Unreasonable Decisions:

Liturgical Music and The USCCB’s Flagrant Disobedience to Rome

Narratio

            Bishop Vigneron had proposed to the bishops, at the meeting of Nov. 10-12, 2006, the formation of a small study group to do the preliminary study lay the foundations necessary to form a national directory or repertory of music for the Catholics in the United States. His proposal was rejected basically because it would involve such an overhead of work, the bishops couldn’t sustain it, according to whichever bishop it was who responded to him.

When Bishop Vigneron clarified that he was only proposing a few people to do the study to suggest to the bishops ways in which this could be done, on a relaxed timeline of plural years, it still seemed to much to them. Furthermore, a bishop asserted (I regret I have not been able to find the transcripts), forming a repertory would somehow freeze the musical production, when there are large numbers of “musicians” and “composers” and “editorial houses” whose livelihood depends on such productivity.

Some Context

A few pieces of background information should shed light on this matter. First, Rome has asked the Bishops of the World to improve liturgical translations, which in America, where we pride ourselves on efficiency and “intelligence,” has been embarrassingly slow. This request was made, and the norms for it were laid out, five years ago in a beautiful document called Liturgiam Autenticam (March 28, 2001). Paragraph 108 requires the “directory or repertory” to which Bishop Vigneron referred, with the beautiful spirit of obedience we should expect from any true son of the Church. The flat rejection to do what Rome says puts the US bishop’s conference in an objective state of obstinate disobedience. No surprise there, I guess.

Second, the USCCB managed to pump out a few “teaching” documents, which surely no one will read. (See them here.) The few good points that some of the documents make obviously had the teeth knocked out of them before they hit the public, after all, American Bishops are always most eager to sacrifice salvific teaching to pleasing the passions of the crowd. One of the documents even recommends that “The Administration and the new Congress need to engage in a collaborative dialogue.” The whole document, by the way, is a total capitulation to the Democratic party line on the topic it treats, but let’s not get too sidetracked. In the face of gay priests and a recent history of homosexual – not pedophiliac – abuses (cf. John Jay Report), and of a militant gay activism at every level of society, the bishops were at least able to more or less assert the Church’s positions, but only after outrageous debates, for example, of whether they should use Rome’s word, “disorder,” or not in the document.

Bishop Bruskewitz (Lincoln, Nebraska), quoting then-Cardinal Ratzinger and Canon Law, reminded the bishops that the USCCB has no teaching office, and has no real theological reason of being (an interesting report here).

A third piece of background information here: the USCCB has a $139 million budget (!) (See here. See here, too, especially under the heading, “A Plan without a Vision?”).

So they can tell the President and his cabinet and staff to “dialogue” with the congress; they can produce weak teaching documents which no one will read; they have $139m at their disposal; but they can’t obey Rome’s call for the sixth year running by a serious reform of sacred music?

Where's Palestrina?

            Have you ever heard of anyone cry about the “spirit of Vatican II,” in whose name, they introduced tambourines, pianos, drums, guitars, electric keyboards, and Simon and Garfunkle style hippie music into the sacred liturgy? Or justified interruptions of the liturgy due to “charismatic” features, or introduced rock music into Teen Life Masses?

Well, none of these people are Vatican II people. I am. I’m a Vatican II priest. And a Vatican I priest. And a Trent priest. And a Chalcedon priest, for that matter.

What are some of the great things Vatican II says about the liturgy? Let’s try a few quotes from the documents themselves, beginning with Sacrosanctum Concilium.

·         “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” (n. 36)

·         “Steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.” (54)

·         “In accordance with the centuries-old tradition of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in the divine office.” (101)

·         “Sacred music is to be considered the more holy in proportion as it is more closely connected with the liturgical action, whether it adds delight to prayer, fosters unity of minds, or confers greater solemnity upon the sacred rites” (112)

·         “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” (116)

·         “In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man's mind to God and to higher things. But other instruments also may be admitted for use in divine worship, with the knowledge and consent of the competent territorial authority… This may be done, however, only on condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable, for sacred use, accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful.” (120)

Whew! All that just from one document. I could flood this web page, and test the Gentle Reader’s patience with volumes more. But if this is what Vatican II asks, organs, Gregorian Chant, Latin, etc., the American Bishops are objectively very far from the mark.

I conclude this small analysis reflecting upon what we priests are praying in Latin every day in our breviary; namely, the hymn which begins each of the offices, the mighty and humble chant, Dies Irae. There is a parody of it, whose author I don’t really know, which goes as follows, greatly contrasting with the silly and heretical goof-songs faithful have been forced to endure now for decades in many parishes:

Day of wrath, O Day of mourning!

Earth to ashes now returning!

Gather, by the millions, burning!

Cleansed at last by cataclysm

Butchered rhyme and battered rhythm,

Neopagan narcissism!

On that day, Lord, when thou comest,

And our dreadful hymnals thumbest,

Smite the ugliest and dumbest.

Smite them, Lord, yet of thy pity

Take their songsters to thy city:

Even Haugen, Haas, and Schutte.

Spare them on the stern condition

That they feel a true contrition

for the Worship III edition.

Doom them not to loss and ruin

While the darker storm is brewing!

They knew not what they were doing.

On that day when Palestrina

Dare not touch a celestina,

What will Sister Ballerina?

With thine eyes that pierce like lances

Still her heathen silly dances

And her flirting with Saint Francis.

Purge us of the prim and prissy,

Ditties fit for Meg or Missy,

Not for Francis, but a sissy.

Cantors who thought nothing grander

Than a sheaf of propaganda

Writ like office memoranda,

Raise them to thy room to bide in

Where their hearts and ears may widen

To the strains of Bach and Haydn.

Let their hearts within them falter,

Hearing, as they near thine altar,

Seraphs sing the Scottish Psalter.

Seize those devils set to pen a

Hymnal neutered of its men, ah,

Fling 'em all to black Gehenna!

Fling them one and all to mangle

Their pronominals, and wrangle

Lest a participle dangle!

Who held manhood in derision,

Preaching double circumcision,

Suffer now their own revision.

Though the songs of Hell are naughty,

None by Handel or Scarlatti,

At the least they'll have castrati.

Pitch, O Lord, the bald and raucous

Slogans of a leftist caucus

Down to Sheol, or Secaucus!

Save their singers, though: restore 'em

To a silent sweet decorum,

Saecula per saeculorem.

Various are the throngs of heaven:

Some were lump, and some were leaven,

Some as lame as six or seven.

When the demons hear thy curses,

And this world's dense fog disperses,

Heal the hobbled, not their verses.

Hush me too, Lord, when I grumble:

In thy mercy make me humble,

Lest On Turkey's Wings I stumble.

Though Haugen sing "Hosea" evermore,

Save me, I pray! but keep me near the door. Amen.