Malurgy

[BobHayes]

I know that I am a Catholic and that my Faith influences influences my views. I am merely being candid about my bias.

Well I'm Catholic too, and probably unlike yourself, I have taken a solemn, public oath to preach and teach the Church's teaching and nothing else. As I said, enjoy your course on the Catechism.... and where that book embraces the subjects of ecclesiology and moral conscience, and you take to heart the Church's teaching, you might find yourself coming over in this forum as a better informed and better Catholic than that which is coming over at the moment. (You've managed to shock one RC cathedral d.o.m. someone who it is rumoured might have a responsibility for liturgy and music in a diocese somewhere, and one diocesan chair of a liturgy and music committee, sometime teacher of fundamental liturgy at a major seminary, so far.)

It is certainly not my intention to shock Father. My academic training is in history and historiography. What started (middle of page seven) as my observation about the context in which history is written has certainly spread out in various directions. I will certainly closely examine how I express myself in future. Hopefully I will become better informed and better able to express myself on this forum. With God's help I will learn to express myself better and - with a bit of luck - more established contributors will no longer feel inclined to describe my views as 'ugly', 'sectarian' or 'prejudice[d]'.

Thank you and God bless.

[mcb]

Stick with us, Bob, this forum is all the better for encompassing a broad range of opinions. Apologies for my uncompromising language.

[Peter Jones]

Thank you and God bless.

As mcb says, stick with us. I don't think you're ugly, sectarian or prejudiced - just, maybe, in need of a bit more formation....... so don't be surprised if you are shocked (into deeper faith) when you explore the Catechism.

[BobHayes]

Stick with us, Bob, this forum is all the better for encompassing a broad range of opinions. Apologies for my uncompromising language.

Thank you!

[BobHayes]

Thank you and God bless.

As mcb says, stick with us. I don't think you're ugly, sectarian or prejudiced - just, maybe, in need of a bit more formation....... so don't be surprised if you are shocked (into deeper faith) when you explore the Catechism.

Thank you!

[Peter Jones]

To return to the topic (and Bob has certainly made us think that the celebration of - and writings upon - the liturgy is about faith and living/celebrating it) - to what extent does liturgical orthodoxy and orthopraxis build up an assembly's faith - and heterodoxy and heteropraxis (if there is such a word instead of Malurgy) weaken faith? OK - there's a whole PhD research topic for someone there - but this was stated (in one form or another) in, I seem to remember, the first document on music and liturgy of the US Bishops. How "Mal" does "Malurgy" have to be to have a deleterious effect on faith? (JP II's letter VQA here is worth reading.

[Southern Comfort]

Music in Catholic Worship, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1972, para 6:

Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. Good celebrations foster and nourish faith. Poor celebrations weaken and destroy it.

The 1982 reprint of the document added, without comment, a word to this paragraph:

Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. Good celebrations foster and nourish faith. Poor celebrations may weaken and destroy it.

Evidently the trenchant original was too strong for someone's stomach....

I had assumed that this paragraph was John's starting-point in beginning this thread.

[Peter Jones]

Thank you for the exact reference SC. I was nowhere near the document when posting and working from memory.

[johnquinn39]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsben ... -this-out/

[Peter Jones]

That priest was suspended and his faculty to celebrate Mass withdrawn. See here.

[Southern Comfort]

That priest was suspended and his faculty to celebrate Mass withdrawn. See here.

It appears that he was almost immediately reinstated (see Pray Tell). And that this back-and-forth has been going on for some time.

[BobHayes]

I doubt a showman like this is very much interested in the structure of the Mass. Here is last week's 57 minute sermon: http://saintsabina.org/video-sermon-110412.html

And they are all available to buy on CD or DVD.

[JW]

On the issue of long homilies, it is reckoned that some of St John Chrysostom's homilies took over an hour to deliver. Here are his views on the matter in an introduction to a sermon on demons; I guess it was being suggested to him that his homilies should be shorter. How do his words apply to our 5 or 10 minute homilies today and what does it say of our "spiritual desire and divine longing" in the 21st Century? Would his homilies be considered Malurgy today?

"But since it happens that there are in so great a congregation,
certain weak ones, unable to follow the length of the discourse, I
wish to suggest this to them, that they should hear and receive, as
much as they can, and having received enough should retire: There
is no one who forbids, or compels them to remain beyond their
natural strength. Let them not however necessitate the abridgement
of the discourse before the time and the proper hours. Thou art
replete, but thy brother still hungers. Thou art drunk with the
multitude of the things spoken, but thy brother is still thirsty. Let him
then not distress thy weakness, compelling thee to receive more
than thine own power allows: nor do thou vex his zeal by preventing
him from receiving all that he can take in.
This also happens at secular feasts. Some indeed are more
quickly satisfied, some more tardily, and neither do these blame
those, nor do they condemn these. But there indeed to withdraw
more quickly is praiseworthy, but here to withdraw more quickly is
not praiseworthy, but excusable. There to leave off more slowly, is
culpable and faulty, here to withdraw more tardily, brings the
greatest commendation, and good report. Pray why is this? Because
there indeed the tardiness arises from greediness, but here the
endurance, and patience are made up of spiritual desire and divine
longing.
But enough of preamble."

[mcb]

From our web site:

Salford Cathedral, dedicated to St John the Evangelist, was opened on 9th August 1848. Bishop George Brown sang the Solemn High Mass and Bishop Nicholas Wiseman gave a ninety-minute sermon.

[BobHayes]

I imagine the Sunday homilies are about fifteen minutes in length in my parish. It has never occurred to me to time them(!), as - thankfully - they are invariably both uplifting and educational. I do not envy parish priests trying to achieve a balance of content and presentation in order that the diverse flock gets as much as possible from a homily.