FRENCH SEMINARY TO USE BOTH FORMS OF THE ROMAN RITE

From Paix Liturgique

Cardinal Barbarin will open next year in Lyon a "bi-ritual" seminary, i.e. a seminary dedicated to both forms of the Roman Rite, which will be both taught and celebrated there. This is the first diocese in France after that of Toulon which offers this possibility to its seminarians. Cardinal Barbarin's project will even go further than that of Toulon: not only will the seminarians have the opportunity to be formed according to the extraordinary form, Mass according to the usus antiquior will be celebrated every day in the seminary, open to all seminarians, including those of the ordinary form.

IRISH BISHOPS GUIDE FOR TEACHERS

GUIDELINES FOR THE RECEPTION OF COMMUNION DURING THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS

Children who attend the extraordinary form of the Mass will receive Communion in a different manner from their classmates who attend the ordinary form of the Mass.

At Mass in the extraordinary form, Holy Communion is received kneeling and on the tongue. Reception in the hand or while standing is not normally permitted.

Communion is received under one kind only, to emphasise the Church’s teaching that Christ is received whole and entire under the appearance of bread or wine.

Normally the child will approach the altar with joined hands and will kneel at the Communion rails (although children making their First Communion may use a prie-dieu).The priest recites the formula: “Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.” (May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul to everlasting life. Amen.) Note that the priest says “Amen”. The child should make no response.

The sacrament of Confession (or reconciliation) is often available before and during Mass in churches celebrating Mass in the extraordinary form. Almost exclusively, confession will be in the traditional form, using a confessional box, rather than face-to-face with a priest.

For teachers who wish to know more about the extraordinary form of the Mass, details are available at http://latinmassireland.org. The schedule of Masses for Ireland is also available. If a teacher wishes to take a class of First Communion children to experience Mass in the extraordinary form, that can be arranged in advance with the celebrant. Explanatory DVDs of the Mass are also available from the Latin Mass Society of Ireland.

In the mean time

Lot's has happened since I last posted:

The Vatican has released the Apostolic Constitution "Anglorum Ceotibus" governing the norms for the new Ordinariates for Anglicans who wish to be received into the church and retain some/many of the customs in union with Peter. Pope Benedict will be known as the Pope of Christian Unity if he keeps going at this rate.

October saw the commencement of discussions with the SSPX concerning the II Vatican Council and other issues - These talks will continue as long as they need too I expect and they schedules for once a month.

The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia is also scheduled to meet with the Pope, relations between the two could not be warmer.

We shall have to wait and see what the result of this movement will be.

Sacred Music an appeal to the Pope

Appeal to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for an authentically Catholic sacred art

The following is a sample chapter:VI. SACRED MUSIC AND LITURGICAL CHANT

Holy Father, the Church has today the opportunity to regain his "highly" role in the magisterium of music, mainly in the field of sacred music and liturgical chant, which must necessarily respond to the categories of "good" and "right" for their intimate connection, not just correspondence, with the liturgy itself (Paul VI, Address to the singers of the papal chapel, March 12th, 1964).

In the ancient history of Christianity the dialectical relationship between sacred music and secular music has produced many times the intervention of the Church to "clean up the building of the Roman liturgy" (a term explicitly used by many popes) from the secularist intrusions that the music itself lead in the temple and that, over the centuries and the gradual technical and musical development, have become increasingly severe and spill-over from the proper liturgical use, ending often in the assumption of roles of self-referencing or profane nature.

From the time of the Const. Ap. “Docta Sanctorum” issued by Pope John XXII (1324), the magisterium has always indicated the righteous ways of understanding music in the service of worship, gradually adopting new techniques compatible with the liturgy, but always and consistently pointing up to the present day (including the magisterium of Vatican II and the entire post Vatican II period) in the Gregorian chant, the primal root, the source of constant inspiration, the highest – because it’s simply the most noble – form of music that can perfectly embody the Catholic liturgical ideal also by virtue of its anonymity and its meta-historical true aesthetical, verbal and sensitive universality.

We cannot now definitely establish musical forms and styles a priori, but therecovery of Gregorian chant, good polyphonic and organ music (even inspired by the Gregorian), – ancient, modern and contemporary – would certainly, after decades of absolute shock and “probability” in music, recall the liturgical "words" that the Catholic tradition in art and music has given us for centuries: they have worked – using a representative expression of Pope Paul VI in the Enc. "Mysterium Fidei" – as real "tiles of the Catholic Faith", which was always founded on sensible data, endowed with truth and beauty; and always devoid of sterile and mannered or archaeological intellectualism, to be avoided with care (as indicated by Pope Pius XII in Enc. “Mediator Dei” that introduced the liturgical reform of the late twentieth century.

Maybe in the arts devoted to the service of worship, music is the strongest, for that constant "catechetical" meaning which the magisterium has constantly recognized, and also the more delicate because, by its nature and unlike the other arts, requires a tertium medium between the author and the viewer, or the interpreter. For this reason the Catholic Church should take better care of the music than of other arts and should, as happened in the past, urge the education of both authors and interpreters: for sure today the effort is much more difficult than in Middle Age, Baroque period or in the XIX century, since the actual society is completely secularized. However today is needed a clear knowledge of the fundamentals so that the musicians – once endowed with the needed expertise – can recover the "sensus ecclesiæ" together with the "sensus fidei".

The Prefect of the "Congregation for Religious" Cardinal Franc Rodé CM

From a recent speach;

"In the last forty years, the Church has undergone one of her greatest crises of all times. We all know that the dramatic situation of consecrated life has not been marginal in this state of affairs. In practically all Western countries, observers note that most religious communities are entering the end-game of a prolonged crisis whose outcome, they say, is already determined by the statistics.In many of these Western countries, religious have lost hope....Under the umbrella of “consecrated life” and behind the statistics there lies a variety of situations.

First, there are many new communities, some better known than others, many of which are thriving and whose individual statistics are the reverse of the general trends.

Second, we have older communities that have taken action to preserve and reform genuine religious life in their own charism; they are also in a growth mode, contrary to the general trend, and their median age is lower than the overall average for religious.

Neither of these two groups sees “the writing on the wall” in the sense that observers of the general trends use it; on the contrary, the future looks promising if they continue to be what they are and as they are.

Third, there are those who accept the present situation of decline as, in their words, the sign of the Spirit on the Church, a sign of a new direction to be followed. Among this group there those who have simply acquiesced to the disappearance of religious life or at least of their community, and seek to do so in the most peaceful manner possible, thanking God for past benefits.

Then, we must admit too, that there are those who have opted for ways that take them outside communion with Christ in the Catholic Church, although they themselves may have opted to “stay” in the Church physically. These may be individuals or groups in institutes that have a different view, or they may be entire communities.

Finally, I would distinguish those who fervently believe in their own personal vocation and the charism of their community, and are seeking ways to reverse the trend. In other words, how to achieve authentic renewal. These may be whole institutes, or individuals, pockets of individuals or even communities within institutes....Operating at the root of this “pseudo-aggiornamento” was what can best be described as “naturalism”.

It supposed the radical centering of man on himself, the rejection of the supernatural, and operated in a climate of radical subjectivism.It showed itself in multiple ways: In talk about holiness that is totally divorced from fulfillment of Christ’s law and the concept of grace. In minimizing sin. In the acceptance of the world as it is, with no need of conversion. In taking the world as the criterion according to which the Church ought to be reformed. In a notion of apostolate or ministry that consists in being at ease in the world rather than changing it. In rejection of authority, and especially divinely constituted authority, hence the rejection of the magisterium and all canonical and disciplinary ordering in the Church....

Towards the end of the Second Vatican Council, I was in Paris finishing my doctoral thesis on “miracles of the modernist controversy.” At that time in France there was a pervasive atmosphere of enthusiasm for the Council as the press and other media presented it, which was a partial image of the Council as a “victory of the liberals over the conservatives.”

When I returned to Slovenia I found that the communist regime was isolating the Catholic faithful, suffocating public expression of the faith and reducing it to a merely private affair. I found a faithful people within a society shaped by the ideology of materialism. I soon realized that what I brought with me from my studies in Paris was of very little use for my pastoral work. I needed to be close to the people and to respect the traditional ways of expressing of their faith. I learned so much from the Christian faithful! They taught me to love the Church, to respect the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.

The great lesson I learned from that experience was this: The religious who secularized consecrated life were not doing so for the sake of the faith of the people of God. It was not the good of God’s people that they were seeking. Rather than God’s will, what they were seeking was their own.

Religious life, being a gift from the Holy Spirit to the individual religious and the Church, depends especially on fidelity to its origins, fidelity to the founder, fidelity to the particular charism. Fidelity to that charism is essential, for God blesses fidelity while he “opposes the proud.” The complete rupture of some with the past, then, goes against the nature of a religious congregation, and essentially it provokes God’s rejection."

Why is Gothic Revival the preeminet style for Australia?

The Romanesque style, in my humble opinion, is a most glorious, and above all liturgical style, it's direct decendant the Gothic style however, partakes of many of the same attributes and principles as well as being a truly christian style.

Regardless of my opinions however, and for significant historical reasons associated with the establishment of the Catholic Church in Australia it is the New Gothic style that was to be the hallmark and jewel of the naiscent Australian Church.

The Benedictine pioneer's embraced the vision of a new golden age for the church in which the newly resurgent gothic style was to be preeminent.

Archbishop Rodger Bede Polding, not only attended the opening of St Chad's Birminigham but undoubtedly met with it architect A.W.N. Pugin - It was this architect and his school of architecture that took the Colony by storm. Indeed to such an extent that it was difficult until more recent time to find any other style.

The English Benedictines did not achieve their ultimate vision, but they did set in place many foundations upon which we can and should build - after it is as a result of their efforts that the Gothic style is the closest style to any that we can truly lay claim too.

Allmost all out cathedrals are built in this style most notably St Mary's Cathedral Sydney, and St Patrick's Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Horbart to naem but a few, all have Gothic Cathedrals.

To be continued