Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Why the Introit should be sung




Dominus illuminatio mea.
Today's introit, for the tenth Sunday of the year, was the first verse of Psalm 27, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" It is also the motto of the University of Oxford and appears on the coat of arms. The Latin tune would take a couple of rehearsals to learn, but it is in mode 2, which is one of the easier psalm tones, which is an option if the choir does not have the time or skill to learn the music. It could even have been sung in the vernacular; this version of the psalm in Anglican chant would make a perfectly satisfactory start to the Mass.



Unfortunately, it got replaced by a hymn on a different theme altogether.

Does this matter?
In the bigger scheme of things, possibly not, especially when there are parts of the world where it is not even safe to go to church. However, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal lays down guidelines on the subject. Replacing the Introit with a hymn is a last-choice option, and it is meant to be a related text. The Introit, together with the Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion verses, form part of the readings for the day, no less then the First and Second Readings and the Gospel; they should not be regarded as optional extras. The Introit sets the theme for the Mass and from the priest's point of view, is a useful hook to hang the sermon on.

Related to this is the music itself. For half of the church year - from Advent to Trinity Sunday, and the main feast days, the Introits have special settings which are generally not difficult to learn and get remembered by congregations after a few hearings. Thus they act as "signature tunes" and convey a sense of the flow of the church calendar and the events in scripture that that it recounts. In this, they play an important role in the ongoing catechesis of the people. So they should not be squeezed out by hymns, and certainly not by Protestant hymns, which are grounded in an aggressively non-Catholic spirituality and get the Mass off to a very bad start by putting congregations in the wrong frame of mind. Preferably, the original tunes should be sung, either in Latin, or in the vernacular if the translated text can be made to fit the music without sounding awkward or the text and music being at odds with each other. The translated text can usefully go in the newsletter, where it provides people with something to meditate upon when they take it home and read it.

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer