BJHN conference speech

[Nick Baty]

How many of you have ever heard an Introit at Mass that had d*mn-all to do with the readings in the Lectionary but just happened to be in the Grad-you-ah-lay Row-mah-noom?
Sorry, that's very unfair. Just couldn't resist it. Well, perhaps it's not as unfair as all that. Yes, it has been a hard week....

Not unfair at all, from my experience!

[Howard Baker]

Cullen is being polemical for sure, but surely his point about propers stands. It has just suited most of us over the years to ignore the liturgical rules. Hymns are easy and provide for ready participation (yet many Catholics won't sing even hymns). And why get anxious if the GR introit is not on the same 'topic' as the gospel of the day? Does absolutely everything have to be themed anyway? Only have the Rite of Sprinkling if water is mentioned somewhere in the readings?

[Southern Comfort]

Cullen is being polemical for sure, but surely his point about propers stands. It has just suited most of us over the years to ignore the liturgical rules.

We had this discussion recently. The assumption made by comments like the above is that, until the postconciliar reforms, everyone sang the Gregorian propers. They didn't, in fact. Many churches used chanting tones for the propers by composer such as Terry, Bévenot and others, or even the tonus in directum. The texts were articulated, yes, but often not to the plainchant melodies. It's not that we've recently started to "ignore the liturgical rules". That goes back a long way further.

[contrabordun]

Actually, he's not making any assumptions about what used to happen. He's commenting on what does, and what could/should happen today.

[Peter Jones]

It has just suited most of us over the years to ignore the liturgical rules.

I have already referred to the PAPAL legislation on the use of hymns at Mass from 1955 - a step in the journey towards GIRM and other documents. Please, in what sense do you consider using a hymn instead of an Introit a disregard of a liturgical rule? As SC has cogently argued in another thread, GIRM 48 lists options, not priorities, and to back up that argument, I would refer you to the footnote in GIRM making reference to JP II's Dies Domini. Read that document and you'll find Blessed John Paul almost ecstatic about songs related to the day/season. If you can find an unequivocal and explicit instruction in any liturgy document that says we MUST firstly consider the Introit from GR as the best thing to sing, please do inform us. There's not even a hint of ordinal numbers in GIRM 47. From where are you forming the opinion that there is?

By the way - Blessed John Paul even goes so far as to use a word that is so beloved of primary teachers but not by liturgists - the word theme.

[Peter Jones]

And if you might think of making reference to Sacramentum Caritatis paragraph 42 - I would remind readers of the deliberate and, to my mind, possibly duplicitous manipulation of Pope Benedict's Latin text by the translator. The original document makes no instruction/recommendation at all that Gregorian Chant must be employed...... only that it's use is given due weight (and that in the light of all the other instructions on the liturgy about active participation and pastoral application, etc… ) Gregorian Chant only has pride of place in celebrations that as a whole are in Latin. See Musicam Sacram 50 and the repetition of that in JP II's Chirograph of 2003, paragraph 7.

PS - I am not at all against chant and chanting - and will be engaged in some of the Missal chants tomorrow morning - even those in dialogue with the assembly, who respond well!)

[Howard Baker]

Well, I wasn't meaning to be get all legalistic. I have tended to read GIRM as implying (though it doesn't precisely state) an order of preference; this is as reasonable an inference as the no-preference-implied-because-no-ordinal-numbers reading of it. After all, the GR is pretty hallowed by ancient use (and is taken to be the gold standard in the cathedrals with the greatest choral traditions); the Graduale Simplex came into being so that those smaller churches who couldn't manage the GR could sing proper chants - so it was invented as a kind of second best. Maybe the '...alius cantus...congruus' was actually included for those who couldn't manage that?

Pre-Vatican II there were far more RC parish choirs than now, and very many of them, especially in the bigger towns, sang some version of the propers every Sunday, maybe not always expertly, but at least they made an effort to follow, in attenuated form, the prevaling (ancient) liturgical principle: psalmody ruled, albeit in Latin.

It seems to me that almost nowhere now, in ordinary parish churches, will you encounter any form of sung proper, except perhaps in some places a responsorial psalm; and many struggle to provide that. The singing of the psalms is becoming a rarity...

I've nothing against hymns in the Mass - sing 'em all the time, old and new; it's just that, ironically, churches ditched a ready-made selection of biblical texts in favour of largely non-biblical hymns, just as the Church was encouraging a deeper knowledge of scripture...

[Nick Baty]

ironically, churches ditched a ready-made selection of biblical texts in favour of largely non-biblical hymns, just as the Church was encouraging a deeper knowledge of scripture...

My experience is somewhat different– churches ditched a huge selection of non-biblical hymns in favour of scriptural songs.

[Howard Baker]

Howard Baker wrote: ironically, churches ditched a ready-made selection of biblical texts in favour of largely non-biblical hymns, just as the Church was encouraging a deeper knowledge of scripture...
My experience is somewhat different– churches ditched a huge selection of non-biblical hymns in favour of scriptural songs.

(a) ...not from Mass, where there were no hymns (biblical or not) to ditch; (b) what proportion of the most popular (popular, not best) hymns/songs today have words of Biblical orgin?

[Peter Jones]

Given our collective comments about how Cullen has missed scriptural foundations /allusions in the songs he implicitly condemns (and even, in so doing,has implied that Almighty God himself is a heretic) - this is perhaps an opportune time to remind ourselves of paragraph 25 of Dei Verbum and its pointer to St Jerome - Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

[Nick Baty]

what proportion of the most popular (popular, not best) hymns/songs today have words of Biblical orgin?

If you consider that the most popular are by Bernadette Farrell, Marty Haugen et al, I would hazard a guess at most.

[Peter Jones]

Well, I wasn't meaning to be get all legalistic.......

My apologies if I came across as a bit grumpy - I did indeed read you as being legalistic.

[Peter Jones]

(b) what proportion of the most popular (popular, not best) hymns/songs today have words of Biblical orgin?

Quite some question!!

Our major hymnals do have scriptural indices........ anyone care to do the analysis Howard is asking for? (One of our Liturgy Planner compilers? Go on - not as if you have anything else to do )

[Howard Baker]

Grumpy? No, I asked for it; I shouldn't have used the word 'rules' to start with. (Mind, being no expert, I have difficulty in figuring out what the criteria are for good practice in liturgy: still, mercifully we don't, a la Ofsted, have an OfLit - I don't think the distant CDW counts.)

[Nick Baty]

But you will find plenty of examples of good practice from many members of the Society of St Gregory. And you'll also find that, for many years, the society has pushed for the use of scriptural text and scripturally-inspired songs.