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• 2004 Liturgy Conference
• Past Conferences

If I would say that words fail me right now or that I am speechless in expressing my gratitude to the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy for this extraordinary award, many of you probably wouldn't believe me. Well, you're right and I have 5,247 words prepared.

I am more than grateful; I am touched by your generosity and humbled by the inclusion of my name among the names of previous honorees such as Godfrey Diekmann, Bob Hovda, Mark Searle, Martin Helriegel, Mary Collins, Bishop Donald Trautman, and Kate Dooley, just to name a few of the Center's catalogue of twenty-three martyrs. And they are martyrs in the sense that they witnessed and helped make possible the liturgical reforms of the past four decades — I am sure not without pain, duress, frustration, and an occasional, "Just what am I doing and why am I doing it?"

I've known about Fr. Michael Mathis for twenty years now. It was in 1984 that Father Paul Doyle and his parish, St. Joseph's in South Bend, hired me to be their music minister. That was to be my parish while I was working as an interim professor in the music department at Notre Dame. When I was not doing all of that, I would hang around the Notre Dame Center, as it was called then. It was at the parish, however, that I first learned about Father Michael Mathis by way of Mrs. Lucy McCullough. She was a faithful, stalwart keeper of the keys, and an expert on the life and times of Father Mathis.

By the time I left St. Joseph's, I felt that Father Mathis and I had been friends since childhood — some trick since he was born in Indiana and I in Pennsylvania.

Yesterday, I made a pilgrimage to St. Joseph's to visit the little museum of parish memorabilia — an entire wall that displays photos, letters, and statements by Father Mathis. For me it was a pilgrimage. I'm not sure that I collected any indulgences in my spasm of piety, but the visit riveted in my heart and head forever that the award bearing his name, that I was about to receive, would attach my name to the company of the twenty-three martyrs and saints who have helped change our lives forever.

Here is how it happened — the "it" being Music and Liturgy before the Second Vatican Council and after the Second Vatican Council.

There are three sections to what I would like to present to you this evening as we take a cursory look at the liturgy and its music before and after the Second Vatican Council.

(The last time I tried to compress tons of knowledge and music into a small time frame was when I taught a course in the summer program on this campus in 1997. It was my laughable task to compress two to three thousand years of sacred music into ten two-hour sessions, with the last two sessions being devoted to student presentations. I should have been drummed out of the academy for even attempting to accomplish this folly.)

Section I: Pre-Reformation

The time immediately before the Motu Proprio: Tra le sollecitudini (I see that as Pre-Reformation). The reference is not to the 16th century reforms of Martin Luther and John Calvin and their cohorts, but to the time when opera dominated the choir loft, chant was in bad need of a repair and makeover, and the folks sat, knelt, and stood in muted wonder.

Section II: Motu Proprio

The Motu Proprio: Tra le sollecitudini (which from here on I will call Motu Proprio because I cannot pronounce it the same way twice in a row) is the threshold of the next sixty years of liturgical reforms. Those sixty years confluence with Vatican Council II and the unveiling of Sacrosanctum Conciliium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in 1963.

Section III: Counter Reformation

The counter-reformation which began around 2000, 2001 and continues today with the issuing of Roman liturgical documents, though couched in language which shows the document to be the next phase of reforms. There are various passages that would seem to re-interpret the Council's decrees to accommodate a shift to a more traditional and hierarchical worship system, to say nothing at all about a different ecclesiology, which Vatican II envisioned.

Section I: Pre-Reformation

Turn on your imagination and join me as we visit the parochial school of St. Patrick's Church in the northeastern part of the United States, about 1903. It is Thursday afternoon and the sixth grade students are trashing the classroom as they wait for Sister. One student isn't trashing and she is Mary Catherine. She is sitting very quietly and Mary Catherine is very, very good. In fact, Sister thinks that perhaps Mary Catherine might have a vocation to the religious life.

Sister comes to the door. A quick silence falls on the children as they leap back to their desks and greet sister with a rousing, "Good afternoon, Sister."

"Good afternoon, boys and girls. Be seated please. Today we will be doing some singing. So please pick up your leaflets and let's learn the first piece on the front of the page. Do you have your sheets ready? I am sure you can sing this easily."

I Am a Little Catholic

I am a little Catholic,
and Christian is my name;
And I believe the Holy Church
In ev'ry age the same.

I love her altars where I kneel,
My Jesus to adore;
I love my Mother Mary dear
O, may I love her more.

I love the saints of olden time,
The places where they dwelt;
I love to pray where saints have prayed,
And kneel where they have knelt.

I love the priests, my pastors dear
They have left all for me;
Next to my parents here on earth,
I love them tenderly.

I love the Holy Sacraments,
They bring me near to God;
The Church points out the way to heav'n.
These help me on the road.

I am a little Catholic,
I love my Holy Faith;
I will be true to Holy Church
and steadfast until death.

[Catholic School Chimes, 1895]

Three days later, Mary Catherine and her eleven other siblings are brought to the church with their parents, coming to the 9:00 Mass.

Pantomime of attending Mass:
No song, No gestures. No vocal participation. A great deal of staring.

Let's jump ahead about thirty-five years now. By this time, Mary Catherine is a mother and president of the parish's altar society. She is proud of her six children, and is especially proud of Kevin, Patrick, and Thomas — they will be part of the pageant the Knights of Columbus are sponsoring at the stadium. It is a special pageant to rally the youth of the sodalities and the altar boys, and they have their own marching song:

An Army of Youth

An army of youth
Flying the standards of truth,
We're fighting for Christ, the Lord.
Heads lifted high,
Catholic Action our cry,
And the Cross our only sword.
On earth's battlefield
Never a vantage we'll yield.
As dauntlessly on we swing
Comrades true, dare and do
'Neath the Queen's white and blue,
For our flag, for our faith,
For Christ the King.
Christ lifts His hands,
The King commands; challenge, 'Come and follow me.'

From ev'ry side,
With eager stride,
We form in the lines of victory.
Let foemen lurk,
And laggards shirk,
We throw our fortunes to the Lord
Mary's Son,
Till the world is won,
WE have pledged you our loyal word.
'An army of youth'

[Daniel Lord, S.J. The Queens Work, St. Louis, MO, 1932]

That morning Mary Catherine with her six youngsters attended the 9:00 Mass as they have done for generations. No music. Not much has changed in the liturgical life of the parish since Mary Catherine was a child. If you wanted music at a Sunday liturgy, you would have to attend the high Mass, the Mass at which the choir would sing, sometimes for an hour and a half. You would, of course, just sit there.

There would be music at the Novenas, the Benedictions, the Stations of the Cross, and the like. If it was May there would be a hymn or two for Mary.

Bring flowers of the fairest,
Bring flowers of rarest,
Mother dear, O pray for me whilst far
From heaven and thee.

There would be benediction of the blessed sacrament where probably all sang Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, and Holy God. The generation might have heard a soloist sing something like this Donizetti parody:

Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
[Donizetti]

It was music like that which really ticked off Pius X and caused major reforms in sacred music in the Roman Catholic Church. So much that a reference is made to "some" Tantum Ergo in a pre-Motu Proprio document authored by Pius X before he became Pius X in 1893:

We should also point out openly what is the mind of the Church concerning the composition of the 'Gloria' and 'Credo' in the Mass, of the Psalms at Vespers, of the Tantum Ergo during the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. During the Tantum Ergo  and also the other liturgical hymns, we should try to give the traditional form of the hymn in itself, and not that theatrical one which belongs to a 'romance' in the first half and a clamorous 'allegro' in the second half of the 'Genitori'.

Now, I really want to find out what the "Genitori, Genitoque" sounded like.

The reforms of the chant were pretty well finished with the appearance of the edition of the Liber Usualis by the Benedictine monks of St. Pierre de Solesmes in France in 1868 and in 1883. In Germany, the Ratisbon (aka Regensburg) edition was printed in 1871 and 1878. Of the two, the French edition was given the Vatican approval by Rome in 1910.

The army of music reformers was under German leadership by way of the foundation of the Caecelian Verein in 1866, under the patronage of St. Cecelia. They sought to purge the choir lofts of operatic music, implement the chant reforms, and to establish a repertory of sacred polyphony from the 16th and 17th centuries. The Cecelian composers wrote music in a style somewhat reminiscent of Renaissance polyphony. This interest in Renaissance polyphony, as I see it, is another display of the nineteenth century romantic's need to look at the past and consecrate it.

The reform and re-codifying of liturgical chants and the rise of interest in Renaissance sacred polyphony gained momentum at the closing of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. Music reforms were well on their way.

When you place these two powerful musical streams into the fertile ground of the Roman Catholic Church re-establishing monasteries, where the influence of the Jansenists for pure and historically accurate liturgies, the formulation of sacred art and design centers such as Maria Laach, the growing scholarship on Scripture analysis, there has to be a strong convergence somewhere along the line. That convergence occurred when Pius X constructed his Motu Proprio. He set the benchmark for reforming agencies such as liturgical music commissions yet to be born and named, but some type of an official implementing agency. It is no wonder, since his background and formation were in liturgy and music.

Let me equip you with some interesting biographical numbers:

November 15, 1884:
Giuseppe Sarto is consecrated bishop of Mantua. Four years later he convokes a diocesan synod. Much of the agenda deals with music and its reforms. He writes a votum on sacred music and submits it to the Vatican in 1893.

November 22, 1894:
Bishop Sarto takes over the diocese of Venice and becomes a cardinal. Five months and seven days later, he issues a pastoral letter on sacred music.

August 9, 1903:
Cardinal Sarto is elected pope and takes the name Pius X. Three months and eighteen days later he issues the Motu Proprio, which he based on his Venetian document written when he was simply Cardinal Sarto.

The Reformation of the twentieth century has been launched.

[Extracted from Robert Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Music^[1]]

The moral of the story is always pay attention to a cardinal who is considered as "papabile" (a possible candidate for the papacy). What he writes as a cardinal can become church law soon, no matter if he writes from Venice, Chicago, or even perhaps Africa.

Section II: Reformation

Momentum grew from the Motu Proprio. In the next 50 years after its promulgation, hymnals with questionable theology were purged. Masses – especially orchestral Masses with soloists – were outlawed. Goodbye Mozart and Haydn. The Solesmes edition of the chant was canonized for universal use (the German edition - the Regensburg - took a while to die, but it eventually did after several squabbles), and the Catholic world saw a series of reforms in the liturgy and in its musical management that became so strong that an ethos of private prayer with improved music influenced the shaping of a spirituality which provided a musical bridge to the holy one - at least at those Masses where music was used.

The music helped in creating this ambience. For example, the introit for the 4th Sunday after Easter set to a psalm tone and "Kyrie eleison" and some of the "Gloria" of Nicola Montani's Missa Brevis.

"Introit," "Kyrie," "Gloria" – sung

You're awfully quiet. This is the practice, the tradition, and worshipful atmosphere that I dare say many, if not most of us, were reared in. Mass was to be quiet. You didn't talk. Mass was holy. The church was holy. We were to act holy.

The Cecelians, members of the St. Gregory Society, chant scholars and singers in the chant schola, all saw their ministry as a direct call from God and St. Cecelia to create the most beautiful package of worship tied with a gold ribbon and offered up to the God, the God who made us to love him, to serve him, and to be happy with him in this world and the next.

We were equipped with a Liber Usualis, a Graduale Romanum, several polyphonic Masses, polyphonic motets, fancy settings for the high holy days all drawn from the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Cecelians, and a little Stravinsky thrown in. Some of us were less equipped, but found some success in implementing the music reforms of the Motu Proprio by singing Mass VIII, Missa de Angelis, and beautiful motets from the St. Gregory Hymnal, which took the place of the St. Basil Hymnal. Only lesser musicians would use the antiquated but quaint St. Basil Hymnal. (Note the arrogance in my voice.)

We organists and choir directors were enfleshing the nearly divine orders in the Motu Proprio to create a little bit of heaven on earth. Some of us even tried to establish some congregational singing because in the Motu Proprio Pius X instructed "Actuosa Participatio."

Therein lay imbedded the seed of what would emerge sixty years later in the twentieth century with the growing concern about Roman Liturgy in the vernacular and the rise of the dialogue Mass in Germany, much of which was not known by folks like me.

The cause for a vernacular liturgy had its own organization in the Vernacular Society, which was an American based organization founded in 1940 that expanded into an international society in 1950. A good source tracing the development of the rise of the vernacular is Dynamic Equivalence^[2] by Jesuit Father Keith Pecklers. He has another volume, The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States –1926 to1995^[3], that is equally valuable.

The movements converged and divine intervention occured and on October 28, 1958 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected pope and took the name Pope John Paul XXIII. Camelot was on the horizon for some and for some others there were many unhappy surprises.

John XXIII called a council in 1961, and in 1963 the first document passed was Sacrosanctum Concilium, by an overwhelming positive vote. It summed up the evolution of liturgical and musical advances between 1903 and 1963. Central to those advances was the foundation laid by Pope Pius XII's encyclical, Mediator Dei of 1947 which proffered far reaching changes in liturgical practice, such as consecrating a sufficient numbers of hosts to accommodate the number of communicants. What a concept!

The council was able to synthesize over one hundred years of liturgical research, scripture reform, and musical reforms and produced Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. An ecclesial avalanche was unleashed and activity to translate, publish, catechize, renovate, and teach some music with what seemed to be an ever-changing text occupied the lives of Catholic liturgical leaders such as parish musicians.

The Constitution declared in Chapter II, paragraph 14 what we are marking today:

"The Church earnestly desires that all the faithful be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations called for by the very nature of the liturgy."

What better way to create worship that is full, conscious, and active than by singing our heads off? The next task was where and with what. Everything was so new, especially to much of the Church in the United States.

What was new?

Five major paradigmatic shifts:

• The use of the vernacular replacing the Latin language
• The altar facing the assembly with the priest in full frontal view
• The distinguishing of the ministries of lectors, cantors, servers
• The establishment of the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist
• The three-cycle Lectionary spread over three years

Following close behind was the re-established Order for the Christian Initiation of Adults, the formulating of three rites for reconciliation and the recovery of the centrality of Sunday.

These major departures from the Tridentine Rite provided an agenda of enormous implementation that would take place as soon as each bishop mandated it.

A major campaign was launched and diocesan staffs, parish musicians, and publishers put on their hard hats and began the task of getting the people to sing at liturgy: they began training music personnel, such as cantors; they discovered and created new pieces that would fulfill the liturgical requirements of say, the responsorial psalm; and they developed armor that would withstand the slings and arrows of outraged Catholics.

Where were we to sing and what would we sing? Well, how about hymns? We sang hymns at Novenas, Benediction, and, if the parishes were of central and eastern heritage, they sang at the Mass and at the great feasts.

Hymns could easily be grafted onto the Mass at the beginning of Mass and the end of Mass and during the offertory and some churches dared to sing at the distribution of Holy Communion. From 1964 to 1977 the following hymnals emerged:

• Our Parish Prays and Sings (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1964).
  This worship aid was already in place before Sacrosanctum Concilium. It was the major resource for the "dialogue Mass."
• Peoples Mass Book (Cincinnati, OH: World Library of Sacred Music, 1964).
• Worship I (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1971).
• The English Liturgy Hymnal (Friends of the English Liturgy, 1965).
• Glory and Praise (Phoenix, AZ: North American Liturgical Resources, 1977).

The appearance of these and other hymnals for use at the celebration of Roman Catholic liturgies borrowed strongly from Protestant sources. It was a rare organist who never heard the complaint, "We are going Protestant. These hymns are Protestant. You are playing too fast."

The responsorial psalm was a brand new concept: to sing a psalm which was contained in the form of a refrain (antiphon) and solo verses scheme. Enter now the settings of the psalms by Joseph Gelineau (more on him a little later) and Lucien Diess. Both composed music which had an appeal, which made them easy to learn. Following them were the St. Louis Jesuits of John Foley, Bob Dufford, Dan Schutte, and Roc O'Connor, who popularized psalm singing with their psalm paraphrases and highly singable and equally satisfying music.

Mass Ordinaries frequently were forced English translations of extant Latin pieces. Simultaneous was the appearance of tons of "English Masses" by composers of varying capabilities. The music personnel were not dubbed music ministers (which has a Protestant connotation) and would function in a different manner with the new liturgical requirements. Provisions were to be made to ensure the participation of the assembly in the Mass. The cantor was an innovation in the sense that this individual singer/leader played an active role in the celebration of the Liturgy of the Word.

Probably the most far-reaching change was the development of the folk style of composition and performance that sent tremors throughout the musical world of Catholic liturgy. The music was in the style one would hear on the popular music media and the instrument de rigeur was the guitar. The development of this style provided music quickly learned and quickly utilized. Some are still used today and make up an important part of a parish's repertory.

Most of us ran from rehearsal to planning meeting to another planning meeting to another rehearsal. We were breathless, and for the most part, we were excited about a brave new world of liturgical celebration.

The Reformation spawned by Pius X, given direction by the liturgical, scriptural, and artistic development of the sixty years after the Motu Proprio, reached its apex in Vatican II. Phase number II of the post-conciliar church was the age of establishing worship that was full, active, and conscious.

However, there was not a universal acceptance of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the re-defining of liturgy and its expression. In spite of the overwhelming vote affirming the Constitution, worship wars were in place and the battling took place in thousands of parishes, religious communities, and learned societies. The Consocietatis was a vocal church music association which capitalized on two of the paragraphs in chapter VI of the Sacrosanctum:

#114
The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care.

#116
The Church acknowledges Gregorian Chant as distinctive of the Roman Liturgy, therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical service.

The president, Monsignor Overath, led the European contingency to the United States to join with the American contingency in 1966 at Rosary College (now, Dominican College) in Lake Forest, Illinois, north of Chicago. The occasion was to explore the ramifications of the Council's decrees. The conferences would be held there and the music presentations would take place in Milwaukee. The European members counted on the American clout to champion the supremacy of chant and Renaissance polyphony.

However, another viewpoint was present. Another European organization, Universa Laus, attended with their president, Fr. Joseph Gelineau. This group embraced the new direction the conciliar reforms were taking the Church. Father Gelineau and his team understood the importance of writing new music for the new rites to enable a singing assembly in a full, conscious, and active manner.

The leadership of the Consocietatis exerted a strong effort to discourage, and perhaps even prohibit, compositions in the vernacular. Chant and polyphony were to be the musica sacra of the Roman Church.

A clash of the titans ensued. Rembert Weakland came to the conference.

He was archabbot of his home archabbey of St. Vincent in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He reported that he had not planned to attend this international meeting. At the behest of Cardinal Dearden, who was the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Detroit, he did go and created an alliance with Father Gelineau. The tide turned and a more pastoral understanding of music and its use in the liturgy was established. Composers would be encouraged to write new music for the new liturgy to help fashion a renewed church who sings and who prays.

The Consocietatis returned to Europe, but, they didn't forget. The signal of things to come was sounded and worship wars were on the way.

With the renewed vigor in the Church to establish "full, conscious, and active" participation with the indispensable ministry of music, we were on the way. What better way to create worship that is all of that than by singing our heads off?

At this point, I need to make two public proclamations:

Proclamation 1
Worship did happen before 1963.

Proclamation 2
Many Catholics did sing – maybe not in the places we wanted them to sing – but they did sing. We also wished they would sing a little louder than a mezzo piano.

In 1990, Catholic musicians and other enlightened Catholics were astonished and even delighted by the appearance of a book, Why Catholics Can't Sing by Thomas Day, a teacher at Salve Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island. He listed all kinds of good reasons why Catholics can't sing, and those reasons were because of the repertory which was developing at the time. He pretty well "dissed" the folk style. He also made little reference to the parishes of German and eastern-European heritages who continued to sing what they sang in the old country. The Germans had their Singmesse and the Poles and the Slovaks had their version of the Singmesse - singing the parts of the Mass in hymnic style with a paraphrased text.

Dr. Day did accomplish what he set out to do: help us to take a good, hard look at what we were doing at the time in the name of public participation.

Then there were the parish schools who could boast a "music sister" who taught the school children Mass VIII and some seasonal items. Most parishes had a choir; usually a men's choir and/or a children's choir which sang weekly. What they sang and how they sang it in too many instances was hardly what the Constitution called a treasury of sacred music. Second rate Caecilian style music abounded and the linger-on hymns from the St. Basil Hymnal refused to die. That is not to say that higher level liturgical music was unknown. No. Chant done well was common in many of the religious houses. Renaissance polyphony could be heard in some of the major cathedrals. Such repertory, however, was not de rigeur in the parish church. From my personal history, the first time I heard a Renaissance motet was in a concert by a Lutheran College Choir. The first time I heard a composition of Palestrina in the course of a Mass was in the Michaelskirche in Munich in 1963, and it was Tu es Petrus on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

I then knew that the treasury of sacred music here was not the treasury of sacred music that most Catholics heard in the churches of the United States.

The success of the Herculean task of making "musical liturgy normative" depended upon the zeal of the pastor and the capability of the parish musician to think creatively and fashion a radically different rationale for making music in the church. Parish musicians were mostly volunteers, with the exception of the daily Mass musician who played and who sang the Mass in the distant organ loft. The person was frequently experienced as a phantom who was nameless and was referred to simply as the "organist."

The Reformation continued with an ongoing development of repertory, a good understanding of what music ministry is to do (be transparent), and the inter-relationship of liturgy and its ritual expression by music.

What is in place now that was not there sixty years ago? Well, an increased awareness of Scripture. The state funeral of Ronald Reagan affords evidence. One of the readings was from Micah. I dare say, in 1963 that would have been unknown to us. Now, the books of the prophets, the psalms, and the writings of the apostles are fixed in the consciousness of American Catholics. Another area is shared hymnody. One of the hymns that was sung at the President Reagan's funeral was Sing with all the Saints of Glory with the tune Hymn to Joy. You can't find that one in the St. Basil's Hymnal or the St. Gregory Hymnal. A good portion of the texts and tunes of the hymns which are sung at Roman Catholic liturgies are from non-Roman Catholic sources. For the most part, the theological weight of today's hymns is considerably deeper than many of our hymns from the late 1800's and early 1900's.

More people are singing something more often at liturgy. Sometimes the sound level is similar to simply breathing on pitch, but, nevertheless, there is more congregational song.

The repertory tries to express in ritual music that is within the cultural framework of the assembly and that cultural framework champions inclusivity. It is a rare parish that doesn't include a traditional hymn beside a Mass written by a contemporary composer with a Mass part sung in chant, in Latin at a Sunday liturgy. Jesus, Remember Me from the Taizé repertory is quite comfortable beside a chant "Agnus Dei" and a 17th century chorale tune. We are singing more and more the liturgical texts rather than singing at the liturgy.

Marty Haugen's Mass of Creation is sung worldwide. Ritual music is a reality.

The music ministry has gained new respectability as names of the director of music and of liturgy are listed on thousands of parish bulletins. Yes, we've come a long way within a very short amount of time. Forty years is a drop in the bucket of our two thousand year history of liturgy and ritual. Much has been sung. Much has been discarded. Much continues to be sung.

Section III: Counter Reformation

In the spring of 2001, Pope John Paul II authorized the long awaited revision of the Missale Romanum. On November 12, 2002 the Latin Church members of the USCCB approved the translation of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the General Instructions of the Roman Missal, aka GIRM. On March 17, 2003 it received confirmation by the Congregation for Divine Worship. It is the major document in the forty years of instructions, promulgation, and implementation. It is also a pivotal document in the sense that it takes the post conciliar reforms in a direction that some see as a counter-reformational move. It initiates a new era in liturgical history of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church.

There is much in the document to praise. Kevin Irwin, in his article, "Overview of GIRM" (Liturgical Ministry, Summer 2003, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, C.P.P.S., editor) sees an emphasis on the eschatological dimension of the liturgy as beneficial. He cites that in spite of the commentary generated by the strong attention given to the persona Christi role of the priest, the role of the assembly is strongly affirmed over and over again. The integrity of the altar, the re-stating of the importance of using only the hosts consecrated at the Mass at Holy Communion, and silence are only some of the clarifications in the document.

Music ministry and liturgical music receive welcome emphasis. In the sections which deal with music, such as #40, we read "Every care should be taken that singing by the ministers and the people is not absent in celebrations that occur on Sundays and on holy days of obligation." There are designations of singing during the processions, the role of the psalmist, and the concern about the singers going to Communion. In #86 we read, "Care should be taken that singers, too, can receive Communion with ease." To the best of my knowledge this is the first time in Roman documents that official recognition is given to singers with the implication that singers are people, too. Looking back at all the anxiety generated by the GIRM in some of our brothers and sisters, myself included, the fretting was hardly worth it.

Two other documents however, Liturgicam Authenticam and Redemptionis Sacramentum, have generated much heat and much discussion.

Liturgicam Authenticam 2001 gives news rules on translation of the Latin texts into the vernacular. The Latin must be respected and the vernacular must follow the text with scrupulous attention. Redemptionis sacramentum 2004 is a disciplinary document regulating liturgical practice and abuses. It has received a lot of attention most recently when the use of flagons in the communion preparation rite is prohibited. Again, we must deal with rubrics and it is hard to get passionate over rubrics.

The past three years have caused no small amount of frustration, anger, and remorse in many of us and many of us felt done in. Perhaps we can see this time as an opportunity to reflect on the past forty years and the worship wars over liturgical practice and liturgical music. Perhaps we can have a reflective sympathy to those choir directors who were told that they could no longer sing Latin repertory even though Latin was never completely prohibited. Perhaps we can have some appreciation of the anger felt when the organist was told that the guitar ensemble would be leading the liturgy, but the organ could be used at the Friday night Stations of the Cross. Perhaps we should have included the "Agnus Dei" from Chant Mass XVIII in the Mass.

Perhaps we can ask ourselves the same question we asked our teachers and leaders who were in deep despair: "Didn't you see it coming? Don't you read Worship magazine?"

Perhaps forty years from now someone will visit us, wherever we might be and whatever state of consciousness we might be in, and ask the question, "Didn't you see it coming? Didn't you see the need to reckon with the staggering popularity of EWTN's liturgies; the success of Taizé music creating reflective prayer; the GIRM's eloquent plea for silence in the liturgy, the enormous concern of numerous newly ordained deacons and priests for 'old church things'?"

Even with all of these observations, I do think we've done a good job and continue to do a good job. For some of us the passion for liturgical catechesis, for mega-liturgical conferences, for implementing the latest Gospel hit-parade tune has cooled considerably, but we have endured.

We are living witnesses to the principle that liturgy is formative. We continue to be formed by our daily and our weekly leadership in causing prayer to happen in our communities no matter how weak the assembly's response is or how debilitating a Roman document can be. We exhibit courage and are urged to take fresh courage as we embark on this current phase of liturgical reform. Our courage is not simply heroic posturing. It is charged by faith and supported by hope and lived in love. We are faith-filled people or we wouldn't be sitting in this room listening to the dude from out of town.

I remarked earlier that we have come a long way. Let's sing about it.

We've Come This Far by Faith

We've come this far by faith,
Leaning on the Lord;
Trusting in his holy word,
He's never failed me yet. 

O can't turn around,
We've come this far by faith.
Don't be discouraged when trouble's in your life.
He'll bear your burdens and move all misery and strife,
That's why we've come this far by faith...

[Text and tune: Albert A. Goodson, 1965, 1993. MannaMusic in African American Heritage Hymnal, GIA Publications, Inc. 2001]

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Last modified May 25, 2004