E
E.E.N.S
Guest
Here are a couple of segments from this article (which I highly recommend you read in its entirety.)
Public perversity, political corruption, the breakdown of the family, massive ignorance and illiteracy, abortion on demand and even infanticide, divorce and remarriage on a grand scale, lack of civic virtue, a booming pornography industry, the total collapse of a culture and a civilization: What a depressing scenario to paint for America at the close of the 20th century! Except it’s not America I am intending to describe; it is Rome in A.D. 590, when a humble monk was elected her Bishop. Gregory loved Rome with every fiber of his being, and it caused him immense anguish to envision the demise of the Eternal City. By nature shy, Pope Gregory didn’t know how to proceed, but the Holy Spirit gave him ample inspiration, for he embarked on a plan of action to take his beloved Rome back from the brink. So successful was he that he received a nickname that graces his tombstone: “God’s consul.”
Pope Gregory’s program was really quite simple: To return to the people of Rome a sense of sin and a sense of the sacred. He was indefatigable in pursuing both goals. His writing and preaching on the moral life were insightful and engaging; he also enlisted the assistance of his fellow Benedictines to raise the moral level of what had become a sewer of debauchery, not only by words but also by the witness of their lives. At the same time, he endeavored to return to his clergy and laity alike the lost sense of the sacred. He understood in his time what his successor of 14 centuries later, John Paul II, has stressed in our time: “A very close and organic bond exists between the renewal of the Liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church. The Church not only acts but also expresses herself in the Liturgy and draws from the Liturgy the strength for her life.”…]We also need a very special kind of beauty, good music. How can we forget that it was not erudite theological debate that won St. Augustine’s mind and heart? The sweet chants he heard outside St. Ambrose’s cathedral did the job; it was the “singing Church” (Augustine’s words) that brought him and countless millions of others down the centuries into the communion of saints. St. Thomas Aquinas saw this clearly when he taught that liturgical music had a most important mission: ad provocandum alibs ad laudem Dei (to stimulate others to the praise of God). Cardinal Ratzinger has aptly summarized the musical development since the Council as that “grim impoverishment which follows when beauty for its own sake is banished from the Church and all is subordinated to the principle of 'utility.”’ With what result? Most congregations, as he says accurately, “endure [it all] with polite stoicism.” What a damning analysis, yet how sadly true.(I have also put this in my blog - which I update daily, so feel free to check it out on a regular basis!
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Public perversity, political corruption, the breakdown of the family, massive ignorance and illiteracy, abortion on demand and even infanticide, divorce and remarriage on a grand scale, lack of civic virtue, a booming pornography industry, the total collapse of a culture and a civilization: What a depressing scenario to paint for America at the close of the 20th century! Except it’s not America I am intending to describe; it is Rome in A.D. 590, when a humble monk was elected her Bishop. Gregory loved Rome with every fiber of his being, and it caused him immense anguish to envision the demise of the Eternal City. By nature shy, Pope Gregory didn’t know how to proceed, but the Holy Spirit gave him ample inspiration, for he embarked on a plan of action to take his beloved Rome back from the brink. So successful was he that he received a nickname that graces his tombstone: “God’s consul.”
Pope Gregory’s program was really quite simple: To return to the people of Rome a sense of sin and a sense of the sacred. He was indefatigable in pursuing both goals. His writing and preaching on the moral life were insightful and engaging; he also enlisted the assistance of his fellow Benedictines to raise the moral level of what had become a sewer of debauchery, not only by words but also by the witness of their lives. At the same time, he endeavored to return to his clergy and laity alike the lost sense of the sacred. He understood in his time what his successor of 14 centuries later, John Paul II, has stressed in our time: “A very close and organic bond exists between the renewal of the Liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church. The Church not only acts but also expresses herself in the Liturgy and draws from the Liturgy the strength for her life.”…]We also need a very special kind of beauty, good music. How can we forget that it was not erudite theological debate that won St. Augustine’s mind and heart? The sweet chants he heard outside St. Ambrose’s cathedral did the job; it was the “singing Church” (Augustine’s words) that brought him and countless millions of others down the centuries into the communion of saints. St. Thomas Aquinas saw this clearly when he taught that liturgical music had a most important mission: ad provocandum alibs ad laudem Dei (to stimulate others to the praise of God). Cardinal Ratzinger has aptly summarized the musical development since the Council as that “grim impoverishment which follows when beauty for its own sake is banished from the Church and all is subordinated to the principle of 'utility.”’ With what result? Most congregations, as he says accurately, “endure [it all] with polite stoicism.” What a damning analysis, yet how sadly true.(I have also put this in my blog - which I update daily, so feel free to check it out on a regular basis!
)
