Most priests I’ve come to know agree that in a “Our Lady of the Suburbs” parish like you describe, the key is to plot out a plan over five years or so. Every Advent, Lent, and Easter, introduce something new. Start with the Kyrie, then the Sanctus, then the Agnus Dei. Come up with some backwards logic as to why it’s happening that partic…
Most priests I’ve come to know agree that in a “Our Lady of the Suburbs” parish like you describe, the key is to plot out a plan over five years or so. Every Advent, Lent, and Easter, introduce something new. Start with the Kyrie, then the Sanctus, then the Agnus Dei. Come up with some backwards logic as to why it’s happening that particular liturgical season. Boil the frog slowly. In five years time, you will have a reform of the reform on your hands. From there, start to introduce a TLM.
the reform of the reform is not sustainable. its only real use is a bridge to a TLM. it's one visiting priest away from not being there on any given sunday, for one thing. It's one new pastor or bishop away from going away entirely. and the thing that makes it attractive is that it's a subset of the TLM, so why not just do that once the ROTR is fully there?
"the Kyrie, the the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei", and of course the Gloria, are in the hands of the choir director (subject to the speed at which the parishioners will tolerate an increase in solemnity), as I understand it, so you would need turnover in both the pastor and the choir director (otherwise your point stands that the situation is unstable until a generation passes away.)
Solution: Hire someone under the age of 40 who knows chant to direct the choir. Points if you make it a special youth choir alongside the regular choir.
2. It's actually really hard to make good solid change in situations where a parish is used to garbage. Nothing can be done permanently by one priest because people know to wait for his successor. It takes a good run of consistent direction before people get the hint that the Good Times may possibly be stopping Rolling and they should try to accept orthodoxy. And that in its turn requires the bishop to care about the parish's spiritual welfare enough to assign tonally consistent priests.
1. point taken. But you need someone with both energy and enough experience to stand up to parishioners charitably.
2. is the reason to make it a special youth choir. People tend to be more tolerant of new things when young people do them, and a youth choir also doesn't have to sing at every Mass, which helps with not overstepping peoples' patience. Youth are also less likely to be dismayed at the prospect of learning chant. Some older people tend not to like the necessity of making mistakes and being confused. And, while you're boiling the frog slowly with older parishioners, you're getting at least the chorists something very solid. It's not like we can ignore the youth until the older people die off and have the problem magically solved. They need good formation, and they need to not wait 20 years until we have virtually the same problem, with different generations, to get it.
The only way out is through, and you have to take the backsliding along with all the other obstacles.
I'm not sure how we got from choir directors and bishops/pastors to saintly old ladies who probably prayed the younger priests' vocations into existence (if only so that they themselves could be assured of the possibility of last rites and a proper Mass of Christian Burial - everyone remember to tell one's heirs "if you cremate me and put me on the mantlepiece I *will* haunt you") but I, at least, would definitely like nice ziti dinners when I am old.
the bad music people are almost always Boomers, who need a ziti dinner and a hearty handshake from Father for all their years of service to St. Joseph the Worker and St Lawrence combined parish.
heh. I hope that no one imagines, just because I am GenX, that I didn't once spend several years playing guitar at a young people's guitar Mass, and couldn't play Anthem or City of God even now, if handed a tuned instrument and sheet music. Generation X however, is tired and has to get up early in the morning.
There are two things meant by the ROTR. I’m referring to choosing the most traditional option within the Novus Ordo rubrics. You’re referring to the older definition, a full rewrite of the Novus Ordo along traditional lines. That’s unlikely in the next 100 years, but it’s a great academic and ad experimentum concept between now and then. One day, there will be a unified Roman Rite and no one will fight about it.
Agree with JD and I also take your point. I was lucky that I was part of a Dominican parish with a stable community of young friars from which the Pastor of the parish is chosen. You just aren’t going to sweep away the music and liturgical norms of the parish in that situation . Yes RoR will actually need to take place at the global level. In the meantime, under TC, your plan to introduce TLM to a parish is a non starter
My plan is to move a crappy parish to a reformed one within five or more years. By then, Francis the Terrible will be dead and we’ll have a Catholic Church to be proud of again. And TLM Liberty comes with that.
Introducing the Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Gloria, Credo, and Pater Noster (at least sometimes) is explicitly called for by Sacrosanctum Concilium. So if you think that’s not enough, your problem is with the Council itself. And that’s the opinion that liturgical liberals use to tar and feather the rest of us.
The Council, in fact, called for the 1962 missal (with a richer fare of readings) in total, with some possible exceptions for the vernacular here and there, with Latin and Gregorian Chant taking pride of place.
I agree that it is not stable, and I wish it were--and I would like to see some day a solution that reunites the rites (or at least the calendars!!!) or, at minimum, defines the Novus Ordo better.
Having said that, I've been near to TLM communities in Virginia (about three, if memory serves), Florida (two), California (two), and St. Louis (also two). So I've seen kind of a swath of what the U.S. has for TLMs, and both liturgically and community-wise, I have serious questions about how TLM communities often play out.
Liturgically, while many of the communities say they want active participation, only one of them made any serious effort to help the congregation do that--and I think participation is important. I don't mean that the congregation needs to hear every word of the Mass or say every response--I'm with Ratzinger's "Spirit of the Liturgy" on this, more or less--but most often what I've seen in TLMs is that the congregation chants and prays NOTHING. I've even gotten dirty looks for chanting/saying the Latin responses with the choir or altar boys, which is just ... weird. I know there are places where it ain't so--in another part of this thread someone mention's a certain St. Mary's--I've just had the bad luck never to find a TLM that welcomed participation, or even made it easy to follow the reading and Gospel (!).
On the community side, I've seen a lot of TLM parishioners and priests who are rigid. That word gets thrown around a lot--but what I mean, for example, are things like the following (examples deliberately taken from different communities): (a) one priest who told a congregation full of mothers that doing laundry on Sunday might not be a mortal sin (maybe he was attempting understatement? but it did not come off that way), (b) another priest who told his congregation that they were better than people who go to the Novus Ordo, (c) parishioners who become scrupulous enough about modesty such that they will not let their daughters wear jeans, etc., (d) intelligent parishioners who are borderline Feeneyites without realizing it because that's the way everyone around them talks, and they don't socialize with anyone outside their community.
Traditiones Custodes is not helping with these sorts of issues, IMHO.
To be clear, I don't say these sorts of flaws are everywhere in the TLM, or are necessarily worse than what can be found in the Novus Ordo--but given my own spiritual state and personal history, the flaws typical of the TLMs near me are more damaging to me--and, I might add, to some other Catholics that I know--than the flaws typical of the NOs around me.
One final point on the stability thing: while it is true that a bad new pastor or a visiting priest might spoil a good Novus Ordo, most (not all!) of the NO priests I know who are progressive are less progressive zealots and more squishy middle types. They want to please. And so when they come into a parish that is already in love with Latin chant (say) they generally try to oblige. The trouble, of course, is when they come into a divided congregation ... I will readily admit that creates problems. As for visiting priests, my experience is that generally pastors choose priests who are sympatico to substitute for them (and even if that does not always happen, that's a one-Sunday risk I'd be willing to take).
I hope this doesn't come off as too opinionated. I grew up with a Latin Novus Ordo (in a Virginia Diocese) that was very in tune with Sacro Sanctum Concilium and I really miss it. This is probably at least in part my homesickness for that Mass speaking. It got replaced a lot with the TLM, which actually drove good Novus Ordos towards extinction in that diocese for a while--which to my mind was a real shame.
Most priests I’ve come to know agree that in a “Our Lady of the Suburbs” parish like you describe, the key is to plot out a plan over five years or so. Every Advent, Lent, and Easter, introduce something new. Start with the Kyrie, then the Sanctus, then the Agnus Dei. Come up with some backwards logic as to why it’s happening that particular liturgical season. Boil the frog slowly. In five years time, you will have a reform of the reform on your hands. From there, start to introduce a TLM.
Or stick with reform of the reform once accomplished
the reform of the reform is not sustainable. its only real use is a bridge to a TLM. it's one visiting priest away from not being there on any given sunday, for one thing. It's one new pastor or bishop away from going away entirely. and the thing that makes it attractive is that it's a subset of the TLM, so why not just do that once the ROTR is fully there?
"the Kyrie, the the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei", and of course the Gloria, are in the hands of the choir director (subject to the speed at which the parishioners will tolerate an increase in solemnity), as I understand it, so you would need turnover in both the pastor and the choir director (otherwise your point stands that the situation is unstable until a generation passes away.)
Solution: Hire someone under the age of 40 who knows chant to direct the choir. Points if you make it a special youth choir alongside the regular choir.
1. Doesn't have to be under 40.
2. It's actually really hard to make good solid change in situations where a parish is used to garbage. Nothing can be done permanently by one priest because people know to wait for his successor. It takes a good run of consistent direction before people get the hint that the Good Times may possibly be stopping Rolling and they should try to accept orthodoxy. And that in its turn requires the bishop to care about the parish's spiritual welfare enough to assign tonally consistent priests.
1. point taken. But you need someone with both energy and enough experience to stand up to parishioners charitably.
2. is the reason to make it a special youth choir. People tend to be more tolerant of new things when young people do them, and a youth choir also doesn't have to sing at every Mass, which helps with not overstepping peoples' patience. Youth are also less likely to be dismayed at the prospect of learning chant. Some older people tend not to like the necessity of making mistakes and being confused. And, while you're boiling the frog slowly with older parishioners, you're getting at least the chorists something very solid. It's not like we can ignore the youth until the older people die off and have the problem magically solved. They need good formation, and they need to not wait 20 years until we have virtually the same problem, with different generations, to get it.
The only way out is through, and you have to take the backsliding along with all the other obstacles.
Yes. These younger pastors have to get more comfortable shuffling these blue haired old ladies off with a nice ziti dinner in the parish hall.
I'm not sure how we got from choir directors and bishops/pastors to saintly old ladies who probably prayed the younger priests' vocations into existence (if only so that they themselves could be assured of the possibility of last rites and a proper Mass of Christian Burial - everyone remember to tell one's heirs "if you cremate me and put me on the mantlepiece I *will* haunt you") but I, at least, would definitely like nice ziti dinners when I am old.
the bad music people are almost always Boomers, who need a ziti dinner and a hearty handshake from Father for all their years of service to St. Joseph the Worker and St Lawrence combined parish.
heh. I hope that no one imagines, just because I am GenX, that I didn't once spend several years playing guitar at a young people's guitar Mass, and couldn't play Anthem or City of God even now, if handed a tuned instrument and sheet music. Generation X however, is tired and has to get up early in the morning.
That was my point about the prospect of revising the GIRM. Ultimately, sustainable ROTR would seem to require that.
There are two things meant by the ROTR. I’m referring to choosing the most traditional option within the Novus Ordo rubrics. You’re referring to the older definition, a full rewrite of the Novus Ordo along traditional lines. That’s unlikely in the next 100 years, but it’s a great academic and ad experimentum concept between now and then. One day, there will be a unified Roman Rite and no one will fight about it.
Agree with JD and I also take your point. I was lucky that I was part of a Dominican parish with a stable community of young friars from which the Pastor of the parish is chosen. You just aren’t going to sweep away the music and liturgical norms of the parish in that situation . Yes RoR will actually need to take place at the global level. In the meantime, under TC, your plan to introduce TLM to a parish is a non starter
My plan is to move a crappy parish to a reformed one within five or more years. By then, Francis the Terrible will be dead and we’ll have a Catholic Church to be proud of again. And TLM Liberty comes with that.
Introducing the Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Gloria, Credo, and Pater Noster (at least sometimes) is explicitly called for by Sacrosanctum Concilium. So if you think that’s not enough, your problem is with the Council itself. And that’s the opinion that liturgical liberals use to tar and feather the rest of us.
The Council, in fact, called for the 1962 missal (with a richer fare of readings) in total, with some possible exceptions for the vernacular here and there, with Latin and Gregorian Chant taking pride of place.
"the reform of the reform is not sustainable. its only real use is a bridge to a TLM"
I profoundly but respectfully disagree.
What happens in August when you have a visiting pastor? What happens when you get a new pastor who isn’t on board? It’s not stable.
I agree that it is not stable, and I wish it were--and I would like to see some day a solution that reunites the rites (or at least the calendars!!!) or, at minimum, defines the Novus Ordo better.
Having said that, I've been near to TLM communities in Virginia (about three, if memory serves), Florida (two), California (two), and St. Louis (also two). So I've seen kind of a swath of what the U.S. has for TLMs, and both liturgically and community-wise, I have serious questions about how TLM communities often play out.
Liturgically, while many of the communities say they want active participation, only one of them made any serious effort to help the congregation do that--and I think participation is important. I don't mean that the congregation needs to hear every word of the Mass or say every response--I'm with Ratzinger's "Spirit of the Liturgy" on this, more or less--but most often what I've seen in TLMs is that the congregation chants and prays NOTHING. I've even gotten dirty looks for chanting/saying the Latin responses with the choir or altar boys, which is just ... weird. I know there are places where it ain't so--in another part of this thread someone mention's a certain St. Mary's--I've just had the bad luck never to find a TLM that welcomed participation, or even made it easy to follow the reading and Gospel (!).
On the community side, I've seen a lot of TLM parishioners and priests who are rigid. That word gets thrown around a lot--but what I mean, for example, are things like the following (examples deliberately taken from different communities): (a) one priest who told a congregation full of mothers that doing laundry on Sunday might not be a mortal sin (maybe he was attempting understatement? but it did not come off that way), (b) another priest who told his congregation that they were better than people who go to the Novus Ordo, (c) parishioners who become scrupulous enough about modesty such that they will not let their daughters wear jeans, etc., (d) intelligent parishioners who are borderline Feeneyites without realizing it because that's the way everyone around them talks, and they don't socialize with anyone outside their community.
Traditiones Custodes is not helping with these sorts of issues, IMHO.
To be clear, I don't say these sorts of flaws are everywhere in the TLM, or are necessarily worse than what can be found in the Novus Ordo--but given my own spiritual state and personal history, the flaws typical of the TLMs near me are more damaging to me--and, I might add, to some other Catholics that I know--than the flaws typical of the NOs around me.
One final point on the stability thing: while it is true that a bad new pastor or a visiting priest might spoil a good Novus Ordo, most (not all!) of the NO priests I know who are progressive are less progressive zealots and more squishy middle types. They want to please. And so when they come into a parish that is already in love with Latin chant (say) they generally try to oblige. The trouble, of course, is when they come into a divided congregation ... I will readily admit that creates problems. As for visiting priests, my experience is that generally pastors choose priests who are sympatico to substitute for them (and even if that does not always happen, that's a one-Sunday risk I'd be willing to take).
I hope this doesn't come off as too opinionated. I grew up with a Latin Novus Ordo (in a Virginia Diocese) that was very in tune with Sacro Sanctum Concilium and I really miss it. This is probably at least in part my homesickness for that Mass speaking. It got replaced a lot with the TLM, which actually drove good Novus Ordos towards extinction in that diocese for a while--which to my mind was a real shame.