising the funeral rites. On that reading, a funeral liturgy ought to foreground Christ’s victory over death, baptismal incorporation into His Passover, and the hope of resurrection more emphatically than the older Requiem did. Nota bene: that is an admission that the TLM does highlight victory, joy, etc.
This is a key problem with the Novus Ordo: it emphasizes eschatological joy, which is okay, but it doesn’t tell you how to attain it. The TLM does.
The lib liturgist/terrorist would say that the Dies Irae places too much affective weight on terror, doom, and forensic dread. Bugnini’s own summary is the classic evidence here: some reformers judged texts like Dies irae and Libera me to reflect a “negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages” and to “overemphasize judgment, fear, and despair,” so they preferred texts that urged Christian hope and expressed faith in the resurrection more effectively. That is the nearest thing to an explicit programmatic rationale from the reforming camp.
Again, how do you attain the Beatific Vision? By having a steady and balanced dose of the Four Last Things and not a little dread of the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.
The lib liturgist would argue that the funeral liturgy is for the consolation and catechesis of the living as well as intercession for the dead. Well, maybe not so much about that last depressing bit. Therefore, the rite should speak in a register pastorally intelligible to modern congregations, many of whom are only tenuously catechized. You know, balloons and sing-along jingles about the flapping appendages of raptors. In that frame, a lengthy medieval poem centered on cosmic dissolution, strict judgment, trembling and fear might be seen as pastorally counterproductive. Instead of petitions about saving the Earth from greenhouse gases, plastic bottles and ICE agents, “Graciously grant that I be not burned up by the everlasting fire” could cause a few puzzled looks, especially at a parish where not a single word has been spoken about Hell or the Sacrament Penance for the last 60 years.
The Council’s broader rationale for revising sacramental rites was precisely that some features inherited from the bad old days (read: Tradition) had come to obscure their nature and purpose for people of the present day. Remember the recent business about the “recent magisterium”? Life really began anew at that Second Pentecost, 1965! Never mind that people do not change, essentially, from age to age. They are still human beings with impulses do to Original Sin and the good qualities of being wrought in the image of God. But the progressivists think that people have evolved out of such dire things like, for example, it really is possible that you can go to Hell and that, having been all grown up, we stand for Communion and stick our hand out to take rather than to receive.
“But Father! But Father!, the now-awakened libs moan, you are distorting everything about the new springtime we are in! The reform did not suppress echsta…. extraol… that ology stuff. It relocated and rebalanced it with and within and around the unspoken metatext between the printed lines of the Über-Council! The current and unique is rooted in resurrection hope. We are now an Easter People, an Alleluia Assembly not a Dies Downer! HA! But you … you and your kind … you must be forced into solitude and silenced because … because we… we…because we have to Council harder! More, not less, Council. But you don’t conform, no no… because you HATE VATICAN III…. er…. VATICAN II!”
I don’t hate Vatican II. What has been done in the name of Vatican II makes me immensely sad.
At the same time, I am more and more convinced that God truly is in charge of the Church because of what we have seen in the wake of Vatican II. There’s no other explanation and that fills me with resolve.
So, use the Dies Irae. You might catch some flack for it. Be ready.
The clock started on Rome’s day when the sun rose at 06:38.
As predicted, the sun rose over the Eternal City at 06:39.
April 3rd, 2026
The sunrise in Rome was at 6:41.
