september 2011

En diakon forteller hvordan den tradisjonelle messen har forandret ham

Liturgi, TLM /

En katolsk permanent diakon i minnesota, USA forteller hvordan det har forandret ham en hel del å delta i den tradisjonelle latinske messen – prester (og ministranter) kan fortelle lignende ting:

… “I never thought that I would be working in liturgy, especially the Traditional Latin Mass,” Deacon Peters said. When he was in formation, he was doing social work and thought his ministry might involve that. He says he didn’t even know what the old rite was.

He said the whole thing began with the Duluth Men’s Schola. (Full disclosure: This writer is the founder and director of the schola, which will be singing Sept. 14.) Then Father Eric Hastings, who will celebrate the Sept. 14 Mass, began to offer the simplest version of the Traditional Latin Mass, a “low Mass,” and there were no servers, so Deacon Peters learned how to serve.

From there, things began to develop slowly. The next step was doing the more complicated sung version of the Traditional Latin Mass, a “missa cantata,” culminating in a heavily attended missa cantata last year featuring a polyphony choir. (This year the choir will be singing William Byrd’s “Mass for Four Voices.”)

From there, the next step was a solemn high Mass, which is vastly more complex — and a vastly more demanding liturgy for a deacon. Deacon Peters said all along it was something meant to be guided by the Holy Spirit and carried out peacefully.

“There are no agendas, there were no expectations, it was just people who loved liturgy and wanted to be faithful to what the Holy Father was asking of us,” he said. …

Deacon Peters freely admits that his work with the traditional liturgy has changed him as a deacon. “I’m a different deacon than I was before,” he said. He said he is more prayerful and reverent in how he approaches the sacrifice of the Mass, in whichever form it’s celebrated, a sentiment he has also heard from altar servers. …

(Tips fra Father Z.)

Fire år siden Summorum Pontificum

TLM /

I morgen er det fire år siden pave Benedikts motu proprio om den gamle messen trådte i kraft, og jeg leser (hos Rorate Cæli) at nå skal det også (endelig) hver sødag bli feiret en tradisjonell latinsk messe i den nord-italienske bye Trento, (Trent):

Just four years after the entry into force of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the traditional Mass is finally going to be celebrated regularly by a diocesan priest in the city of… Trent, the main seat of the great Council: every Sunday at 6:30 PM (yes, that is 1830…, local time, in the Church of Santa Maria del Suffragio, in the city center), by order of the local Archbishop.

This is just the latest of hundreds of new traditional Latin Masses celebrated weekly
after Summorum Pontificum: «It’s morning again in the Vatican, and, under the leadership of Pope Ratzinger, our Church is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?»…

I kommentarene under innlegget er det ulike meninger om denne nyheten; noen gleder seg, andre er mer skeptiske og mener at den tradisjonelle messen fortsatt møtes av mye motstand og uvilje. Det er også ulike meninger om i hvilken grad lekfolket støtter opp om disse messene – her i Oslo skulle jeg gjerne ønske at flere kom til de tradisjonelle søndagsmessene, 2. og 4. søndag jver måned i St Joseph kirke.

Folket både bør og skal synge messens ordinarium

Liturgi /

Jeg leser vider i doktoravhandlingen fra USA om katolsk kirkemusikk – som jeg skrev om her. Forfatteren forklarer hvorfor pave Piux’s motu proprio om kirkemusikk ikke ble lyttet til (i USA). Bl.a. brydde prestene seg ikke om musikk, og visste ingen ting om (kirke)musikk. Og mange steder brukte man bare amatørmusikere, som ofte bare kunne klare det vanligste og mest banale. Med også i de større menighetene i byene, med dyktige musikere, brydde man seg ikke om pavens ønsker; der øvde man bare inn flotte konsertmesser (slik at folk ikke fikk synge ordinarieleddene (som de burde)), mens proprieleddene (som koret skulle ha sunget) ble ignorert (fra s 241-43):

The glaring anomaly was that musicians – generally the ones with the most training – simply allowed choirs continually to usurp the role of the people, outlined by Pius X himself, in singing the Ordinary. Without doubt this non-compliance on the part of parish musicians was a key to the non-reception of TLS. It was the practice of the time, both in Europe and the US (albeit one often condemned), to publish programs of Mass music in the various newspapers and journals, and one can readily see in these the continued focus of choirs on providing polyphonic versions of the mass ordinaries, to the exclusion of Gregorian settings (not to say the congregation), and little attention to Gregorian propers. Pius X is said to have commented dryly on seeing just such a printed program:

«At that moment the Holy Father stood up and fingered through a pile of papers on his desk,
until he found a newspaper clipping which he pulled out and showed to me, with the remark that it was from Canada. It was a list of musical works performed in different churches of Montreal on Easter. There were pieces for orchestra, Masses in all the keys, with solos and duets composed with the virtuosity of the theatre carried over into the church. Pointing with each finger to these programs, Pius X said with an ironic smile: ‘Do they do this kind of music in Paris, too?’ All I could say was, ‘Alas, Holy Father, alas!’” (In Ehmann, “Church Music,” p. 210)

Even at conventions for “liturgical music,” the music chosen for demonstration is remarkable for its lack of attention to congregational singing. In Orate Fratres a priest warns that “Variety in music at Mass must come from the singing of the proper by the trained liturgical choir; and the choir must not be allowed to usurp the parts of the ordinary which belong to the people,” . . . [T]hese parts belong to the people ordinarily, and . . . there is no hope for better participation at Mass until they are given back to them.” and as late as 1945 Rev. H.A. Reinhold is still pleading in the pages of The Catholic Choirmaster “to give the people a part in what rightfully belongs to them – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and all the Responses.

Sadly, the practice of choirs usurping the Ordinary is abetted both by clergy and publishers. And in a further twisting of TLS, “so often we find that, while the choir monopolizes the congregational parts, it neglects to sing its own parts”: the Propers, especially the Gregorian originals, were ignored. In his landmark 1933 letter in America, “Shall the People Sing at Mass?,” Fr. John LaFarge remarks:

«As for our more exquisite gatherings, if one quarter of the energy that the choirs put into preparing elaborate musical settings for the Common of the Mass (which the people themselves are supposed to sing) were expended on learning the figured setting of the Proper, we should have perfect achievement.»

Men kanskje messens proprium oftest bør synges på morsmålet?

Liturgi /

I våre tradisjonelle latinske søndagsmesser i Oslo synges alltid messens proprium på latin med de foreskrevne gregorianske melodier, og slik bør det være – selv om det også om nødvendig er tillatt å synge disse tekstene på latin til enklere melodier. Men i andre messer, mer vanlige menighetsmesser, mener flere at dette vil være mindre passende.

Jeffrey Tucker og László Dobszay (i artikkelen jeg nevnte tidligere i dag) mener (faktisk) også det; slik skriver Tucker:

However, he (Dobszay) was also nearly alone, for many years, in being an advocate of sung vernacular propers in the ordinary form.

For years, I couldn’t understand his thinking here. Why vernacular? Well, Dobszay saw that there was a step missing in the achievement of the ideal if we expect to take a leap from the prevailing practice of pop songs with random text to Latin chant from the Graduale Romanum. That step was to sing the Mass texts in the vernacular according to a chant-based idiom drawn from our long musical tradition.

He turns out to be incredibly correct on this point. In fact, he was the true inspiration behind the Simple English Propers, book that has permitted regular parishes to start singing chant for the first time. This book and so many others are part of his legacy that he left in this world. In fact, I would even suggest that the new translation of the Roman Missal that is implemented this Advent owes much to his influence.

Just this week, I had a conversation with a dedicated Church musician who had converted to the chant cause and implemented sung propers in Latin in her parish. This approach was making gains in Mass after Mass for two solid years. Then one day the pastor came to her and said: “I’m not really sure that the introit you are singing really serves its purpose. I think the people are afraid of the Latin, regard the schola as somewhat separate from everything else, and I fear that this approach is alienating people.”

She was stunned and of course bristled. But what the pastor says goes, as we all know. Tragically, progress stopped. Now the parish is back to singing English hymns that are not part of the Mass proper. They are just hymn selections chosen the same week from a check list of possible pieces to sing. The choir was no longer singing the liturgy; it was singing something else.

So what went wrong? … it is crucial to consider that the pastor’s objection was not to Mass propers but rather to Latin. …

I kommentarene til dette innlegget finner jeg også to spesielt interessante synspunkter:

… Does it have to be plainchant? Why not set the propers to the more standard Psalm fare available? Something like Psallite but with a closer adherence to the text. For some of us even plainchant is a big step for a parish to accept. If the primary goal is to use the propers, maybe a baby step is first needed. Then down the road, when the parish hears propers set to plainchant, the transition will be easier. …

… I had a priest friend who was a peritus at the Council. HIs understanding of the liturgical reforms was that the Ordinary was to remain in Latin with the people to learn to sing, in Latin, the parts proper to them but eventually the orations and propers would be in the vernacular. Too bad that didn’t happen that way. We would have been spared a lot of pain …

Messens proprium må alltid brukes – og synges

Liturgi /

Jeffrey A. Tucker skriver mer på nettstedet The Chant Café om noe han har arbeidet med lenge, og som jeg har begynt å tenke mer på de siste månedene; om hva som virkelig hører med i messen:

The more I understand about the topic of Catholic music, the more it seems that music and liturgy they are really inseparable. The mark of a truly mature musician in the Catholic Church is the understanding that it isn’t really about the music after all but rather the integral contribution that music makes to the overall ritual.

A goal of the liturgy reform at Vatican II was to achieve this more fully; the effect has been the opposite: to completely shatter the relationship between the loft and the sanctuary. The main objective today is draw them together again. This is more important than any other personal taste in music or parish political agenda. …

… Here (in László Dobszay) was a severe critic of the structure and rubrics of what is known as the ordinary form today who was by no means an uncritical champion of the older form of Mass. Neither politics nor nostalgia interested Dobszay. He was passionate about the truth above all else. And the two truths that this book drove home were 1) the Roman Rite is intended to be a sung liturgy, and 2) the propers of the Mass are the source text for what is to be sung by the choir.

A reform that he championed was once considered outrageous: he wanted the permission to replace Mass propers with some other text to be completely repealed. The propers must never, under any conditions, be neglected. I’ve come around to this view. So have many, many others. In fact, it is a rather common view now, and one that even finds growing support in each successive translation of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. …

Det anglikanske ordinariatet og seksuelt misbruk på 60- og 70-tallet

Generelt, Katolsk, Økumenikk /

Lederen av den største gruppen anglikanere som søker forening med Roma, erkebiskop John Hepworth, forteller i dag om forferdelige seksuelle misbruk han ble utsatt for i Den katolske Kirke i Australia i unge år. I erkebispedømmet Melbourne fikk han god behandling etter at han leverte sin klage i 2008, i erkebispedømmet Adelaide har det fortsatt nesten ikke skjedd noe med hans klage siden da.

An Australian archbishop leading a breakaway Anglican faction that wants to reunite with Rome has revealed that he fled the Catholic priesthood after experiencing systematic sexual abuse over more than a decade.

Archbishop John Hepworth, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a 400,000-member Anglican breakaway group seeking reconciliation with the Vatican, broke decades of silence after securing an apology from the Catholic church and an offer of $75,000 compensation.

The revelation of his private pain, known until today only to family, a few close friends and senior church leaders, adds an extraordinary personal twist to the creation of Anglican ordinariates that have opened the way for the largest mass defection to the Catholic Church since the Reformation.

Despite what he suffered over a 12-year period from 1960 at the hands of two priests and a fellow seminary student who went on to be ordained, Archbishop Hepworth said he was determined to continue his mission to bring the churches together. …

Les mer om dette HER, event. også to andre artikler HER og HER.

Syng messens proprium på enkle melodier

Liturgi /

Alle katolske messer har egne inngangsvers, (offertorievers) og kommunionsvers som skal/kan synges (helst) eller sies. Men dette skjer sjelden i vår tid, siden disse i praksis blir erstattet av hymner. I våre søndags-TLMer i Oslo synges alltid alt dette fra Graduale Romanum, men det er ganske krevende for katoren/koret. Men det fins også enklere måter å gjøre dette på; man kan synge den latinske teksten på en enkel salmetone (jeg forstår at dette ble gjort ganske ofte i Norge før 1965) eller på recto tono. I vår tid kan man også synge disse versene på morsmålet, og i forbindelse med den nye engelske oversttelsen av messen, er det gjort mye arbeid med å tonsette disse engelske tekstene på tradisjonelle melodier. Og om dette leste jeg i dag (på the Chant Café):

I wanted to relate to you my experience this morning, directing a small schola of young people singing the Simple English Propers at Mass.

The schola consisted of a treble boy (age 12) and four female trebles (ages 16, 16, 17, and 21). The pastor of the parish recently suggested to me that we do something more for our daily Masses when they are feasts or solemnities. My mind immediately went to the Simple English Propers. Today we gathered at 7:15, rehearsed the propers, a psalm by Aristotle Esguerra, and an Alleluia by Fr. Samuel Weber. With five singers whose experience with plainsong is very limited, we prepared them to a satisfactory level in 25 minutes, and sang Mass at 8AM. It was quite lovely and a welcome switch from four hymns. We closed the Mass singing “Immaculate Mary”.

For those who are looking for a way to get started singing the propers, I can’t recommend SEP enough. I fully expect this little ensemble to improve in their ability to read and sing plainsong, and to be able to sing the propers from the Graduale Romanum for Solemnities, while singing the SEP (Simple English Propers) for Feast Days.

Ressursen Simple English Propers kan man finne HER, og under har jeg tatt med eksempler (fra 23. søndag i kirkeåret):

Inngangsvers

Offertorium

Kommunionsvers

Ordinasjonsjubileer i dag

Generelt, Katolsk, Økumenikk /

Det er 12 år siden min diakonvielse i dag, men for en prest er prestevielsen en hel del viktigere (for meg var det 8. januar 2000), så jeg tenker mest på at det i dag er 20 år siden Fr. Richard John Neuhaus ble presteviet. Han var også tidligere luthersk prest, og er nok den personen som hadde aller størst betydning da jeg ble katolikk i 1994 – Neuhaus konverterte fire år tidligere.

Om Fr. Newhaus leste jeg i dag:

Twenty years ago today, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Richard John Neuhaus was ordained a Catholic priest. Cardinal John O’Connor ordained Father Neuhaus in 1991 at St. Joseph’s Seminary, just north of the city in Dunwoodie. Exactly one year previous, on September 8, 1990, Cardinal O’Connor had received Richard into full communion with the Catholic Church, in a ceremony held in the private chapel of the cardinal’s residence.

Last night, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York invited friends and colleagues of Father Neuhaus to Dunwoodie for the Mass inaugurating the new seminary year, falling as it did on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of his ordination in the same chapel. Addressing the seminarians and the faculty on the importance of the interior life, Archbishop Dolan took as his inspiration a verse from the assigned reading of the day: your life is hidden with Christ in God.

“It was a winding road from St. John’s Lutheran in Pembroke, Ontario, where Richard was baptized, to this seminary chapel, where Richard was ordained, but the road always had a single destination—union with Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Dolan preached.

“Few of you will have a life as public at Father Neuhaus had,” he continued. “But we can all learn from him. The key to his life as a Christian disciple was that he always did his prayers in the morning before reading the New York Times. Prayer before penance, he would say!” …

Les resten av denne artikkelen her.

Jomfru Marias fødselsdag – Hl. Augustins preken

Liturgi, TLM /

I de gamle tidebønnene tar man i dag med en preken av den hellige Augustin – i 4., 5. og 6. lesning til Matutin (fra http://divinumofficium.com):

From the Sermons of St Augustin, Bishop of Hippo. 18 th on the Saints.

Dearly beloved brethren, the day for which we have longed, the Feast-day of the Blessed and Worshipful and Alway- Virgin Mary, that day is come. Let our land laugh and sing with merriment, bathed in the glory of this great Virgin’s rising. She is the flower of the fields on which the priceless lily of the valleys hath blossomed. This is she whose delivery changed the nature that we draw from our first parents, and cleansed away their offence. At her that dolorous sentence which was pronounced over Eve ended its course to her it was never said «In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.» Gen. iii. 16. She brought forth a Child, even the Lord, but she brought Him forth, not in sorrow, but in joy.

Eve wept, but Mary laughed. Eve’s womb was big with tears, but Mary’s womb was big with gladness. Eve gave birth to a sinner, but Mary gave birth to the sinless One. The mother of our race brought punishment into the world, but the Mother of our Lord brought salvation into the world. Eve was the foundress of sin, but Mary was the foundress of righteousness. Eve welcomed death, but Mary helped in life. Eve smote, but Mary healed. For Eve’s disobedience, Mary offered obedience and for Eve’s unbelief, Mary offered faith.

Let Mary now make a loud noise upon the organ, and between its quick notes let the rattling of the Mother’s timbrel be heard. Let the gladsome choirs sing with her, and their sweet hymns mingle with the changing music. Hearken to what a song her timbrel will make accompaniment. She saith » My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the lowliness of His hand-maiden, for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed for He That is Mighty hath done to me great things.» The new miracle of Mary’s delivery hath effaced the curse of the frail backslider, and the singing of Mary hath silenced the wailing of Eve.

Å synge messen – ikke å synge i messen

Katolsk, Liturgi /

Jeg fikk i midten av august kjenneskap til en oppgave (phd) om katolsk kirkemusikk, som jeg så langt bare har lest noe av – 200 av over 600 sider, pga. ferie o.a. Den heter «THE MUSICAL PRELUDE TO VATICAN II: PLAINCHANT, PARTICIPATION, AND PIUS X», er skrevet av Walter William Whitehouse, og kan leses her.

Oppgaven er svært grundig og går tiår for tiår gjennom utviklinga på 1800 (det var stadig vanskelig, ja umulig, å få orden på kirkemusikken, selv etter mange problemer og biskopelige bestemmelser), og når oppgaven kommer fram til pave Pis X, leser vi på s169-70:

Pastoral Concern for the Faith of the People

All of the above forces, or “impulses,” were not novel in the twentieth-century Church or new with Pius X, nor certainly was concern for an ardent faith in Catholic believers. What is new with Pius is the pronounced locus of the source of “the true Christian spirit” as within the liturgy itself: more specifically, a direct attribution of Christian spirit to “active participation in the sacred mysteries” as the “first and indispensable source.”

Moreover, this actuosa participatio is realized by virtue of singing, which is the proper role, the historic and recovered role, of the laity during solemn Mass. Thus, the means of active participation is singing, and in Pius’ famous (if apocryphal) phrase, not singing at the Mass, but singing the Mass. This is categorically a major shift, a decisive return to early-Church practices over centuries of musical and liturgical passivity among the Catholic laity.

And further, the means by which the faithful were to participate in the singing of the liturgy was none other than Gregorian Chant: that music which was in unison, did not need accompaniment, was (so it was claimed) easy to learn, and which rendered the texts intelligibly. The role of the people was to sing the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei), and it was these texts which Pius wished all to know and understand; by them they participated in the action of the Mass itself. A lively Christian spirit demanded participation; active participation was accomplished through singing; intelligible and liturgical participation required singing the texts of the Mass; and the accomplishment of all of the above pointed forcefully to the use of Gregorian chant. …

Tradisjonell latinsk messe i Oslo søndag 11. september kl 19.00

TLM /

Messen blir som vanlig i St Joseph kirke i Akersveien.

Se tekster og bønner for denne 13. søndag etter pinse HER – programmet for messen HER. Som ordinarium synger vi (som vanlig) Messe XI og Credo I.

Under inngangsprosesjonen (før messen starter) synges denne gang alle fire vers av følgende salme:

Fast skal min dåpspakt evig stå, og Kirken vil jeg ære.
Den er den grunn jeg bygger på, jeg følge vil dens lære.
Takk være Gud, som på min vei til sannhets Kirke førte meg!
Jeg aldri den vil svikte.

Kardinal Bartolucci hilser pave Benedikt – om kirkemusikk, og den gamle messen

Katolsk, Liturgi /

Jeg leste dette for en ukes tid siden, men poster det ikke før i dag – etter å ha sett kardinalens hilsen på video (nederst). Kardinal Bartolucci falt i unåde (liturgisk sett) på 60-tallet, men føler nå at pave Benedikt er i full gang med å rette oppde gamle feilene. Han sa bl.a. følgend ei sin hilsen:

… In the year after that (I was made) vicemaestro, with Perosi, of the Sistine Chapel Choir. Upon the death of the Maestro, I was named, in ’56, by Pope Pacelli, Pius XII, perpetual director Maestro. Then, the times unfortunately changed. But today, a true a proper reawakening by so many young people, who wish to relive the beauty of the Latin Mass and the greater spiritual fruit derived from it, can be noticed with great satisfaction; this is great, a very great comfort. And it makes us hope for a liturgical future certainly desired by Your Holiness. We thank the Lord, that he may help all those who are working for seriousness in sacred music. I firmly trust that, we the help of God, a true return to the bimillenary tradition of sacred music will take place. …

Hele teksten kan leses hos Rorate Cæli, og i videoen under kan man få engelsk teksting ved å trykke på CC-knappen nederst.

En mindre kameratslig tone i messen

Katolsk, Liturgi /

William Oddie skriver også om den nye engelske oversettelsen av messen; det gikk i praksis fint, skriver han, og så legger han mest vekt på betydningen av at man nå svarer presten «Og med din ånd.»:

Well, the new translation of the Mass is now up and running, and, at least in my parish, its launch seems to have passed off without any awkwardness at all. “And with your spirit” was confidently and (as far as I could see) unanimously declared, as though the congregation had been saying it for years … As in parishes all over the country, a series of sermons on the new translation, and on the Mass itself, also got successfully underway. I wonder how many priests said for the first time that the people’s response in that opening exchange between priest and congregation does not mean “and the same to you, Father”. “And also with you” can’t really mean much more: indeed, it was the perfect example of how the old translation, from the off, consistently reduced (ah, wondrous past tense) theological meaning in the movement from Latin to English.

For det aller meste er han godt fornøyd:

On the whole, I am thrilled by the new translation, which consistently uncovers new theological meaning in the text. That’s why this Sunday I felt I had to be present at a celebration using the new English Rite: this was, after all, an historic event for the Church in this country. In future, I shall probably revert to my practice of attending the Oxford Oratory’s 11am Latin High Mass on Sundays. But most other Masses there are in English: and when I go to Mass during the week, there or at the Oxford University Catholic chaplaincy, Mass will still be in the vernacular. Most of us who prefer Mass in Latin have long ago accepted that most Masses we attend will be in English: so it is wonderful that the new translation is so palpably closer to the Latin – not just in some scholarly sense we would only be aware of if we have made a close comparative study of the new and old translations with the Latin text, but noticeably for anyone, sometimes, dramatically so: it is splendid, for instance that now, instead of confessing “that I have sinned through my own fault” and striking my breast just the once, on Sunday I confessed (striking my breast thrice) “that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”: for, the suppression of that threefold repetition of the “mea culpa” (in response, perhaps, to some mistaken ecumenical sense that there is a protestant dislike of what they are pleased to call “vain repetition”) – that suppression always produced a consciousness, in anyone who went sometimes to the Mass in Latin, of a dreadful and palpable loss of the prayer’s devotional power. But no longer: never again. Alleluia.

Men til slutt skriver han at han gjerne skulle ha sett at man også hadde fått en ny oversettelsen av «Agnus Dei».

I have to say, however, that there was, for me, one disappointment (and though only one, a real and substantial one): that there has been no change in the exceptionally clumsy (and inaccurate) translation of the Agnus Dei. “Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world” isn’t just dreadful because it carries on from the old regime that terrible habit of writing prayers which seem to be informing God that he does this or that, or has this or that characteristic, ….

Barnedåp i eller utenfor messen?

Katolsk, Liturgi /

Av flere grunner har jeg i dag sett en del på hvordan barnedåp skal og kan gjennomføres i en messe, og tenkt på om det er nyttig og godt at man har dåpen i messen. Selv har jeg nesten bare hatt dåp i messen når jeg har feiret messe på avsidesliggende steder – som jeg har gjort en hel del, både da jeg var i Bergen, i Stavanger og (faktisk) også her i Oslo.

Jeg foretrekker å ha barnedåp som en egen seremoni, og oftest døpes bare ett barn om gangen – dette er også praksis de fleste steder i Norge, så langt jeg vet. Og det er også det mest tradisjonelle, for inntil 1970 var det så langt jeg vet ikke tillat å ha dåp i messen. Ved dåp at store barn og av voksne har jeg vanligvis en egen dåpsmesse, siden disse dydøpte også får sin første hellige kommunion samme dag.

I Norge brukes mest praktiske argumenter mot å ha dåp i søndagens høymesse (ved mindre messer er det en hel del lettere å ha dåp); som at kirken allerede er stappfull, at det skjer så mange andre ting i høymessen, at det er vanskelig å integrere dåp i en søndagsmesse på en god måte, at det kan bli veldig lang tid for dåpsbarnet (og for andre små barn) å være i kirken, slik at det derfor kan bli mye uro etc.

På Fr. Z’s blogg ble dette diskutert for et par år siden – SE HER – og kanskje leserne også har synspunkter på dette?

Ny og (mye) bedre engelsk oversettelse av messen nå i bruk

Katolsk, Liturgi /

For about two-thirds of my life, ever since the introduction of the old ICEL translation, I have argued and written that we should have an accurate translation of the Missal for Mass in English. This morning for the first time, I was able to celebrate Mass in English at which we used a decent translation of the Gloria, the Creed, and the Domine non sum dignus. Although I have joined others in looking forward to this development and defending it, nevertheless, I was rather moved to be able to use it fully for the first time. All my priestly life, I have had to celebrate English Mass with a dumbed-down, lame duck translation.

I England begynte man denne søndagen med (store deler av) den nye, korrigerte oversettelsen av messen til Engelsk (jeg irreterer meg selv grønn spesielt over syndsbekjennelsen, Gloria og første eukaristiske bønn i den gamle oversettelsen), og Fr. Finnigan skriver sitatet over, og en del mer om hvordan han opplevde første søndag med en god oversettelse.

Pave Benedikt skal til Tyskland om tre uker

Katolsk, Økumenikk /

John Allen skriver interessant om pave Benedikts besøk til Tyskland senere i september:

Benedict XVI may be as Catholic as they come, but he’s also deeply German, and he obviously feels a streak of affection for his country’s most celebrated theological son. Part of the drama of the trip, therefore, is how Benedict may use it to recalibrate relations with Protestantism heading into the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.

Den unge Ratzinger skrev også noe interessant om Luther for 45 år siden:

Back in 1966, a young German Catholic theologian penned a commentary on the final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), expressing some fairly strong reservations about what he saw as the overly optimistic and “French” tone of its concluding document, Gaudium et Spes, the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.”

The document’s lofty humanism, this theologian charged, “Prompts the question of why, exactly, the reasonable and perfectly free human being described in the first articles was suddenly burdened with the story of Christ.” He worried that concepts such as “People of God” and “the world” were given an uncritically positive spin, reflecting naiveté about the corrupting effects of sin.

Along the way, this writer offered an arresting aside. Gaudium et Spes, he opined, breathes the air of Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit, but not enough of Martin Luther, the German father of the Protestant Reformation. Saying so required a certain ecumenical chutzpah, given that Pope Leo X’s 1520 condemnation of Luther’s ideas as “heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears and seductive of simple minds, and against Catholic truth” remained on the books.

That’s an irony worth recalling, given that the young theologian in question is today Pope Benedict XVI, and that in two weeks he’ll be heading back to the Land of Luther for his first official state visit. …

Muligens var det Luthers mer realistiske syn på verden som fikk Ratzinger til å skrive slik, og/eller at han likte Teilhard de Chardins tanker svært lite. Jeg tar også med siste sitat fra John Allens artikkel:

Ecumenically, the highlight should come with a Sept. 23 visit to an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, about two hours by car southwest of Berlin, where Luther lived from 1501 to 1511 while studying at the local university. … … Jesuit Fr. Hans Langendoerfer, the secretary for the German bishops’ conference, said this week that Benedict will use the stop in Erfurt to reshape Catholic perceptions of Luther and his contemporary disciples. …

«Messen bør alltid synges»

Liturgi /

Jeffrey Tucker fra the ChantCafe.com er tilbake som medarbeider på NLM-bloggen (the New Liturgical Movement), fordi, skriver han:

The more I understand about this entire topic, the more it seems that music and liturgy they are really inseparable; the mark of a truly mature musician in the Catholic Church is the understanding that it isn’t really about the music after all but rather the integral contribution that music makes to the overall ritual.

I sitt første innlegg på NLM-bloggen skriver han likevel mest om avdøde László Dobszay – for mange (i alle fall for meg) mest kjent for de komplette tidebønnene på nettstedet divinumofficium.com. Om Dobszay skriver han bl.a.:

… He was a visionary, a genius, a truly innovative and brilliant thinker who understood the Roman Rite like few other living people. He was a mentor to me through his writings and his drive. He was also a very dear man. … he was always incredibly encouraging, enthusiastic, gentle, helpful, and happy to see that so many people in his last years had taken up his cause.

He must have felt like a lone warrior for all those prior decades. A champion of Dobszay’s work has been Fr. Robert Skeris, who worked to bring Dobszay’s writing to an English audience. When I first read the Skeris-edited book The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform, I was absolutely stunned. It seemed to bring everything together for me. Here was a severe critic of the structure and rubrics of what is known as the ordinary form today who was by no means an uncritical champion of the older form of Mass. Neither politics nor nostalgia interested him.

He was passionate about the truth above all else. And the two truths that this book drove home were 1) the Roman Rite is intended to be a sung liturgy, and 2) the propers of the Mass are the source text for what is to be sung by the choir. A reform that he championed was once considered outrageous: he wanted the permission to replace Mass propers with some other text to be completely repealed. I’ve come around to this view. So have many, many others. In fact, it is a rather common view now, and one that even finds support in the new translation of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal.

Of course he was a master in understanding the Gregorian tradition, and a true champion of the universal language of the Roman ritual. However, he was also nearly alone, for many years, in being an advocate of sung vernacular propers in the ordinary form. For years, I couldn’t understand his thinking here. Why vernacular? Well, Dobszay saw that there was a step missing in the achievement of the ideal if we expect to take a leap from the prevailing practice of pop songs with random text to Latin chant from the Graduale Romanum. That step was to sing the Mass texts in the vernacular according to a chant-based idiom drawn from our long musical tradition.

He turns out to be incredibly correct on this point. In fact, he was the true inspiration behind the Simple English Propers book that has permitted regular parishes to start singing chant for the first time. …

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