Posted on 03/20/2006 7:50:53 PM PST by NYCCatholic
Pope’s upcoming Apostolic Exhortation likely to call for increased liturgical solemnity, reintegration of Latin
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I wish they had pictures posted showing the English style decorative painting of the ceiling and high walls. The dimness of these ones, while it captures the stain glass well, doesn't do justice to the interior.
If only more modern churches were built like this! it must have cost a small fortune though. The parish serves about 11,000 Catholics.
The real reason: Sin disappeared and Hell was closed in 1968. Or somewhere thereabouts.
Local Canon Law in Philadelphia required that the Epistle and Gospel be read, and a homily be preached, in the language of the people of the parish at every Sunday Mass.
I think a lot of them would have to. Oddly enough, I think a lot of them would like it. I know a priest in his 40's (just after they stopped having to learn Latin) who has bought himself a "Teach Yourself Latin" book and sits up at night working on it. He says the NO and he's not affiliated with a Latin Mass movement; he just thinks it's right, but he doesn't have the background to be able to do it.
You have my sympathy. I joined the choir in our last church because my daughter was interested in joining it, and I stayed on after she left for college. We had a great choir directer, superb music, and an organist who had studied with the best.
When we moved to Vermont, I found another good choir, and a smaller group that did good music. I joined it. But a succession of priests and choir directors and the typical bad feelings that arise because of the disputes and turmoil in the Church raised by dissenters gradually reduced the music to the lowest common denominator. Funds dried up, the last semi-decent choir director left, the choir disbanded.
Our new priest who presided over the last stages of this disaster has since been asking people to volunteer for the choir, but who the heck wants to spend his time singing "Gift of Finest Wheat," or worse? So we have one lady who sings at the mike, a piano player (the organ goes begging), no real choir, and a congregation that mostly hold their hymnbooks in front of them but can't manage to sing this junk.
Our priest is actually orthodox and good with people, except for one or two fairly innocuous ad libs that he throws into the canon of the Mass and a few other quirks, but the music has just fallen apart. And we have numerous talented people in the congregation, too. Young people who play musical instruments beautifully, talented singers, the whole works. We did some great four-part Renaissance music earlier, and plainchant too. But there remains not a clue how to use this potential for the greater glory of God. So, I just grin and bear it.
Bless his heart, and thank God for our holy shepherds, who still continue to seek.
Thanks. That is consistent with my experience as well.
Actually, Father Neuhaus did a piece on the sheer awfulness and ineptness of the NAB translation in the next to last issue of First Things. And he made the point that probably the reason the American Bishops insist on using this lousy and inaccurate translation is that they have a financial stake in it.
Same with the missalettes. When I had my old leather-bound Latin missal, with facing translation, I bought it once in a bookstore and brought it to church with me whenever I went to Mass. Now, they buy those paperback missalettes every few months, and the publishers--in our case a firm or a religious order out in Oregon--make a fortune on it. The parish has to pay through the nose for this junk, and money that could have gone toward the parish school is eaten up on paperback junk, missalettes and hymnals both. And when the ICEL was playing with the text and screwing it up a bit more each time, that meant even more sales, of which they got their cut of the royalties.
I think he should mandate these changes, but first he should mandate studies for all of the priests in the Church - one year of liturgical Latin
Once it is chanted or sung beautifully, it cannot be tolerated.
You are fortunate. Our church, like most these days, has a wooden table for the altar. The old altar, candlesticks, and the rest were all junked, and the reredos was replaced with plywood rec-room paneling.
I think there were fresco designs on the walls, but they were all painted over with whitewash. Thank God the stained glass windows remain, but that's about the extent of it.
In my last church, while we were attending mass there, there was some talk of junking the stained glass windows and putting in clear glass. Fortunately the decision finally went against doing this, because the windows had been designed by Louis Tiffany, and the pastor was persuaded that they were too historically valuable to junk.
Mass is not a performance or entertainment, it is the highest form of prayer.
Get rid of aesthetics/beauty and replace it with the dull/boring/bland.
It is right out of the hippie movement.
No its right out of 1960's home decor - orange shag carpet and fake wood wall panelling.
That is scary. Have you ever been to an American monastery? The vast majority of them look like modern Catholic churches. Ugh!
Compare our monasteries (deliberately ugly) with beautiful European monasteries, and it is night and day.
St. Anthony is nice! I like the private chapel. They were able to salvage the steeple, the tabernacle, stations but sadly not the altar from the fire. However, and I hate to nit pick, some things could be better.
pics are very beautifull! I was happily surprised when I visited Saint Bartholomew in tacony for the first time over 20 years back in 2003. It still looked the same!
My wife, brother and myself have gone for mass there on Christmas eve the last couple of years. Choir needs some work though.
Like I said. ;)
Wow. I've never in my life ever felt the inclination to punch a priest before, but there it is. Well, I'm off to confession...
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