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MarkThompson
Guest
Are you referring to the translation of cantus with “chant” in the GIRM?
I have not yet figured out whether people who claim that without a doubt this will usher in a new era of mandatory chanted propers – you know to whom I’m referring – really think this, or if they believe that they are influential enough that by framing the discussion in this way they can actually cause it to happen. My sense is that the latter is true of Father Z’s insistence that the Eucharistic Prayers for Children will be prohibited, and probably the former in the case of the cantus issue. Like I say, though, I’m not really sure.
It is, however – one’s personal hopes and preferences are completely irrelevant here – pellucidly clear that those people are entirely mistaken and that there is not going to be any requirement for chant instead of hymns, etc. It’s hard to even count all the reasons:
- Before Vatican II you could use hymns at Mass just as we do today; why would the Church create a rupture with that continuous practice? One could imagine a gradated system along the lines of Musicam Sacram where if you are going to have incense and sing the Ordinary then you have to sing the Introit instead of an opening hymn, something like that. But “no opening hymns allowed” wasn’t the rule in November 1911, so who would ever think the Church is planning to make it the rule in November 2011?
- “Mandatory chant” isn’t the rule in any other country or language (Italy included, perhaps especially). Why would Rome intend to create a different rule – one not even applied in Rome or at papal liturgies – for English-speaking countries?
- The Church simply does not operate this way – slyly changing one word in a document, saying nothing about it, with the secret plan that this will in fact mandate a massive, costly, disruptive liturgical overhaul for everybody. When they want to announce huge changes that many people would hate, they will announce them and give the priests on the ground an opportunity to prepare for them in a pastorally sensible way.
- And to be sure, such a mandatory change – particularly spring on people in such a way – would indeed be hugely unpopular. It would most likely fail and have to be retracted, making the bishops, and indeed the whole Church in English-speaking countries, look terrible. Even if it succeeded, it would require the outlay of a large amount of political capital which the bishops do not have and are certainly not prepared to expend on the pipe dream of chant everywhere, when most of them don’t even have it at their own cathedrals.
- What do you think is the chance that the bishops would plan such a change, but not bother informing any of the publishers – despite the fact that they are already working closely with them on the Mass revisions – instead letting them go ahead with printing a bunch of “revised” missals and missalettes that, according to the bishops’ secret plan, but unbeknownst to the publishers, are in fact full of now-useless hymns?