Hymnum Dicite Deo Nostro, Alleluia

"Praise and worship" need not amount to a ol' fashion Holy Ghost throwdown with a revivalist preacher at a Wednesday Bible Church service. The sung praise of God comes from Holy Writ itself, but before it was written it was sung. The canticles of the Scriptures and the psalter are not recorded events like most of the Bible, but actual hymns meant to be sung by posterity to the God Who revealed Himself to mankind.

Catholics owe the utmost respect to sacred music, both in its composition and its proper implementation. Music often saves a troubled parish, whereas the 1962 liturgy may not. The English Oratories, St. John Cantius in Chicago, and St. Mary's in Norwalk all have notable music programs which revived meddling parishes and imbued into the faithful an understanding of what is beyond our three dimensions and five senses.

Above all sacred music must be humble, and not pretend to be something it is not. The Roman Church nearly decided against polyphony during the Renaissance, when most composers—notably the Venetians—wrote to the same rhythmic patterns of contemporary dance music. Polyphony can be beautiful, however it is easily overdone and makes the wrong impression when sung underwhelmingly. Chant should be the normal music of the parish church: it is easily singable, possessive of a changing quality according to feast and season that is palatable to man's need for variety, does not require any special talent to sing respectfully, and is a music uniquely owned by the Church. Chant can be sung, screamed, hummed or stuttered by anyone; it began in the basilicas of the great metropolitan sees, adapted to medieval parishes, and crystallized under its daily use by monks whose talents reflected the full gamut of vocal ability. The conventional Roman Masses (I, IV, VIII, IX, XI, and XVIII) are all quite usable and no parish with a regular sung Mass should not be able to sing the seasonal chants; the Missa de Angelis every week is inexcusable. However, polyphony should still have a place in the musical life of the Church.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a performance of Rachmaninoff's setting of the All-Night Vigil in the Byzantine Office. A local chorale held the concert at a protestant church and provided transliterations of the Slavonic. I found myself singing Sviatey Bozhe, Sviatey Kripkey during the Great Doxology between instances of smoke irritating my eyes. At the Polyeoleos, or whatever the Slavs call it, several singers unconsciously began to sway from side to side as they sang Praise the name of the Lord, alleluia/Praise Him in the heights, alleluia. Chant is the normative music of the Church because it is singable. Polyphony should only replace chant when it can render the faithful speechless. Unless this writer finds himself in Moscow he is unlikely to hear this opus ever sung in its proper context, yet his second time hearing Rachmaninoff's Vigil in viva voce reminded him that polyphony must be humble enough to capture the nature of texts they vivify; polyphony cannot be reduced to ornamental fluctuations and descants.

There is even a place for very simple music. Who can speak ill of the little parish that draws 60 or 70 souls and, bereft of a proper music proper, sings the standard tones? This sort of music deserves more honor than the overreaching choir we have all heard, for it does not feign to be something it is not.

Music can be many things: a key to opening up more of the liturgy than just the Eucharist, an injection of life into a dire parish, or portal into the unseen element of what transpires in a church.

"What state can be more blessed than to imitate on earth the choirs of angels? to begin the day with prayer, and honor our Maker with hymns and songs? As the day brightens, to betake ourselves, with prayer attending on it throughout, to our labors, and to season our work with hymns, as food with salt? The consolation from hymns produces a state of soul that is cheerful and free of sorrow."—St. Basil the Great

Podcast Episodes That Will Never Be Recorded

(Wikimedia Commons)

Episode 1

Audio problems abound. Of our three participants, only one bothers to buy and use a real microphone. The others are being recorded through Skype.

Topic of conversation: Why we are doing a podcast (dubbed The Radcast).

Episode 2

His Tradiness and Mr. Grump discuss Chartreuse for 15 minutes, then quibble about whether coffee can be good for an hour.

Promised guest for the next episode is a local priest who secretly celebrates the pre-1955 Roman Holy Week.

Episode 3

No special guest. His Tradiness and Mr. Ecclesiastical Vigilante discuss the merits of the Eastern rites for three hours.

Episode 4

A 20-minute update about why there has not been a podcast in over a month.

Episode 5

Steve Skojec is our special guest as Mr. Grump complains about Pope Francis. His Tradiness is nowhere to be found.

Episode 6

In a desperate attempt for new listeners, The Radcast discusses the newest popular movie, dissecting it for Catholic themes that don't actually exist. Mr. Grump complains about Steven Greydanus and his hack reviews.

Movie reviewed: The Ghostbusters (remake). Special guest: A traddy priest who is not an exorcist but preaches about occult errors at least once a month.

Episode 7

Michael Voris's wig is discussed—Church Militant described hilariously as "his beard." Mr. Voris STB's hypocrisy of attacking bishops but not the bishop of Rome also discussed.

Comment section overwhelmed by two CM interns demanding we retract any statements casting doubt on Mr. Voris's masculinity.

Episode 8

"The St. Joseph Episode," as it comes to be called. Mr. Grump rants solo about Josephite devotion and bad history for four hours.

Episode 9

The violent death of St. Gengulphus and the hilariously vulgar punishment of his killers is recounted. Some brief attempt is made to tie this in to contemporary controversies surrounding the family.

Also, the arts of compiling hagiography and medieval legendariums is considered.

Episode 10

Live commentary during an online video stream of Bp. Williamson's latest consecration, complete with drinking game. A great deal of well-made scotch is consumed during the sermon.

Episode 11

St. Corbinian's Bear calls in for half an hour, produces mostly unintelligible growls.

Episode 12

The hosts call the Catholic Answers Live radio show, purporting to be interested in their topic of the day: "Why Be Pro-Life"? Once on the air, they pretend to be drunk and belligerently demand Karl Keating to talk about Japan.

Episode 13

A 5-minute update explaining why there hasn't been a new episode for two months. Also, the final episode.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Why Look Down, Men of Galilee?

"I may be allowed to say that the disciples' slowness to believe that the Lord had indeed risen from the dead, was not so much their weakness as our strength. In consequence of their doubts, the fact of the Resurrection was demonstrated by many infallible proofs. These proofs we read and acknowledge. What then assureth our faith, if not their doubt? For my part, I put my trust in Thomas, who doubted long, much more than in Mary Magdalene, who believed at once. Through his doubting, he came actually to handle the holes of the Wounds, and thereby closed up any wound of doubt in our hearts." —St. Gregory the Great, 29th sermon on the Gospels

Tolkien Playing Hermes While Númenor Sinks

Hermes Trismegistus bestows his blessing upon thee!

It seems that the rather hysterical condemnation of Tolkien's fantasy world as implicitly, if not explicitly, Gnostic by a certain Fr. Ioannes Petrus is making the rounds again. (For His Traddiness's thoughts on the matter, see here and here.) The inimitable Mr. Joseph Pearce has stumbled across these talks and written some unnecessarily long essays in response at The Imaginative Conservative website (here and here). I do not know why he questions the consecration of Fr. Petrus, but I suppose Mr. Pearce is intent on discrediting the man before discrediting the man's argument.

Now, Mr. Grump is open to the argument that there is something in fantasy world-building that is at least formally Gnostic, but not that it is doctrinally so. There is nothing to suggest any hint of heresy in the works published by Tolkien. There might—might—be a hint of Manicheeism in his fantasized creation story (never published in his lifetime), where the dissonant music of the angelic Melkor is blended in with the holy harmony to make the physical world we know today. But no one can accuse Tolkien of any real dualism.

The photo above shows J.R.R. playing the part of Hermes in a school production of Aristophanes' The Peace. I wonder sometimes if he was simply so saddened by the state of the world and of the Church that he retreated into classical times, and then into a fictional history of his own making. The history invented in The Silmarillion is almost as dark and bleak as the history of the war-torn twentieth century, though, so I don't know how effective it could have been.

His thoughts on escapism:

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? (from On Fairy-Stories)

Modern esotericism, supposedly founded in ancient times by Hermes Trismegistus, is a form of escapism. It ruins the valid practice of finding symbolic meaning in words, colors, beasts, cosmic phenomena, and stations of life, by squeezing false doctrines out of them. On the surface the esotericist will affirm the commonly accepted doctrines, then suggest that there's more going on beneath the surface, and finally admit that he's pushing the tired old heresies of dualism and reincarnation. Ho hum, the perennial heresy strikes again.

John Tolkien was no heretic, but he was a deeply unhappy trad by the end of his days. I do not fault him much for his fantasy-world obsession, even though I would quickly get bored doing the same thing, myself. The real world is more interesting than any world I could subcreate, and probably less depressing than Middle-Earth.

I wonder if he would have served the Catholic world better by spending his last years writing against the disintegration of the Church, rather than polishing The Silmarillion and passive aggressively saying all the Mass responses in Latin when the vernacular was becoming the norm. It is rumored that Tolkien spoke at a few early English traditionalist meetings, but I have yet to see any tangible evidence. Imagine a series of essays against the Novus Ordo by the author of The Lord of the Rings. What a great boon that could have been to our generation, and how much harder it would have been for secular schlockmeisters like Peter Jackson to scrape the religious barnacles from his work!

Josephology Sidebard: Ss. Philip & James

I had entirely forgotten about Jerz the Werz day and even wore a red tie with a matching pocket square to the Divine Liturgy today. A Tradistani chorister, hiding from the novel feast at Byzantine services, reminded me. While reading the Mattins of the feast this morning I recalled that the hagiography of James the Greater fits in quite well with the traditional narrative of St. Joseph.

From the second nocturne:

"So great was James' holiness of life that men strove one with another to touch the hem of his garment. When he was ninety-six years old, and had most holily governed the Church of Jerusalem for thirty years, ever most constantly preaching Christ the Son of God, he laid down his life for the faith. He was first stoned, and afterward taken up on to a pinnacle of the Temple and cast down from thence. His legs were broken by the fall, and he was wellnigh dead, but he lifted up his hands towards heaven, and prayed to God for the salvation of his murderers, saying " Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do " As he said this, one that stood by smote him grievously upon the head with a fuller's club, and he resigned his spirit to God. He testified in the seventh year of Nero, and was buried hard by the Temple, in the place where he had fallen. He wrote one of the Seven Epistles which are called Catholic. "

Ss. Jim'n'Pip, pray for us!

Hymn for a Creationist

St. Peter of Verona receives the Triple Crown: as virgin, martyr, and doctor.

In the twenty-seventh year of Thomas of Aquino's life, his fellow Dominican Peter of Verona was murdered by Milanese Cathars, against whom he had vociferously preached for years. The great contention between Peter and the Cathars was the creation of the world by God instead of the Devil or some Devil-like deity. The orthodox Peter contended that the world was good, the heretics that it was evil or thoroughly corrupted.

Eleven years after this gruesome martyrdom, Thomas made a pilgrimage to the saint's tomb—for Peter had been canonized less than a year after his death—and composed the following eulogy. It would later be engraved in a slab near the sepulcher.

Praeco, lucerna, pugil Christi, populi, fideique,

Hic silet, hic tegitur, jacet hic mactatus inique.

Vox ovibus dulcis, gratissima lux animorum.

Et verbi gladius gladiis cecidit Catharorum.

Christus mirificat, populus devotus adorat,

Martyrioque fides sanctum servata decorat.

Sed Christus nova signa loqui facit, ac nova turbae

Lux datur, atque fides vulgata refulget in urbe.

Loosely Englished by Msgr. H.T. Henry:

Here silent is Christ’s Herald;

Here quenched, the People’s Light;

Here lies the martyred Champion

Who fought Faith’s holy fight.

The Voice the sheep heard gladly,

The light they loved to see

He fell beneath the weapons

Of graceless Cathari.

The Saviour crowns His Soldier;

His praise the people psalm.

The Faith he kept adorns him

With martyr’s fadeless palm.

His praise new marvels utter,

New light he spreads abroad

And now the whole wide city

Knows well the path to God.

St. Peter's killer, the hired assassin Carino of Balsamo, soon repented of his crime and fled to a Dominican monastery at Forlì. He performed penance, became a lay brother, and lived a religious life until the end of his days, having taken the name Peter.

Saint Vitalis of Milan

Next month will mark the 563rd anniversary of the fall of the Roman Empire, when the city walls which protected the scant remainder of ancient civilization crumbled under the canonnade of Renaissance paganism. It was the proper end of classic culture in one part of the world and the return of it to another. Greek art and literature returned to the West, as did an interest in philosophy and architecture. The Constantinopolitan Church would remain indefinitely alienated from the Roman Church, forced by the new masters of the land into permanent decline. Centuries later we would speak of Eastern and Western Churches, as though they have little to do with each other, a creeping brand of orientalism. 

source: Oberlin College

There are many churches in Italy built during the late Byzantine rule over Italy which seemingly blur the boundaries between what are now denominated East and West, but at the time of their constructions was simply the Empire. Among these is the basilica of San Vitale in the former Exarchate of Ravenna, the remote administrative center of Italy for the Empire now based in Byzantium. The church is octagonal in shape, recounting to us that the Sacrament of greatest importance in earlier days was Baptism, which incorporated one into the Church. St. Augustine simply calls Baptism "the Sacrament" in his Confessions. Images of the occasionally notorious and often effective Justinian and his wife, Theodora, grace the opposite sides of the apse, at the center of which is a beardless image of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the earthly court anticipates the heavenly court. The people of the region likely depicted Christ without facial hair because of the Roman custom of men to shave; they showed Christ as they knew him, even if inaccurately. The arch over the apse holds the images of the Twelve Apostles, through whom we have received the Church and come to know Christ.

A church similar in antiquity but different in both execution (Roman basilica rather than Greek dome) and intention (communal church rather than political metaphor) is Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello. The Mother and Child look down the apse in Greek fashion, but the apse with an episcopal throne and forward facing altar are purely Latin. The imagery on the Rood screen echoes what developed into the iconostasis in Byzantine Christianity. The seemingly Greek Last Judgment on the back wall dates to the 12th century, before the Venetians sacked Constantinople.

St. Vitalis, whose patronal church is more renown on earth, pray for the Church in heaven, where you enjoy fitting repute!