Biskop Slatterys foredrag om liturgien – 4

Siste del av biskop Slatterys foredrag kommer her (men sannsynligvis komemr det mer i desembernummeret av bispedømmets tidsskrift). Han skriver her om at salmesang ikke er en del av den katolske messen, men at de hører hjemme i tidebønner og ulike former for andakter. Nå må det legges ting to ting; 1) at det er tillatt å synge salmer isteden for de oppsatte inngangsvers, offertoriumvers etc for hver messe, 2) og at salmene vi synger i Norge oftest er svært mye bedre enn sangene som synges i de fleste amerikanske menigheter. Slik skriver biskopen:

What I would like to propose is that we recover the sung introit (the fragment of a psalm with its antiphon, or response, sung while the celebrant and ministers enter the church and approach the altar at Mass.) For two generations, Catholics have been expected to sing an opening hymn at Mass, and, in many parishes, the faithful are regularly browbeaten to “stand up and greet this morning’s celebrant with hymn ‘so-and-so’,” which, depending upon the parish, might be taken from the red hymn book or the blue hymn book or the nicely disposable paperback missalette. So deeply has this “opening hymn mentality” shaped our consciousness that most Catholics would be astounded to hear me say that hymns have no real place in Mass.

Hymns belong in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the common devotions of the faithful, but the idea that the parish liturgy committee should sit down sometime early in the month and look through a hymn book, trying to find pretty hymns that haven’t been overdone in the past three or four months and that explore the themes of the Sunday Masses and that bring the people together as a singing community is an idea completely alien to the spirit of the Catholic liturgy.

The singing of hymns as Sunday worship was a Protestant innovation, better suited to their nonsacramental worship than to the Mass. And an opening hymn introduces – at the very inception of the sacred action – that element of creative busyness, which is, as we have seen, antithetical to the nature of salvation as a gift we receive from God. Sung introits have been an integral part of the Latin Rite, and remain so in the Extraordinary Form, where the schola, or choir, chants the more difficult antiphon, and the congregation sings the psalm. This gives the faithful both the chance to listen and respond, practicing, in effect, the basic elements of the Mass: listening and responding.

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