Restore beauty to Catholic liturgy: Fota III International Liturgical conference

An appeal to restore beauty to Catholic liturgy was the key theme that emerged from the Fota III International Liturgical Conference Psallite sapienter: Benedict XVI on Sacred Music held recently in Cork.

Central to the event was the celebration of Pontifical High Mass (extraordinary form / Tridentine Rite) for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost by Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, formerly of Saint Louis USA and currently prefect of the Vatican Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Church besides the Pope.

The Lassus Scholars, Dublin, directed by Dr Ite O'Donovan, sang the Gregorian chant of the Mass Proper and Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli for the Ordinary.  Ecce sacerdos magnus (Victoria) accompanied the entrance procession and the Te Deum was sung before the final procession.

The conference itself was chaired by Fr D. Vincent Twomey SVD, a member of the Ratzinger Schülerkreis.  In his introduction, he noted how Ratzinger's writings on sacred music insisted that it was not a mere ornamental accessory, but an integral part of Christian liturgy and must have the transcendental characteristics of goodness, truth and beauty.

Irish composer Philip Carty gave witness of his own personal struggle to achieve reverence in his composition.  Is no music better than bad music he asked.  Yes, he answered, because of the silence!  With other speakers he decried the growing culture of singing pop songs during funeral liturgies in Ireland and a paralysed Church afraid to challenge it.

Keynote speaker Archbishop Raymond Burke recalled the Holy Week Gregorian melodies Pueri Hebraeorum and Christus factus est he learned growing up as a boy in rural Wisconsin.  He described as a sense of loss what he experienced as a seminarian in the year 1965-66 when the Liber Usualis containing these chants was abandoned for songs in the vernacular that were, in his view, utterly banal and inferior in quality.  The wonderful pipe organ was replaced by guitars and other lesser musical instruments.

James Macmillan, the Scottish composer of the Mass for the papal visit to the UK in September said that in reaching out to secularism, Church people had committed cultural vandalism.  When did we hear about beauty in a homily he asked.  The liturgy had become de-poeticised, de-Catholicised.  He said it was good to know the Pope was now making his effort to reverse the trend.

Ite O'Donovan, director of the Lassus Scholars, spoke of the crisis in faith and alienation she and other musicians experienced after the Council when there was a dichotomy between what the Council and papal documents said and what actually happened.  She felt the revival of the traditional rites in recent times had opened a path of return for some.

Monday's High Mass was again in the extraordinary form celebrated by Fr Jerome Bücker, a newly ordained priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, a society dedicated to celebrating the extraordinary form of the Mass.  The setting of the ordinary was William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices to which Dr Kerry McCarthy (Duke University USA) had previously given an introduction.

Other interesting features of the 3-day conference were the celebration of Solemn Vespers on the Saturday evening, followed by an organ recital by Thomas Lacôte (Bourges, France), who spoke on how liturgy inspired his own contemporary musical creation.

Mgr James O'Brien and St Colman's Society for Catholic Liturgy, who organised the conference, announced that next year the theme of Fota IV will be The Roman Missal. 

Picture shows the cantillation of the Gospel at Sunday's Pontifical High Mass.

by Patrick Duffy