Summorum Pontificum Opinion

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Yes, and tradition can also feed the OF. Just check out the 1974 Graduale Romanum or the above mentioned antiphonary. Tradition should not mean to fossilize.

It can and must adapt to a changing world while at the same time remaining true to tradition. It can and is done regularly in the OF at monasteries around the world, and at Communauté St. Martin. It is true that it is a delicate balancing act but that does not equal impossible.
 
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OraLabora said:
Tradition should not mean to fossilize.
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Actually, the most impressive Tradition of the Church has been it’s ability to evolve and grow in the real world. Tradition is not a obsolete heirloom in a museum. The liturgy is a tool to get a job done. If you start with the mindset that tools can’t be constantly improved, you end up using rocks and sticks.
 
Dovekin said:
Except that singing in Latin is harder than singing in one’s native language, so bad music from “a cantor who couldn’t carry a tune” is probably more likely in the EF?
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Perhaps you haven’t heard the hundreds of years of music that has been inspired by the EF? Works by Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, to name a few come to mind and most of it is allowed free of charge. There is a reason Pope Benedict refered to the EF as a Treasure of the Catholic Church.

But vocal music isn’t all of it. There are plenty of visuals to guide you as well.
 
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ProVobis said:
Mozart
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After him, Catholic music started to nosedive. Sure, you’ll find good composers now and then, but nothing of the stature of a Palestrina, Bach or Mozart. Long before Vatican II, Catholic Church music had devolved into Romantic era sentimentality and sappiness. Plenty of pre-Vatican II church music was as appallingly trite and banal as much post-Vatican II music. As I said above, there is a certain element of truth in the trope that “Catholics can’t sing”, and that reputation was earned long before Vatican II. Some TLM enthusiasts seem to think we went straight from Palestrina to Kumbaya in the sixties. Truth is, you would have been hard pressed to find any Palestrina in a Catholic church in the 50’s. Music of that type was found only in some Cathedrals and Basilicas, on special occasions.
 
That’s rather surprising given how far the world at large has generally fallen since the time prior to Vatican II. Such Catholics don’t see the Church as being the only institution able to transmit supernatural grace to earth, something that was seemingly lost for a good time.
 
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Jbrady said:
Long before Vatican II, Catholic Church music had devolved into Romantic era sentimentality and sappiness.
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This is exactly true and is what spawned the reform of Gregorian chant at Solesmes in the mid-late 19th century. The result was the 1908 Vatican Edition of the Graduale Romanum, which still forms the basis of the 1974 post-Conciliar Graduale Romanum used for the OF Mass in Gregorian chant.

Sometimes « tradition » is confused with nostalgia for a specific time in liturgical history.
 
OraLabora said:
This is exactly true and is what spawned the reform of Gregorian chant at Solesmes in the mid-late 19th century.
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The use of chant took off AFTER Vatican II. The first time I head real chant was in 1974, at a university service at a Jesuit university. I remember everyone commenting how “novel” and “groundbreaking” it was. Even the oldest congregants. I take that to mean that chant was not a regular part of the average pre-Vatican II congregant’s “diet”. I just remember sundry bits and pieces from the Holy Week services, chanted exclusively by the priest himself. I never heard it sung by the choir.
 
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You’d find out if you read more than the first three words of my reply.
 
Take a look at how things were in the world in the early 60s. Take a look at how they are today. Can you honestly say things have improved overall? The withdrawal of grace in the world at large over some years is very apparent.
 
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Forgive me but I thought we were talking about liturgy and specifically the music in the post you were responding to. It’s a fact that by the 19th century Church music was for the most part pretty abysmal and Gregorian chant in particular had significantly degenerated. Hence Solesmes and the whole liturgical renewal movement that really took off under Pius X, and started to accelerate in the mid-40s with Pius XII who incidentally, appointed Annibale Bugnini to head up the whole liturgical reform commission.
 
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To be more specific, in the early sixties, which you seem to consider some kind of Golden Age, Americans were still discussing whether a Catholic could be president, and calling the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon” didn’t raise many eyebrows. There were people who put clauses in home sale contracts stipulating that the buyer could go on to sell the home to Catholics, Jews and non-whites.
 
And cancer survival rates were much lower. Death rates from heart attacks much higher and those who survived were left with seriously compromised heart function. My brother died of a childhood cancer in 1956, of a cancer that is today treatable.

And St Paul back in his day was complaining about declining morality, go figure…
 
What you express here is nothing new under the sun. The Church has experienced the same throughout her history. The Pauline epistles are full of anguish and coaxing over very similar issues.

The Church will survive. Jesus promised it. Yes she will be battered along the way just as we all are as individuals.

Pray more, worry less.
 
I agree and am not really worried; just stating things as they are.
 
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Nearly every single thread that has the TLM (EF) as it’s topic reveals a fear in those who desperately attempt to marginalize it.

They will shout their high praise of the reforms of VII and the popes that followed the close of that Council, but can’t accept the gracious gestures of JPII and BXVI toward the laity whose spiritual needs call for the TLM to bolster their faith.

What is this fear ? Why do you people feel such a need repeat your discomfort in knowing the TLM is no longer suppressed ?

Is it because the TLM isn’t
“modernized”?

Is it because no women will be seen in the Sanctuary during Mass ? As lectors, alter girls, or EMHC ?

Does the Missa Cantata take “too long” ? No, that can’t be it. You don’t go to those. You are free to attend the OF.

So what is it exactly ? What drives the need to find something negative about the recent embrace of the TLM by those raised on the OF ?

Why this " we don’t need the TLM in order to have reverent Masses" ? That is true, but why the need mention it repeatedly ?
 
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