Saturday, August 26, 2006

Pope's comments on Gregorian chants rekindle an age-old musical debate

I love liturgical chant, I love the gracious solemnity of it, the fact the music is so much part of the of the prayer. I am would like to have more of it in our liturgy, at the moment we have Missa di Angelus every Sunday except during Advent and Lent when we use a mixture of Mass XVI/XVII. We don't sing the Pater or the Credo partly because I am a little afraid of introducing more Latin because, mainly because older people complain they can't understand it and want to understand what they are praying. The counter argument to this is that very few Muslims understand Arabic. Jews understanding Hebrew is a comparatively new phenomena, until the coming of Zionism Hebrew was only a liturgical language, even Jesus spoke Aramaic not Hebrew. Having a special language for the liturgy or prayer seems to be part of religion. Who nowadays speaks Sanskrit or "Church" Slavonik, they are solely liturgical languages, and what about "toungues" that extra-ordinary muttering encountered among Charismatic groupings.

Anyhow, as a follow-up the piece on the Pope's comments on liturgical music read the whole of this article
Understanding God is hard work, the argument goes, and similarly, music in church should challenge us. A sermon that says only what people want to hear would lack moral authority. The same goes for music.
The chants sung at Regina Laudis are more than 1,000 years old. But Sister Elizabeth Evans says "old'' doesn't mean "irrelevant.''

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the 10.30 am Mass, it would be good to have more chant, I am glad when I can get to weekday Mass we sing the Mass on feastdays, the Salve was so beautiful when everyone joined in.

Anonymous said...

Do we teach children how to worship? We don't seem to teach adults. Most people come to be entertained rather than worship. Maybe me included.

Anonymous said...

Master!
I think you will kmow I will agree. What we do is to try to preserve the gift that has been handed down to us that deserves maintaining. There is much I have to learn, there is also much I have to preserve from what I have ben taught... love ya dude.

Anonymous said...

Doh!
Last comment was pants.

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