AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was always traditionally on a Thursday, reflecting the fact that the Eucharist was instituted on Holy Thursday. Sadly, we shall not be celebrating the feast today as it has been shifted to the Sunday. That breaks loses the connection. It is also a pity to lose these weekday feasts and hopefully it will one day be shifted back to its proper day. Here are the Introit, Sequence and Communion for the Feast, together with the beautiful Ave Verum Corpus by William Byrd. We are having a special Mass and procession on Sunday. That is an excellent thing. It would be an even better thing if this, the correct music for the feast day, were sung then, and that it was not diluted by music which really did not belong to the feast day or to the Catholic liturgy at all. One lives in hope. The interview below by Fr Guy Nicholls of the London Oratory puts this clearly.

Västlänken is a 20 billion kronor project designed to join the railway lines running north and south of the city, where all routes currently terminate at the Central station. It is mostly in tunnel and coloured green on the map. It goes round three sides of a square, though it is claimed that due to easier tunneling conditions it would be less expensive than a direct link. It will not make for fast through-journey times. Nor does not look like the most cost-effective solution to the problem of saving people travelling from north to south the trouble of having to change at the Central station (red on the map). One aim of the route is to bring rail services into the western side of the city centre with a new station at Haga, but connections to this part of the city centre could be improved at a fraction of the cost, and again, much more quickly, by extending the existing tramway, which now runs through the city centre, to run along the inner ring road direct to the Central station. The p...

  Saying the Rosary is a good way to get to sleep. In fact, I normally fall asleep when trying to say the Rosary. I rarely get past the first decade. There is something in favour of this if you are trying to sleep. It is safer than tablets, and if it did not work you will have prayed the Rosary, so you win either way, but it is not the point of the prayer. I have now found a solution to the problem. On Ascension Day I went with a group to Skänninge and after Mass in the church there, we walked to Vadstena, about 12 miles away. Ending at the shrine of St Birgitta, this was a pilgrimage organised by Kardinal Dante-Sällskapet , which was set up by priests from the Institute of Christ the King (IKC) to promote the Tridentine Mass in Sweden; it has the support of the Bishop. Fader Marcus Künkell led the pilgrimage, and on the way, we prayed all fifty decades of the Rosary. So there was no falling asleep even though it was after lunch. The conclusion is to say the prayer whilst walkin...

I have been complaining lately about the scarcity of Catholic music in the Catholic church locally. I was accused of being small minded and that anyway there was no alternative. Parry's "I was glad" is to be sung soon at a forthcoming event. This was written for the Coronation of King George V in 1911. It radiates British imperialist bombast in the highest degree. There is a softer setting by Purcell but that was written for the Coronation of King William III in 1695, so it too is hardly suitable for a Catholic liturgy. "I was glad" is the psalm Laetatus sum . A search on YouTube returned three thousand hits, including lovely settings by Haydn, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Zelenka, Gorczycki, Michael Haydn, Alessandro Scarlatti, Willaert, to name just a few of the better known composers. There is also, of course, a Gregorian chant setting of the psalm. No alternative to the Parry? Hardly. But why exactly are we ignoring the treasure in our attic? Have we forgotten...

This was originally a response to a posting on Fr Blake's blog. Eamon Duffy's "The Stripping of the Altars", dealing with the sixteenth century Reformers in England, has a resonance with events within the Catholic church in the 1980s. Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, there was little change in the sound of Catholic liturgy. Organisations such as the Association for Latin Liturgy were established to encourage the continuing use of Latin within the Novus Ordo Mass. During the mid-1980s, however, the use of Latin dwindled, mostly on the initiative of a new generation of priests. This was largely against the wishes of the laity, since the abolition of Latin in the liturgy would normally result in the immediate loss of about one-third of the congregation, who would then migrate to neighbouring parishes. The process was then repeated when these neighbouring parishes in turn lost their Latin liturgy with the arrival of a new incumbent. Eventually t...

The National Audit Office has issued this report . "Doubts" is code for total demolition of the economic case for the project.

Punk Girl #1 , a photo by Elmar Eye on Flickr. In his sermon last Sunday, a local priest put his finger on what must be an important factor in the decline of the Catholic church in Europe. He said that the Second Vatican Council addressed the modern world just as it was moving into the era of Post Modernism. Post Modernism grew out of, amongst other things, the understanding of signs and symbols, through the work of people such as Levi Strauss and Sperber during the 1960s. The first fruits of this were to be seen in fashion and music, in the Punk movement, which was about the recycling and re-use of signs. It was quickly picked up by, amongst others, the American architect Robert Venturi who wrote an influential book, best known under its revised title "Learning from Las Vegas", published in 1977. This knocked the supports away from the architectural movement known as Modernism, which had come to prominence just before World War 2 and dominated architectural theory unt...

The purpose of a church choir is to sing the music of the church to which it is attached. When people join they expect to sing that music - not, for instance, Irish folk songs. The limitations are part of the deal. If they want to sing Irish folk songs as well then they can join, or set up, another choir that specialises in that. If you join an Anglican church choir you can expect to spend most of your time singing the characteristic Anglican repertoire - Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Blow, S S Wesley, Goss, Walmisley, Stainer, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Howells and probably something unpleasant and difficult to sing, by the current resident organist who fancies himself as another Bach. The main services being Matins and Evensong, an Anglican chorister will have to master the technique of Anglican chant. Put that all together in a large vaulted stone building with timber choir stalls and an organ with a solid diapason and you have the authentic Anglican sound which you can hear at a c...

Is there such a thing as Catholic music? The question arose because I argued that pieces from Bach's St Matthew's Passion, fine though they were, had no place in the Catholic liturgy. Did this mean that music written by non-Catholics should be excluded? I was accused of being narrow-minded for making such a suggestion. Surely music used in the Catholic liturgy should be music that was written for the purpose? The Catholic liturgy is not a concert, nor is it a performance. First and foremost, it is prayer. It is not as if there is a shortage of suitable music. In the case of the Good Friday liturgy, for which the St Matthew's Passion piece was suggested, there are, for instance, the well-know Allegri's Miserere and the recent composition by MacMillan. Another version by Lotti Adoremus te Christe by Palestrina Another version by Monteverdi Crux Fidelis by King John of Portugal There is wonderful but rarely heard music written for the purpose which is an in...

I heard an interesting sermon this morning. The point made was that "the Second Vatican Council set out to address the problems of Modernism and the rationality that characterised it, but that Modernism itself was soon to be supplanted by Post-Modernism, which is characterised by disorder and chaos, if anything at all." This could explain a great deal. The liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council, at their best, led to a liturgy of rationalism. If this is the case, then it is not surprising that the only real growth point within the contemporary Catholic church in Europe is within the Traditionalist movement, for the traditional Catholic liturgy alone is able to reach the dark corners of the human psyche that lurk beneath the surface of rationality. It was the acknowledgement of the existence of these dark corners that brought about the collapse of Modernism and led to the birth of Post Modernism. There is a fine irony in the notion that traditional Cat...

I have had a reply to a Facebook discussion, arguing that setting Gregorian chant in modern notation will encourage congregations to sing it. I don't know where this idea has come from that people can sing Gregorian chant more easily from modern notation which they are used to. I have looked to see if there is any research on the subject and have found none. Most people of course cannot read music at all and even those that can, cannot sing from a score but have to learn the tune and use the score just as an aid-memoire - which is what I and the majority of choir members do. I cannot even recognise music that I have sung for 40 years when it is set in modern notation. If people are not used to reading from musical scores they get used to Gregorian notation more easily - I could not read music at all and began with the Gregorian notation and then MOVED ON TO modern notation when it was required. Gregorian notation is best for beginners, and for those that are used to modern notat...

At our choir in Hove we used to sing an old hymn, with a dreary tune and well over-the-top words by the Ultramontane Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, the first Archbishop of Westminster, called " Full in the panting heart of Rome ". It must be the ultimate in Catholic kitsch music. " Panting hearts ", as we called it, became a standing joke, but then it was probably done as a joke in the first place. I suspect that the original Catholic triumphalist text was tongue-in-cheek, as the music came from the Calvinist Scottish psalter. We would laugh about it in the pub afterwards. We did not give up singing just because we did not like the music now and again. However, I gave up on the current choir a couple of weeks ago, and that was for the reason that the choir director had got the idea into his head that I was a bass singer, and there was nothing that I could say that would change his mind. It simply does not do to push singers into music that is physically difficult ...

The Railway Gazette reports that The first of 15 Vossloh UKLight diesel-electric locomotives for freight and charter train operator Direct Rail Services is now under construction at the Vossloh España plant near Valencia in Spain. DRS expects the first locomotive to be sent to the Velim test circuit in the Czech Republic for trial running in September, and the second to arrive at DRS’s Crewe depot by the end of October to start the UK approvals process. Designated Class 68, the UKLight is based on the EuroLight freight and passenger locomotive family. Intended for both freight and passenger operation, the 21·5 tonne axleload Bo-Bo will have a 2 800 kW Caterpillar C175 engine and AC traction equipment supplied by ABB. Differences from the EuroLight design include a smaller-profile to suit Britain's more restricted loading gauge, a higher top speed of 160 km/h rather than the 140 km/h and an increase in fuel tank capacity from 4 000 litres to 5 000 litres. The Class 68’s mixed-tra...

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena , a photo by Elmar Eye on Flickr. The Bishop of Stockholm, a Carmelite, came to Göteborg today and gave a talk about how Pope John Paul II had been influenced by Carmelite spirituality. He referred in particular to St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), and the spiritual significance and value of the Dark Night of the Soul. He did things the right way too - with a celebration of Mass and a ten minute sermon, and a 50 minute lecture after the Mass. We also had the opportunity for a buffet supper afterwards which was an enjoyable social occasion.