Quo Vadis?

An excerpt from the original essay by Fr. Jay Scott Newman Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness For the sacred music 1. Stop balkanizing the Mass schedule with different types of music. This trick comes from Protestant church growth strategies, and it teaches our people that divine worship is just a matter of personal taste. Yes, progressive solemnity can distinguish one Mass from another in a large parish (low Mass, sung Mass, solemn Mass, etc.), but the basic approach to matters musical should remain essentially the same. 2. If the choir is visible to the congregation, move them to a place where they will not be. This is absolutely essential to celebrating liturgy as worship rather than liturgy as entertainment. Yes, Anglicans more or less successfully replaced priests with lay choirs in the chancel, but for several different reasons, that simply does not work in the contemporary Roman Rite. The ideal place, of course, is a loft for organ and choir at the rear of the church. Fa...

The following is an excerpt from a circular of the Archdiocese of Bombay and makes for interesting reading: THOU ART A PRIEST FOREVER A VADEMECUM for Priests - Archdiocese of Bombay SACRED LITURGY The Liturgy is a visible sign that the Church is a community of praise and worship. At every liturgical celebration - be it in private or in public, in word or in song, in the performance of the Sacraments and sacramentals or in the recitation of the Breviary - a priest must lead the members of his assembly into Jesus’ intimate Abba-experience and make them aware of the “communion of saints” in the Church Universal, so as to mingle their worship with the Magnificat of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Hallelujah and Hosanna of the Angels and Saints in heaven, with the Kyrie eleison of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and with the Maranatha and Benedictus of all the faithful on earth. Liturgical ceremonies must therefore “exude and instil a sense of the sacred, be awe-inspiring and Spirit-filled...

Hi, the following article copied and edited from the original author's contibution have sparked off a raging debate and a fight in the choir I sing. This is given below for you to read and arrive at your own conclusions (it would help if you are aware of the situation). I could call this article as "What ails The Lukeharmonix?" but this is the general state of many Catholic church choirs today. "...Musicians fulfill an important and necessary function in the sacred liturgy. But whether fully trained professionals or ardent amateurs (amateur: translation: one who does it for love), all must remember that the purpose of the music is to implement the liturgy, not to entertain the faithful or glorify themselves. The motto of all ought to be: Non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam! ( Not to us, Lord, but to your Name be all glory! ) The Second Vatican Council mandated that the choir be an integral part of the liturgy team: "Choirs must be diligently promoted...

534, 535, 536 its just me counting the number of screws in the furniture in my office. I know you may be jealous when you hear that I’M JOBLESS!!! Let me first clarify, I have not joined the millions of unemployed Indians as yet, I have submitted my resignation to ABN AMRO and am serving out the mandatory 30 days notice period. I have one offer letter on hand as of today and am expecting one more. Now the offer on hand is from a typical “Marwari” company and has all the usual “frills and flounces”. The expected offer is an unknown from a startup, so it holds a lot of promise. Anyway coming back to the cause for this post, I have been so bored doing absolutely nothing in office that I read 4 business newspapers, check 3 email accounts, scrap friends and strangers alike on orkut, make a few long phone calls and still find that despite blowing up lots of office money I just don’t seem to kill enough time and so you will understand the screws. At number 536 I suddenly remembered the wonder...