Where`s my Liber Usualis” I know I put it somewhere hmmmm
Chant is good. Chant and cantor is better.
We used to chant at my parish in San Antonio. Our choir director had an enthusiasm for it for a while. However, based on the reaction to our occasional attempts with my Spanish choir, it’s white noise to the Hispanics.
Axios!
I love Gregorian chant. When I was in college, before I was a Catholic, I used to accompany my sorority sisters to Mass at the Newman Club in Berkeley. At that time, Newman Hall was in an old, beautifully paneled building and Mass was held upstairs. They used something called “The Congregational High Mass”. This was before Vatican II.
If you arrived a tiny bit late (which happened because we all walked) you could hear the strains of the chant drifting down the stairs and out the doors before you ever actually arrived. It was mystical and probably contributed to my conversion.
Later, after I was married, my husband used to fish in a pond on the St. Mary’s College, Orinda, campus. You could hear the Brothers chanting vespers in the evenings. The music would drift across the meadow. So soothing! Didn’t matter whether you caught any fish. More reverant than church!
Very good.
Therefore, the bishop said, all parishes in the Marquette diocese will be expected to teach chant to the faithful, and introduce the regular chanting of the Ordinary parts of the Mass. These steps, Bishop Doerfler said, “can be taken by the smallest parishes in the diocese.” He ordered that all parishes have chant programs in place by the end of the year 2020.
Bishop Doerfler also announced that the diocese would prepare its own hymnal, and only music from that hymnal will be approved for use at Mass in the diocese. He said that a diocesan director of sacred music will be appointed, to help parishes instruct the faithful and prepare for the new programs.
References:
“Sing to the Lord, All the Earth!” (Marquette diocese)
Bishop Sample issues pastoral letter on sacred music (CWN, 2/15/13)
Wow, a bold step!
Finally a good move from our bishops.
It was 50+ years ago. The "whole congregation" part, as I remember it, never happened because it was swamped by the appalling post-V2 tsunami.
But anyway, the whole congregation basically "saying" what the acolytes said, and "chanting" what the choir was chanting, was what was then called "Liturgical Reform": the "Dialogue Mass." I'm still for it.
Archbishop Sample is a great blessing to the Portland, OR, area. I have family there, and they send me some of his letters. We just need a few hundred more like him.