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| source: sthughofcluny.org |
Just as Rorate took down one article on the ancient Roman liturgy, so they have added another, this concerning the proper postures and rubrics for high Mass. Ceteris paribus, an attempt to introduce these guidelines at the local FSSP parish would likely cause a revolt: no kneeling for forever, standing during the prayers before the altar and after the consecration of the chalice (Irish piety dies hard), popular singing of the Introit—expanded beyond the solitary psalm verse—as the true "opening hymn", and approach of the communion rail during the Agnus Dei are all quite foreign in this area. Traditional Benedictine monasteries seem to be making headway, but their influence ends at their walls. This writer, for one, thinks such an approach would lighten the showcase-like rubricism of many old rite Masses and encourage popular involvement without resorting to Faith of Our Fathers or the Missa de Angelis. I am told Fr. Ronald de Poe Silk printed Mass leaflets following the old instruction to stand after the elevations; perhaps there is hope yet!
In other news, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency, Donald "Make America Great Again" Trump, and his bugaboo, "Lyin' Ted" Cruz, are both making remarkable strides for that emetic fashion of post-middle age, the Comb Over. Trump's is more obvious, less a comb over than a comb forward; a man I knew who played golf with the Donald c.2003 said his biggest danger in life was a gust of wind that would open his head like a tin can. Cruz's comb over is more subtle, covering an emerging patch rather than an existing bald spot. Trump's double in London, Boris Johnson, simply has terrible hair, as though a Chinese takeaway fried it in peanut oil without adding something to help the strand caramelize.
The gentleman's comb over is on its way out, the last stylish practitioner of it being Prince Charles. The comb over was once a standby hairstyle of preppy New England and the Old World. Once a man thinned on top he could simply and gracefully part his hair lower and lower, gradually reaching a point of reasonable protection from the elements. Post-military short hair and post-hippie long hair render the post-middle age comb over antiquated.
And yet some comb overs perplex us. William F. Buckley Jr. looked like a man with something to hide on his program Firing Line, particularly in the 1970s, when he sported a frayed weave to the side opposite his low hair line. However, as ridiculous as it looks, he sported the same hairline when he served as an infantryman in World War II at the age of 21. What was Bill Buckley's secret? In time we may never know....
More serious material is in the cards....
Buckley's hair is easy. Let your top grow out, shave the sides, comb over your luxurious mop to one side. Needless to say, it will not work for the thin-haired.
ReplyDeleteI miss the 19th century hairstyles when beards and mustaches were allowed to express masculinity and/or seniority. Unfortunately, the carnage of the stupidest war in history brought that to an end.
Unfortunately, the carnage of the stupidest war in history brought that to an end.
DeleteAlong with much else that was good and noble, alas.
I now get into my late 50's and my grey hair is now third back long, which I can tie up to look a bit neater in town, especially when wearing clerical dress. My temples are slightly thinning, so I do a centre parting. I seem to look quite 18th century now! I have been lucky not to go bald.
ReplyDeleteClassic Rorate to take down something of actual value while the bogus "Bergolian Milestones" posts are given leeway.
ReplyDeleteWhat did they take down?
DeleteThis.
Deletehttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ya5aNPwwEC4J:rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/04/holy-week-notes-on-tiny-but-growing.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I'm guessing someone at one of the parishes in question complained.
DeleteI think the publication isn’t so much to do with the removal but rather the tone of holding the 1962 line.
DeleteBut that assumes a self-awareness by New Catholic or the other Rorate bloggers that such a tone was problematic after all. I'm not sure that's a given here.
DeleteI stopped reading the rubrical guidelines midway. Once upon my life, I would have been drunk with exactly the same fetish/preoccupation with getting the congregation to step up (literally and figuratively). Not now. Getting the clergy to restore the Liturgy is worth the time and effort; getting people to stand rather than kneel at particular moments is putting the cart before the horse. Besides, this reeks of Novus Ordo neo-Ultramontanism as its worst - legislating postures! Some parishes are more inclined than others to have congregations singing the Ordinary; let's work on this and build it.
ReplyDeleteI am halfway with you. Kneeling forever, or nearly so, on all days without distinction is not part of the classical Roman Rite. I wouldn’t allow them to get into bad habits in the first place. Aside from the Canon, the Angelus Press Sunday booklet matches this article. But, you need the classical rite first, as you correctly point out.
DeleteThe way to do this is to restore proper choir posture. I have modified the choir booklet from Fr. Pasley to that effect. When I am in choir with a cleric I don’t even give them a choice, we just do it, and the MC says, “I have no idea, you do.”
DeleteIt may be of interest to the readers here to note that the SSPX had (and perhaps continues to have) posture wars. Following the "1962 mandate", there was a concerted program to get the congregations to observe "1962" postures for High Masses - e.g. stand immediately following the Prayers at the Foot rather than waiting for the Gloria, standing for the entire duration of the sung Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Most SSPX parishes in the US now follow the "new" postures, though some reverted back to the old, American customs because of strong opposition. I don't think you'll find one FSSP or other Ecclesia Dei parish using the "newer" postures, so in this respect, the SSPX is more advanced.
DeleteAll that said, it's the clergy in Choir that need to be following actual rules, which is not often the case. Some hybrid of Choir and servers' postures are often seen among clergy and others in Choir. Leave the congregation alone in its long held customs unless one has the rare chance of starting with a fresh congregation unfamiliar with the TLM.
I am regularly accosted by members of the congregation who insist "so and so sits while the priest is changing and whosits stands, which is correct?" They are never willing to accept that until recently, the rubrics never address the posture of the congregation, who were usually standing throughout history with no pews anyway. I always say: the only thing codified is that if members of the faithful (say the Medici's and the Pazzi's) get in a knife fight in the church, they should attempt to bleed outside, lest the church be desecrated, everything else is left to personal piety and the custom of the place. I suppose it is just another example of our own perverse age that even the posture of the congregation has to be decided by "the supreme legislator"
ReplyDeleteAs one who lived through the VII era, I can say that posture of the congregation was not an issue. Each region had its own customs, and with the then-called "national" parishes, those customs were maintained. It wasn't until 1962 or 1963 that congregational posture was discussed from the pulpit, when some national guidelines were implemented.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the Rorate article, the tone of it was imperious, and one got the impression the writer didn't understand the issues he was attempting to discuss. It also made some claims as to the "editorial policy" of the blog that seemed to be more opinion than fact.
Finally, as someone who's been in the traditionalist movement for a long time, and happy to see the headway we've made, there is still a question of prudence and tone. I believe the Rorate piece showed little of either.
on a more topical note, my impression was that the said article on Rorate was not taken down due to its discussion of the pre55 Holy Week or as some kind of coverup (why would it, the pictures are public record", but of the unhelpful and painfully anachronistic way it was presented, namely, quotes such as: those who "faithfully" adhere to the rubrics of 1962, and "this blog officially has no issue with the pian reforms" all smack of what some of us have termed "supremelegislatorism" whose heyday in the 19th and 20th centuries is nonsensical in this age of the impending "amoris laetitia."
ReplyDeleteI think it's still more likely that someone in a community in question asked that it come down. It's one thing to post a photo or two; it's another to openly advertise that you're celebrating pre-Pian Holy Week on the most notorious trad blog in the English speaking world.
DeleteBut maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time they've shot first and asked questions later.
I was recently relating to a friend about the anticipated hullabaloo with all the Holy Week photos out there, that it was all very reminiscent of the old Twilight Zone episode, with the aliens' plan of internal strife to conquer the earth. There is no need of the heretics and "progressives" to directly attack those concerned with Tradition; we time and time again have shown the unflagging ability to destroy eachother
ReplyDeleteFrom R. Friend's article:
ReplyDelete"III. People are supposed to follow the postures of the clergy in choir"
In most places, there is no clergy in choir, unless you are in a monastery. None of the existing cathedral chapters has till now switched to traditional rite. Maybe some places have a surplus of altar boys that just are in the sanctuary without any function and so can simulate the "choir". Besides, it might be complicated for the most faithful to keep in mind two or even three sets of postures. I guess that an additional motivation for "extra" kneeling is just "not to stick out", i.e. have a possibly low position, hide in the pew, so to say.
The article contains also some unrealistic requirements and doubtful assertions. But this would take another article to discuss them.
In Europe, the choir postures, even nowadays where, as you note, there aren't clerics in choir at the traditional Mass, remain the norm at the traditonal Mass, for the most part. The Chartres walk is too exhausting for there to be consistency, and on the first day, we followed the American practice, which has spread into Europe because of the red booklets (Joseph Shaw said as much on the topic a few years ago).
DeleteThe old hand missals agree with him, for what it's worth. There weren't clerics in choir at the majority of Masses before the council either.
What a bizarre situation! It really should be in the realms of some off-beat fiction that people who claim to be upholding 'tradition' attack other people for being too traditional. The received orthopraxis of centuries is wrong and the 'correct' version of the Roman liturgy is the form that existed for all of two years. What went before and what came after are both wrong and Rome got it right for two years out of two millennia - yeah sure!
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting to see the hard work of two of the commenters above in their respective parishes produce some stunning results if the photographs are anything to go by. How peculiar that the 'RetRorate' crew should feel the need to refer to 'faithfully' etc - what one earth do some of these people really want?
(Irish piety dies hard)
ReplyDeleteMan, does it ever.
...what one earth do some of these people really want?
ReplyDeleteHaving failed at standing athwart history yelling at it to stop, they now just want the earth to stop so they can get off it.
I agree with the general theory of mimicking the liturgical choir, as long as it isn't mandatory; that is, as long as we have pews or chairs at all. I'd prefer if we just trashed the pews altogether, and my opinion grows more and more confirmed every time I'm on toddler-minding duty with my daughter at church. When I'm not serving or singing, I watch my daughter so my wife can attend Mass undistracted, but my daughter puts up a fit if she can't walk up and down the church every which way. All the perambulating about the nave is a lot less awkward when we're visiting an old-school Eastern church without pews.
ReplyDeleteTo address some commenters' justified concern about a lack of clergy in choir, I say we just need to restore proper chancels and choir stalls, and ensure that every trad community that's big enough to have a dedicated men's schola place them in the stalls rather than the organ loft. Those of you who have seen my wedding photos will recall how we turned the front pews sideways and arranged the schola between the bride/groom and the congregation, facing one another antiphonally as though they were keeping a respectful distance between the couple and the plebs, haha.
For those churches where such an arrangement isn't realistic, surely they could at least assign some more liturgically astute guys to sit in the front pews and lead by example, no?