Ditch Doc

Those most responsible for the wreck of Catholic liturgy in recent years are fond of the notion of delivering local custom from the ravages of the out-of-touch juggernaut of Roman tradition. In the name of which cause they take the metreless chants of the dusty Meditteranean first Christians, add words here, repeat others there and twist rhythm, mode and instrumentation until the Gloria evokes the latter end of a night in a Northern European beer hall. Not all the pretzels are of the salty and delectable variety.

The Mennonites of Aylmer, Ontario.
Because who else is spinning Elgin County the Christian mariachi top 40 in Low German?

On the top of Google’s listing for weird emails today:

Dear Father,

Bad news: When I set the tenth Sunday after Pentecost as the first day for the Kinkoriites to sing the Propers, I’d forgotten that my boss is expecting me to attend the World Congress on Thyroid Cancer in Toronto. So I probably can’t make it. I am raking south-western Ontario for a replacement cantor for you. Very sorry for the mess.

In Christo,

Ditch

And here’s how you all should have spent this past week:

Keep an eye on Corpus Christi Watershed, who put together this video. They were taping all week, and I hope they’ll have more to offer soon.

A few weeks ago, a non-Catholic music student and friend of a friend attended our Extraordinary Form morning Mass to hear the chant. Her review: “Looks like not much has changed since the 9th century.” It was the best musical compliment I’ve ever received.

Step one when you buy a Liber Usualis is to flip to the very end and ask “Doesn’t this thing have an index?” To which my grandfather used to answer: “It’s a Catholic book. Of course it’s got an Index.” (Flip back about a hundred pages. Theeere you go. Sorry, I don’t know why either.)

The language and music of the liturgy use our minds and bodies to express God’s love of man and our love of Him. Although visual art expresses the same thing, it does so with an inanimate medium, and so has a secondary place in worship.

That is why you can kneel in a beautifully decorated gothic Basilica untouched by the iconoclasm of the last forty years, in misery over the sickly-sweet vapidity of “Peace is Flowing Like a River.” And it’s why you can be brought to tears by a small congregation confidently singing the Kyrie in a cramped, misshapen church. You have entered the cave in Bethlehem, where the faithful have found the Lord in unworthy surroundings and come to do Him homage. The first scene recalls instead the Temple in Jerusalem after the veil was rent, when the great edifice still stood to the glory of the Lord, but the Lord had left. It is among Christ’s greatest mercies that he will never leave the tabernacle to escape bad music.

You are to understand that the next quotation is from our tiny, constantly smiling, soft-spoken anatomy prof with the white hair and the gentle very English voice.

“Now these muscles are the dilator muscles of the mouth, and they have very strange names. My favourite one is this one: the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi. It doesn’t even sound like a muscle. It’s more like a… a blessing.” And then he intoned it, to uproarious laughter on all sides.

Ecumenism is a Hasidic Jew singing reggae in praise of Hashem and reigniting your zeal to say the Rosary in public. Enjoy.

Jerusalem – Matisyahu

And if this doesn’t work, tell me. I want you to hear this guy.

The liturgy is the primary way by which we come to know God. God is three Persons. So go ahead and adjust the language, music and symbolism of the Mass to make them totally understandable on the first go. But only if you have previous experience of coming to know, completely, three people in the space of an hour. If, on the other hand, you’ve found that even your non-divine friendships continue to deepen for as long as they last, then give me a liturgy that I can chew on for eighty years or so.