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

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bkovacs said:
But he didn’t forbid the style of Franciscan Chant, which is still superior to “Gather Us In”.

medievalists.net/2009/12/16/franciscan-chant-as-a-late-medieval-expression-in-the-liturgy/

amazon.com/Gregorian-Chants-Franciscan-Monks-Assisi/dp/B000005RIK
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In Br. JR comment he said Gregorian Chant was banned in the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours) but made no mention of the Liturgy of the Mass. That is unless I’m ignorant and the Divine Office is the Mass?😊 If so please correct me. This is not sarcasm by the way I’m honestly asking for correction if I’m wrong.
 
The_Old_Medic said:
I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
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I’m not a latin mass kind of guy myself, but neither am I much fond of the banal form of ‘contemporary’ music referred to in the article. But your response above is amazingly ill informed. Before 1960 there were vanishingly few ex-catholics. Today the single largest religious demographic in America is catholics. the SECOND largest is EX catholics. They’ve ALREADY left in droves, my friend. Attempts to turn the sacred liturgy into a ‘community meal’ is no small part of the reason!
 
The_Old_Medic said:
That is the opinion of one Priest, one who obviously does not like, or appreciate, contemporary music.
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“Gather Us In” was contemporary music in 1982. That’s almost 30 years ago. It’s as fresh as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. The median age in the US is 35 years. For increasing numbers of people this work is seriously dated. It is very much a product of times past. Practically the only thing older is that rickety old space shuttle NASA keeps patching up.
The_Old_Medic said:
The participation of the people is a LOT more important than whether or not a piece of music has a long history with the church.
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Yes, and I always found it ironic that by verse four in “Gather…” we find the line:
…give us the courage to enter the song.
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It’s like Marty Haugen already suspected when he wrote the piece that not everyone was going to participate.
The_Old_Medic said:
Do we go back to those days, when, “The difference between Protestants and Catholics is that Catholics don’t sing”?

I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
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When one throws out the music that came before, what defense is there when your stuff gets thrown out?
 
I believe that the Divine Office is NOT the Mass. It is called the prayer of the Church. There are several different ways of saying the Divine Office. The Dominicans have one variety as do the Franciscans, Benedictines and Carmelites. I’m sure the Byzantines have there particular methods too
 
The_Old_Medic said:
I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
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Touche !

“Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”
St. Athanasius

“What if some novel contagion seek to infect the whole Church, and not merely a small portion of it? Then he will take care to cling to antiquity, which cannot now be led astray by any novel deceit.” St. Vincent of Lerins

“Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.”
Pope St. Pius X

And to the OP, Fr Z is right imo.
 
GloriousOrder said:
The Roman Catholic Church is one big line of tradition. A break from tradition is wrong. We are an inherently conservative institution, holding on to what our holy forefathers passed down to us. Singing and belting out tunes is not the height of active participation; actually, I’d call it a perfidious distraction to real prayer. Hymns like “Gather us in” are so sappy it’s a choke-hold on the faithful, putting them in the frame of a concert, or theater green room gathering for coffee, rather than being in the presence of mysterious and holy God.

Gregorian chant is hard for most to understand, but the ephemeral floating quality of the single melismatic line always shakes people to the core. Traditionalists don’t like Gregorian chant because it’s old, but because it’s a connection with so many of the saints. We feel as if we’re one in worship with all the past, hearing the same simple, angelic chant without need for instruments or tolerant, gushy, happy feelings. Gregorian chant was never considered “different” by the world. Ambrosian chant preceded it, Byzantine chant preceded that, and ancient Jewish and Roman chant preceded Byzantine. It is a very ancient tradition to sing to our God without need for instruments, but with a mysterious voice of ineffable joy.

If traditionalists got “hold” of the Church again, I dare say all the people who rely on happy-clappy hymns, guitar masses, and nonsense music would leave. If they were there only for the sense of “community” and not a sense of the terrible righteousness and awe of almighty God, they probably didn’t fit anyway. We need to evangelise all people, and we ourselves need to be evanglised… teary-eyed modernist music doesn’t put depth into anything or anyone. Neither does Gregorian chant, inherently, but it moves the soul to a non-harmonic world where only the One Voice of the saints and angels combines. It’s 100% different from hymns influenced by chorales and popular songs.
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👍
 
markomalley said:
Actually, it is not the opinion of one priest. Nor is it the opinion of traditionalists.

It is the opinion of the Roman Catholic Church from (yes, folks, believe it or not) the Second Vatican Council:
  1. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.
  2. In order to preserve the heritage of sacred music and genuinely promote the new forms of sacred singing, “great importance is to be attached to the teaching and practice of music in seminaries, in the novitiates and houses of study of religious of both sexes, and also in other Catholic institutes and schools,” especially in those higher institutes intended specially for this. Above all, the study and practice of Gregorian chant is to be promoted, because, with its special characteristics, it is a basis of great importance for the development of sacred music.

    ​
  3. All other things being equal, Gregorian chant holds pride of place because it is proper to the Roman Liturgy.

    ​
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even though the church indicates the chant needs to hold a place of honor, and indead the revised missal does that, the Church also encorages the developmetnof sacred music that reflect cultural differences and local traditions.
As such then it is not indicating the the chant should be the only music used in liturgical worship.
 
As someone who is in a church choir, I have to say there are some good, modern hymns that should be appreciated. Aside from the happy, clap-trap there really are gems to be savored. Although to me, chant is beautiful and should have a priority, there is a place for more modern songs as well.

When I converted to Catholicism, I was attending Latin Mass, now that I attend regular, Novus Ordo Mass, I really miss the chant and hope one day it will be brought back so I can learn it. 🙂 I feel like a part of our Roman Catholic heritage has been taken away now that we barely ever use Latin or chants. There has to be a balance somewhere…
 
Some might say a lot of catholics converted to protestantism when the church masses lost some of the things that made catholicism uniquely catholic.

I tell you the truth, if the first mass I attended did not have Gregorian chants and other traditional flavors, I probably would not be on the path I am today.
 
Originally Posted by The Old Medic
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I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
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I’d like a mix of the best parts of both.

I’d like to sit and hear Chant flow over and through me (or some of that other music that only very talented singers can sing).

But, I also want to stand and sing in English and maybe a little Latin, and don’t want the choir or the music DROWNING out the mostly cra… voices (but very heartfelt attempts) of the laity.
 
markomalley said:
Bishop Slattery’s take on the subject:

I know that for two generations now, Catholics have been expected to sing an opening hymn at Mass and in many parishes the faithful are regularly browbeaten to “stand up and greet this morning’s celebrant with hymn #so-and-so” which, depending upon the parish, might be taken from the red hymnbook, or the blue hymnbook, or the nicely disposable paperback missalette. So deeply has this ‘opening hymn mentality’ shaped our consciousness that most Catholics would be astounded to hear me say that hymns have no real place in Mass.

Hymns belong in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the common devotions of the faithful, but the idea that the parish liturgy committee should sit down sometime early in the month and look through a hymn book, trying to find pretty hymns which haven’t been overdone in the past three or four months, which explore the themes of the Sunday Masses and which brings the people together as a singing community is an idea completely alien to the spirit of the Catholic liturgy.

It is alien first of all because the singing of hymns as Sunday worship was a Protestant innovation, better suited to their non-Sacramental worship than to the Mass, and alien secondly because an opening hymn introduces - at the very inception of the sacred action - that element of creative busy-ness, which is, as we have seen, antithetical to the nature of salvation as a gift we receive from God.
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👍👍👍
 
The_Old_Medic said:
That is the opinion of one Priest, one who obviously does not like, or appreciate, contemporary music.

Hate to inform you, but at one time, Gregorian Chant was also new, and perceived to be “different” and “unsuitable”.

Just because it is old, does not make it more liturgical, or more suitable.

The participation of the people is a LOT more important than whether or not a piece of music has a long history with the church.

Do we go back to those days, when, “The difference between Protestants and Catholics is that Catholics don’t sing”?

I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree with your thoughts. I am one who likes the modern Music in the mass. were Fr. Z is off is that many of the hymns are based on scripture, using the word of scripture. I also like the chant but not as a regular diet. I think the place of honor should be reserved to special seasons of the year, Advent and lent, when a more reflective style, as is the chant is called for.
With the revised missal, I have instructed the choir to learn the chant for this advent season.
 
The real question here is, are there any songs out there that AREN’T better than “Gather Us In”? 🤷
 
exoflare said:
The real question here is, are there any songs out there that AREN’T better than “Gather Us In”? 🤷
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“Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” sung by California suburban, all-white choir, accompanied by hand-clapping congregational “rhythym” section?

It takes special hubris to sing the words “…pharoah’s army got drown-ded” in that setting.
 
The_Old_Medic said:
I pray every day that the “traditionalists” never get sway over the Church again. If they do, they will drive out a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic faithful.
Click to expand...
Problem is that already happened. Modernists got hold of Church and we lost our Catholic identity. People got confused and left in droves.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the traditionalists who are helping to bring back our Catholic identity. I pray we will start seeing a return of those who left.
 
Ruth_Catherine said:
Problem is that already happened. Modernists got hold of Church and we lost our Catholic identity. People got confused and left in droves.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the traditionalists who are helping to bring back our Catholic identity. I pray we will start seeing a return of those who left.
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I wanted to write that earlier, but you said it much better than I could. Actually, you said it nicer than I would have.

Thanks, Ruth Catherine! :clapping:
 
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