Latin at the Pope’s Mass in Glasgow

I believe the new verb is “to fisk” – to reprint an article with  running commentary on it. It’s time for PrayTell to give it a try. The article is “Pope’s Glasgow Mass in Latin” from HeraldScotland:

A substantial part of the Mass to be celebrated by Pope Benedict at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow on September 16 will be said in Latin, the Vatican has confirmed.

In an interview with The Herald, published today, Monsignor Guido Marini, the Pope’s master of ceremonies, reveals the Canon and Preface – the most significant parts – will be said in the ancient language. [I think they mean ‘Preface and Canon,’ unless the Pope is celebrating the Mass in reverse order. And I bet the Preface will be sung, not said. At least I hope so. I’d vote for singing the entire Eucharistic Prayer, but I don’t expect that will happen.]

Mgr Marini said: “For all the Masses said in the UK the Preface and the Canon will be said in Latin. What the Holy Father intends by using Latin is to emphasize the universality of the faith and the continuity of the Church.” [Or at least the universality of the western or Latin rites, since Eastern Catholics in communion with Rome don’t use and never have used Latin.]

The Canon is the most significant part of the Mass as it both precedes and follows the Consecration. [The Eucharistic Prayer is the most significant part of the Mass and it begins with the Preface Dialogue, as explained in the GIRM. Their description of the Canon preceding and following the Consecration makes it sound like the Canon stops so the Consecration can occur! Sacramental theologians have been saying for at least half a century that the entire Eucharistic Prayer is consecratory. Eucharistic Prayers in early centuries of the Church, as far as we know, did not have an Institution Narrative, but they certainly were valid and consecratory. ] It will be said in a Latin translation of the modern English liturgy, [Hmmm, what principles did they use to translated it back into Latin from our English? And is the 1973/74 text the normative English from which to translate?] and will be viewed as a sign of Benedict XVI’s desire to return to the solemnity of the traditional liturgy.

Mgr Marini also revealed a new English translation of the Mass, to be introduced next year, will be truer to the original Latin used by the Church for 1500 years [Actually, many of the Latin prayers in the postconciliar Latin  missal are a revision of the ancient prayers. Many of the Latin collects, eg., are only a few decades old in their present form.] before the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Parts of it will be said at Bellahouston for the first time.

But the move falls short of a wholehearted return to the old Tridentine rite of pre-Vatican II, supported by Pope Benedict, [Wholehearted? Do they mean ‘wholesale’? Neither one reflects the wishes expressed by Pope Benedict – namely, that the celebration of the preconciliar rite be more widely permitted alongside the ‘ordinary’ form as reformed by the Second Vatican Council. As far as I know, Pope Benedict has never stated that he wishes for a wholehearted or wholesale return to the Tridentine rite.] but which remains controversial. Earlier this year news of the papal visit to the UK sparked debate about the unity of the church in Scotland as it was claimed some Scottish bishops opposed returning to the old pre-1970s liturgy. [Again, the proposal wasn’t to return to the old liturgy, but rather to allow freer use of it.]

Yesterday Father Stephen Dunn, parish priest of Sacred Heart church in Bridgeton, responded to the news by saying he is moving his regular Latin Mass from Monday evening slot to Tuesdays at 10am from this week.

“I’m doing this because it is in accordance with the wishes of the Holy Father,” he said. [Huh? The Holy Father wants Latin Mass in parishes to be Tuesday at 10am rather than Monday evening? I missed that papal decree.] “I am delighted that the Holy Father is once again using liturgical Latin. It was never banned but has been discouraged.”

But Scottish composer James MacMillan, who has set parts of the new English verion to music for the Bellahouston Mass, dismissed any idea of controversy.

“Vatican II was never intended to do away with mass in Latin,” he said. “Contrary to what certain activists are trying to claim, neither Latin nor choral music have ever been banned.”

Ronnie Convery, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Glasgow, said: “It is possible the Latin liturgy at Bellahouston may reawaken a renewed interest in the Church’s traditional music forms. We are completely relaxed about it,[I like his attitude!] and support it.”  …

So that’s our first try at fisking at PrayTell. I’m not sure we’ll bother doing much more fisking. But stay tuned – we’ll see.

awr

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Katharine E. Harmon, Ph.D., edits the blog, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit & Wisdom.

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Comments

20 responses to “Latin at the Pope’s Mass in Glasgow”

  1. Karl Liam Saur

    Whether this is the best choice we can debate, but this is better than the idea floated earlier to have the Pope render Institution narrative alone in the Latin, which would have been a cockamamie choice.

    Reply
  2. Fr John Mack

    Sorry awr,

    Fisking is annoying, although I realize some in Catholic blogdom just can’t help themselves.

    Generally, I would prefer to read the article AND THEN hear your most expert commentary and reflection.

    Who made us this verb anyway? Oh, language is living, organic, and dynamic? (I couldn’t help MYSELF there!)

    Reply
  3. Todd Flowerday

    Let me weigh in strongly against fisking. I’ve avoided it for seven years of blogging. I make it a point never to read them. In the hands of an ideologue, it’s juvenile.

    That said, the journalists are likely bungling the translation of liturgical terms from the pope’s liturgist.

    As for the use of Latin in these liturgies, so what? The pope’s not going to take up residence in the UK. And a return to Latin is not going to renew a Christian Europe.

    Reply
  4. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
    Anthony Ruff, OSB

    OK – I hear you! I much appreciate the feedback. And my response isn’t meant to stop the feedback coming – everyone, feel free to pile on.
    awr

    Reply
  5. RP Burke

    I think the readers so far seem to have missed Fr. Anthony’s point: a real send-up of the “fisking” phenomenon.

    Reply
  6. John Drake

    I was WONDERING when PrayTell would catch up with the progressive, modern concept of fisking! Nice to see it! My only suggestion for future fisks is to adopt the widely accepted protocol of using bold font for emphases, and bold red for comments. Much more reader-friendly.

    Looking forward to many more such fisks!

    Reply
  7. Sean Whelan

    I don’t mind fisking, though I would agree with John Drake – the italicized fisks are awkward to read.

    Regarding the article, come on! Enough with this latin! People do not speak it! Why remove the central prayer from the people even more?

    This is ridiculous. Please, God, send another John XXIII or Paul VI!

    Reply
  8. Paul Inwood

    Isn’t fisking what the inimitable [or supply your own adjective!] Fr Z does? It can be most annoying in the wrong hands, especially when the author misses the point completely, but perhaps not in the right hands!

    Reply
  9. Cody C. Unterseher

    I find it fascinating, Dom Anthony, that most of the comments deal with the fact of your “fisking,” and not with the horrendous theological, terminological, and ideological mistakes in the article.

    BTW, you missed one: “Tridentine” is not a proper term for a “rite.” 😉

    Reply
  10. Ioannes Andreades

    If you want to read a comment about fisking, please move on.

    Am curious about the phenomenon of singing or chanting the canon. What is the historical background for such a practice? I know that the canon wasn’t always said in a low, nearly inaudible voice, but was there a time that is was usually sung? Moreover, if one wants to show the unity of the preface and the rest of the eucharistic prayer, presumably one part should not be sung without the other.

    Reply
    1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
      Anthony Ruff, OSB

      Ioannes, this is an excellent question, and I wish I had better information. My impression – and this is based on piecing some things together and doing some speculating – is that the Eucharistic Prayer was probably chanted in, say, the 4th – 5th century when the text was pretty well (but not entirely) standardized, and cantillating of presidential texts was still standard.

      I have the important observation of Fr. Ed Foley in mind, too, that the distinction between singing and reciting was not hard and fast in the early Church, and everything had a somewhat lyrical ‘sing-song’ (my term, not his) quality to it. But I wonder whether the distinction wasn’t becoming clearer by the 4-5c. I have wondered whether Sanctus XVIII goes back to the 4-5c (we don’t know this), whether it’s opening on B would have followed naturally upon the solemn preface tone (if this tone goes back that far), and whether the ‘modulation’ in the last phrase of the Sanctus is getting us to the typical reciting pitch A, flexing on G, as in the hypothetical reconstruction of the monks of Solems since Vatican II.

      In the absence of hard evidence, or notation before the 8th century, all we can do is speculate.

      If others are aware of better scholarship on all this, I’d love to hear it.

      awr

      Reply
      1. Ioannes Andreades

        Thanks so much!!!

  11. Ben Blackhawk

    Not such a great article to fisk, as it consists mostly of objective information (much of which is obviously bumbled in typical fashion by journalists). Unfortunately most of your ‘corrections’ come across as a bit nit-picky. [I guess the trick to good fisking is to make the journalist look like a fool without making us feel sorry for her/her. Maybe you are just too much of a college prof to pull that off 🙂 no offense!) But I liked your last comment about the ‘relaxed attitude’ towards Latin. I would have liked it if you had any more info on this MacMillan chap and if his music he had planned is still being used or is he going to use somebody else’s music now that the responses have to be in Latin.

    Father, with your many and highly-placed contacts in the liturgi-sphere, you could be an excellent fisker: just bring in juicy tidbits you have heard which the article leaves out.

    Reply
  12. C H Edwards

    I might have fisked the caption to the papal photo, as follows:

    “Much of Pope Benedict’s Bellahouston Park Mass will be in the scholarly language of Latin” [Actually, it likely will be in liturgical Latin rather than in scholarly Latin.[

    Reply
  13. Fr. Jan Michael Joncas

    Chapter One of my doctoral dissertation (HYMNUM TUAE GLORIAE CANIMUS: Toward an Analysis of the Vocal and Musical Expression of the Eucharistic Prayer in the Roman Rite: Tradition, Principles, Method. S. Anselmo, 1991) tried to address the issue of how the Roman Rite Eucharistic Prayer was rendered vocally from the period of euchological improvisation to the period of a standardized text. Since the only notated Christian music manuscript so far discovered dating to this period is the Oxyrhychus papyrus 1776 which contains a Trinitarian hymn (NOT a Eucharistic Prayer), all of this data only offers texts that were vocally rendered and descriptions of how these texts were rendered. Liturgical historians offer various speculations about how these texts were vocally performed based on the data. Eisenhofer and Lechner believe that when worship moved from house churches to larger buildings, public declamatory speech patterns were adopted for these prayers as the nucleus of melodic recitative (accentus vs. concentus, the singing of the congregation or choir). Righetti argued from the term “carmen sacerdotis” that Augustine used for the Eucharistic Prayer that it exhibited “cursus” and would have been executed with simple musical modulations. (To be continued)

    Reply
  14. Fr. Jan Michael Joncas

    Jungmann argued that Christians adopted the “speech-song” of pagan address to divinities for public worship in late antiquity; that since exaggerated vocal inflections in presidential prayer was condemned, the prayers were at least minimally inflected; that in the absence of notation the “positurae” or “pausationes” that appear in the manuscripts of the prayer texts indicate types of cadences as well as grammatical signs; and that “sensus” applied to the “preces diurnae” in the Verona collection of libelli missarum means “recitative melody.” Michel Robert argued that if the less-important presidential prayers of the Roman Rite were chanted, the Eucharistic Prayer certainly would have been. Properly musicological studies of the topic have not been particularly helpful since notated manuscripts of the Roman Rite Eucharistic Prayer stem from a period in which the bulk of the Canon was recited inaudibly. Leo Treitler’s arguments about certain manuscript marks serving as both grammatical signs and indications of vocal inflection in some ways parallel Jungmann’s contentions.
    The upshot is that: 1) we have little evidence for the vocal performance of the Eucharistic Prayer in the city of Rome during the period of the house churches, other than to assume that the text was rendered aloud in a way that was intelligible to the participants; 2) we have slightly more evidence for the vocal performance of the Eucharistic Prayer in the city of Rome (to be continued)

    Reply
  15. Fr. Jan Michael Joncas

    when the liturgy was celebrated in public settings (basilicas, central-plan churches, etc.); whether deriving from the cantillation of synagogues, pagan public address to divinities, or the conventions of public oratory, presidential texts, including the Eucharistic Prayer, were rendered aloud in a kind of “speech-song” we might call cantillation; 3) for a variety of reasons, the central portions of the Eucharistic Prayer came to be recited in a low voice, eventually “silently” (in such a low voice that even those standing about were not supposed to hear the text); however the Preface Dialogue and Preface as well as the Doxology and Amen remained vocally rendered in chant at the missa cantata/missa solemnis; sections of the Sanctus “covered” the silent recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer up to the Institution Narrative/Consecration and sections of the Benedictus “covered” the silent recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer up to the Doxology; 4) the 1969 Ordo Missae reconfigured the text of the Canon, add three further Eucharistic Prayers, and changed the method of vocally rendering them. In addition to simple and solemn tones for Prefaces, the OM provided notation for segments of the Eucharistic Prayers. In the case of Eucharistic Prayer I/Roman Canon this notation ran from the “Quam oblationem” through the “Supplices te rogamus.”
    I hope this was of some interest to those who wanted some historical background on the chanting of the Roman Rite Canon.

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      Add to that the evidence during the transition from late Antiquity to the Carolingian period, where the idea of the “silent” Canon started to show itself and the reaction to it indicated it was first considered an abuse.

      Reply
    2. Ioannes Andreades

      Thanks! This is very interesting.

      Our evidence on Roman singing is notoriously sketchy, at least in comparison to Greek. Carmen could mean a wide variety of spoken utterances as well. I guess what it comes down to is that there is no explicit evidence for the singing of the canon in Rome. I’m not sure that the a fortiori argument works that if the lesser prayers were chanted the more important ones would have been too. The two types of texts are structurally very different, with prayers such as the collects clearly more concearned with rhythm and the sounds of the clausulae. It could be argued that the collects and post-communions were almost ornamental and could lend themselves to being sung. As Andrew Barker writes, “To most reflective Roman minds, music in their own milieu was no more than trivial entertainment.”

      Anyway, I appreciate all of this.

      Reply
  16. Alan Smith

    To answer Ben Blackhawk’s question about James MacMillan’s setting of the new English text, I am happy to confirm that we will indeed be singing it in Birmingham (as they will also be doing in Glasgow). You can download all the liturgies of the Papal visit to the UK (and much more) here: http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/content/download/9844/63860/file/UK-Magnificat.pdf

    Reply

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