Fr. Zuhlsdorf answers the question, "Why Gregorian chant is better than 'Gather Us In' "

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Oneofthewomen said:
Fransicans do not use Gregorian chant, Francis forbid it’s use.

Br. JR has posted on this a lot!😃
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I have heard this before and Francis applied this to his order with the approval of the Church, but it did not apply to the rest of the Church. What we speak of here is for the Wester rite, not Eastern or any Order part of the Roman rite. We are only bringing up what Vatican 2, Pope Paul the 6, B16, and even the USCCB as said about Gregorian chant in our liturgy.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
Not a big fan of Gregorian chant,
and not a big fan of “Gather Us In” either,
but my question is, for all of you who want only Gregorian chant at Mass,
do we tell all the Franciscans that Francis was wrong and totally unorthodox?🤷
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Simply because Gregorian chant is to be given “pride of place” does not exclude the possibility of other suitable music. But neither does the possibility of other suitable music translate to “anything goes.”

Personally, I really enjoy singing along at Mass, but I cringe at much of the OCP/GIA fare. I think there’s room for new music provided it is good music. I’d like to see more guidance from the bishops in this regard (like a list of approved hymns or even an approved hymnal), but I know they have their hands full with the new Missal at the moment. One step at a time, I suppose.
 
archangel04 said:
I have heard this before and Francis applied this to his order with the approval of the Church, but it did not apply to the rest of the Church. What we speak of here is for the Wester rite, not Eastern or any Order part of the Roman rite. We are only bringing up what Vatican 2, Pope Paul the 6, B16, and even the USCCB as said about Gregorian chant in our liturgy.
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Agreed, but what about all the parishes that are run by Franciscans?

The Church is big, and there are many ways that we can worship,
Francis saw this 800 years ago, why can’t we see it now? 🤷
 
Joe_5859 said:
Simply because Gregorian chant is to be given “pride of place” does not exclude the possibility of other suitable music. But neither does the possibility of other suitable music translate to “anything goes.”

Personally, I really enjoy singing along at Mass, but I cringe at much of the OCP/GIA fare. I think there’s room for new music provided it is good music. I’d like to see more guidance from the bishops in this regard (like a list of approved hymns or even an approved hymnal), but I know they have their hands full with the new Missal at the moment. One step at a time, I suppose.
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I agree with everything you say.
However, regarding the bolded portion, I have come across many,
on these boards and elsewhere who seem to think that if it’s not GC,
it is not suitable for liturgy. 😦
 
Oneofthewomen said:
See the first 2 posts in this thread started by Br. JR, a Franciscan.
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I edited my post as you posted your response.

What I said above is that I would appreciate some kind of actual reference, rather than referring to an post by another CAF poster.

While I have the utmost respect for JREducation, citing an anonymous poster on a message board as an authority doesn’t really help me if I mention this outside of the confines of CAF.
 
markomalley said:
I edited my post as you posted your response.

What I said above is that I would appreciate some kind of actual reference, rather than referring to an post by another CAF poster.

While I have the utmost respect for JREducation, citing an anonymous poster on a message board as an authority doesn’t really help me if I mention this outside of the confines of CAF.
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I have no reason to doubt Br. JR, as what he has said mimics everything that every other Franciscan I know has told me. I suppose that you can find it in the Rule of St. Francis, but I have never had any reason to question it.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
Agreed, but what about all the parishes that are run by Franciscans?

The Church is big, and there are many ways that we can worship,
Francis saw this 800 years ago, why can’t we see it now? 🤷
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True but the problem is we get the same. Let me exlain. So many times we hear at major parishes, “we don’t have the time or money to learn Gregorian chant”. “People dont want that type of music, they want something that makes them feel alive!”. So then what is proper music for worship then? What ever the music leader decides? Is it the music that makes you want to leap out and start dancing or mosh pitt? If thats the case then let me go to the club or concert where I can dance with pretty ladies lol. Is there room for new music? Of course, but music that reflects with the Church traditional music and both can compliment each other, but when you get music that ruptures from that tradition, then what’s the point?
 
Oneofthewomen said:
I have no reason to doubt Br. JR, as what he has said mimics everything that every other Franciscan I know has told me. I suppose that you can find it in the Rule of St. Francis, but I have never had any reason to question it.
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I likewise, have no reason to doubt him. And I don’t.

And I could effectively use him as a reference here on CAF with full confidence.

But, as I said earlier, if the topic comes up in a discussion in the real world, or for that matter even on another message board, it is problematic as nobody, outside of CAF regulars, will have any idea who this guy JREducation is.

BTW, here is a copy of the 1223 Rule: fordham.edu/halsall/source/stfran-rule.html

I actually looked at that when you first mentioned Franciscans weren’t allowed to use Gregorian Chant, but I can’t really see it in there.
 
I don’t like Gather us In. I don’t like Gregorian chant either, unless it is during communion and ONLY (no congregation) sung by a schola of voices singing the exact same notes (not men and women singing an octave apart).
 
Oneofthewomen said:
Not a big fan of Gregorian chant,
and not a big fan of “Gather Us In” either,
but my question is, for all of you who want only Gregorian chant at Mass,
do we tell all the Franciscans that Francis was wrong and totally unorthodox?🤷
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Holds in Dominican rage against that order of evil string-strummin’ hippies… 😉

Let’s do a thought-experiment. Anyone who has heard a popular Medieval chanson or ballade can easily distinguish it from a drone-soaked Medieval setting of a Proper for the Mass. Anyone who has heard a popular Folk song or ballad cannot often easily distinguish it from a Modern setting of a Processional. Listen to some of Orlando de Lassus’ secular chants, full of bawdiness and musical jokes. Compare that to his settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, or his setting of the Requiem aeternam. There is a very audible divide between what is secular and what is sacred.

The Medieval troubador had a sense of the secular-sacred difference, and made sure to keep his common, instrumentally-accompanied music out of churches. It was a great scandal to even play a violin in the nave of a church in the Middle Ages, given its folk uses in brothels and such. How much more should we consider the electric guitar a sacrilegious instrument in a church, given its associations today? Obviously we’re called by God to appropriate everything for use in praising His Holy Name, but we’re not demanded to embrace the entire world and pretend there’s no distinction left… :o
 
What about the Anglican Chant of the Ordinariates, do lovers of contemporary music despise that form as well.
 
I worked once with a Jewish attorney who absolutely loved when I played my cassettes of Gregorian Chant!

And I once knew a woman that raised her eight children on beans and tortillas. When someone offered them another type of food, they got sick.

Just sayin’! 👍

P.S. I came back to expound on my second statement lest it be misinterpreted which, believe it or not, often happens on CAF. :rolleyes: What I meant with the second statement is that when you are raised on one type of food, it isn’t easy to digest other food no matter how much better it is for you. If you have been raised in the Church with “Gather Us In” and other similar ditties, it would take time to appreciate Gregorian Chant.
 
  • English (or any ‘swa’ language, where the length and value of the vowel depends on the position of the syllable inside the word) is not proper to sing Gregorian On Holy Saturday our deacon (at my territorial Church) tried to squeeze the English words to the melody of the Exsultet iam angelica turba coelorum, and that was a disaster.
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Thank you for this explanation. Most Americans are too enamored to their own English to even begin to realize the shortcomings of their language in proper Catholic worship. If pieces of Handel’s Messiah have never been able to make headway into the Mass, then certainly English hymns sung to the tune of the Edmund Fitzgerald shouldn’t.
  • the Apostolic See approved for Hungarians their traditional hymns (some since the 17th Century) as hymnal for the Mass, and that made that hymnal sacred, ordered as part of the Mass.
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I’m partial to the Slovak myself.🙂
 
bkovacs said:
What about the Anglican Chant of the Ordinariates, do lovers of contemporary music despise that form as well.
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The bolded portion is why I have such a hard time with these “debates”.I prefer more modern music, but am not opposed to other styles.

I, for one, have never said I despise Gregorian chant. It is not my favorite, and I will not go out of my way to attend a Mass that is done in this style. If I end up somewhere where it is used, I will deal. While music helps to enhance my Mass experience, it is not the reason I go to Mass.

Why does it seem that it always has to be ***either/or ***and not both/and? 🤷
 
Lormar said:
What I meant with the second statement is that when you are raised on one type of food, it isn’t easy to digest other food no matter how much better it is for you. If you have been raised in the Church with “Gather Us In” and other similar ditties, it would take time to appreciate Gregorian Chant.
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Nice analogy. I think this is why the Church would never simply drop the hammer and ban all non-Gregorian chant liturgical music. Our Pope and bishops are not generally that into jarring people unnecessarily.
 
In April 1974 Pope Paul VI sent to every bishop in the world a booklet of some of the simplest selections of Gregorian Chant, much of it drawn from the Graduale Romanum. This booklet, called Jubilate Deo, was intended as a “minimum repertoire of Gregorian chant”. It is, in other words, an official Latin “core repertoire” for the Roman Rite. It was prepared, the Pope said, in order “to make it easier for Christians to achieve unity and spiritual harmony with their brothers and with the living tradition of the past. Hence it is that those who are trying to improve the quality of congregational singing cannot refuse Gregorian chant the place which is due to it” (Voluntati Obsequens).
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Pope Paul VI gave permission for the selections in Jubilate Deo to be freely reprinted. The booklet was accompanied by a letter in which the Holy Father made this request of the bishops:
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“Would you therefore, in collaboration with the competent diocesan and national agencies for the liturgy, sacred music and catechetics, decide on the best ways of teaching the faithful the Latin chants of Jubilate Deo and of having them sing them…. You will thus be performing a new service for the Church in the domain of liturgical renewal” (Voluntati Obsequens).
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Jubilate Deo contains simple chant settings in Latin of the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation, Agnus Dei. It also provides musical settings for the dialogues between priest and people, such as before the Preface, and the Ite Missa est, the response to the Prayer of the Faithful, and others.
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An, expanded edition of Jubilate Deo was later issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 1987.
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Unfortunately, the faithful were not taught these chants, and it is rare to hear any music from this collection sung in parishes today.
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adoremus.org/JubilateDeo.html
 
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