Corpus Christi

June 12, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

One June day I went to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight to celebrate Corpus Christi with the monks. The liturgy of the day was beautiful. The Abbey Church was full of Gregorian chant, incense and a radiance through the smoke that lifted one into the clouds of glory. We then processed out into the monastic garden where there was a special altar set up for Eucharistic adoration.

Why do Catholics go to all this trouble? Because the whole mystery of Our Lord’s presence is true, and beautiful, so we celebrate it with beauty and reverence and love. What is beautiful and true evokes the response of Love in the human heart, and when someone experiences the congruence of beauty, truth and love together the soul is transformed.

Where else does one have gathered and concentrated in one place the little Trinity of Beauty, Love and Truth within one ceremony and one action, but in the liturgy? A lecture may inspire you with Truth. A picture or a piece of music or the face of a young child or a sunrise may inspire through beauty, but where else do they all come together? So we celebrate the liturgy of Love and we call it Opus Dei – the Work of God.

Catholic Charismatics

April 21, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Last weekend I was in Philadelphia to speak at a Catholic Charismatic Renewal Conference, and had a great time. This may surprise some readers, as I think some perceive me as a traditionalist Catholic.

It is true that when it comes to worship styles (especially at Mass) I am more traddy than trendy. However, when it comes to spirituality, pastoral work and theological views, I am interested and open to groups in the church who may not be on the same page as me liturgically.

I like singing praise and worship music if the band is good and the singing is upbeat. (Especially in a non liturgical setting) I’d rather be with a group of people who are singing their guts out and jumping for Jesus than to be with crossed arms Catholics. You know the ones I mean who stand there at Mass, mouths closed, arms crossed with an expression on their face that says, “I’m here ’cause I have to be here, but you just try to get me interested.”

What I like about Catholic Charismatics is that they are enthusiastic. If they’re not traddy in their liturgical style, they are orthodox in their theology. The best are totally loyal to their bishop and the Holy Father. I have criticisms of some aspects of the movement, and realize sometimes there has been division and there is a wacky extreme, but that can be said of most of the new movements in the church.

The most important thing for me to realize is this: the charismatic movement reminds me that we don’t all have to join the charismatic movement, but we all need to be charismatic. What I mean by this is that we need what is good from the charismatic movement, even if we don’t join it, and those who are members help us to see that. It reminds me that a man is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies.

It is the same with all the movements. I’m glad the FSSP are out there with their allegiance to the traditional Mass. They’ve got their wacky fringe element too, but they’re good people and while I don’t want to join them, I support them. I’m grateful for them because they remind me of the need to value the tradition and renew the liturgy.

You could apply this not only to the new movements, but to religious orders too. I don’t want to be a Franciscan, for example, but I’m glad the Fransciscans are there to remind me of the need to be joyful in poverty, free to love in chastity and learning the Lord’s will through obedience.

So, while I’m not a card-carrying Charismatic, I’m glad there are plenty who are. They widen the range of Catholicism. They’re hard working, organized, enthusiastic and they love the Lord. More power to them.

The Return of Sacrifice

April 10, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Last night at St Mary’s the Mass of the Lord’s Supper was celebrated with great solemnity and beauty. The choir sang William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. More on Byrd later, but for me it was all very moving for a different reason.

One of the things that attracted me to the Anglican Church was the great musical tradition. It is simply true that the Church of England has the finest ecclesiastical choral tradition in the world. The collegiate chapels and Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the cathedral choirs throughout the land, were funded with historic endowments. They were able to employ singers and offer scholarships to boys at their choir schools. The male voice choirs dated back to the Middle Ages and were venerable, professional, and sublime in the music they produced. Some of the greatest composers of ecclesiastical music came from this tradition.

Furthermore, still today despite the rot within the Anglican Church the choirs perform their liturgical music not in the concert hall, but in the daily and weekly routine of the liturgical life. Most choirs sing Evensong most days of the week. They are a working choir. They sing the Masses on Sundays and high holy days, and to top it all they do all this in breathtakingly beautiful collegiate chapels, cathedrals and the great parish churches of the land.

The creme de la creme is the choir of Kings College, Cambridge. I was lucky as an Anglican priest to have served as a curate in a parish church with a full traditional boys and mens choir, and after four years there, went to be chaplain at Kings College Cambridge. I worked at the choir school helping to educate and moderate the super talented boys who were choristers at the college. I attended Evensong daily, celebrated the Eucharist in the splendid chapel and joined in the worship there.

This was part of the church and the world in which I moved as an Anglican priest. Then in becoming a Catholic I had to give it up. The churches we attended were dull modern auditoria. Some of them not too bad, many of them awful. The liturgy was often the usual modern Catholic Howdy Doody show with felt banners, priests walking around with a hand held mike being folksy. The music was torture. Plump middle aged ladies strumming guitars, beardy weirdy men in sandals standing at a keyboard swaying to the beat. Bad music. Heretical words. Excruciating.

But we had to be Catholic. So we made the sacrifice. The beauty, the reverence, the dignity, the sublime music, the architecture, the learning, the glories of Anglicanism: all of it went on the altar.

For over ten years we lived with it. We did the best we could.

Then God calls us to return not only to the USA, but to Greenville, South Carolina. Now at St Mary’s, Greenville I am honored to be on the staff and serve with Fr Jay Scott Newman and Fr Bart Leon OSB. Last year the parish hired Dr Kevin Clarke as organist and choirmaster. Kevin is trained in the Anglican tradition, but is Catholic.

So last night, to the music of William Byrd, Gregorian chant, Durufle and Victoria we celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper–which is itself the celebration of sacrifice. At the altar the mystery of it all thundered through to me. I made a small sacrifice. So what. I gave up beauty to be Catholic.

But beauty was returned in a way I could never have foreseen. Now in a beautiful church with a beautiful liturgy and beautiful music, with congenial colleagues and a loving congregation God has given me both Catholicism and beauty.

This experience convinces me that whatever ever we sacrifice to God he returns magnified and blessed. This is one of the principles of sacrifice: that whatever we give to God he gives back in a greater and more magnificent way.

Here’s the final twist: it may not happen in this life. For me it has. I’ve seen this principle work and I know without a doubt that it is true. But even if it doesn’t happen in this life it will, as surely as God is almighty, happen in the next.

On that day all will be harvest. On that day every little seed that we have planted in sacrifice; every little action of love, every little prayer, every little self denial will blossom out and bear much rich fruit for all of eternity, and we will see it and know it and we will be amazed.

And we will fall down on our faces crying, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Todd Unctuous Reports

March 23, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

This objective news report just in from MSM correspondent Todd Unctuous.

POPE PERFORMS MASS FOR AFRICANS

Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of the world’s Catholics, performed Mass today at a very large place in Anglola, Africa. The aging pope wiped his brow several times and seemed weak and very frail. The crowd was estimated at several thousand. Many people were there to hear the former member of Hitler’s Nazi youth speak about the evils of racism. The man his critics used to call ‘Nazi Ratzi’ has recently rehabilitated holocaust denying bishop Williamson. It has been said that the ‘PanzerPope’ disagrees heartily with Bishop Williamson and thinks that Bishop Williamson is wrong in his harsh critique of the much loved film The Sound of Music.

Wearing a flowing pink robe, and surrounded by men in lace gowns, the man his critics used to call ‘God’s Rottweiler’ spoke in his heavy German accent to the cheering Africans about the evils of homosexuality and told them not to use condoms. At the place where the Pope did Mass yesterday two girls were killed by the crowd. Lavinia Truck, the spokesperson for WEAC (We Are Church) said, “This Pope is very old. He is frail. He is obviously not infallible. If he were infallible he would have been able to stop those girls being killed. I went to Catholic school, and I know the dogmas. This is not an immaculate Pope.” Robert Mugabe, the leader of troubled Zimbabwe, said, “Like many American politicians. I too am a Catholic. I think this old white man should have stayed in Italy and gone to bed early with a good book and left Africans alone.”

Not all Catholics were critical of Pope Benedict’s visit. I spoke with a very nice African woman in her thirties who was mentally disabled. She said, “I like the Pope. They gave me more candy today.” A group of elderly women commented, “Today we have had a day off from the washing and collecting water. The Pope is a great man.”

Todd Unctuous is forty two.

Liturgical Baptists

March 12, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I was talking to a very nice Baptist fellow the other day who was interested in my journey from Bob Jones University to the Catholic faith. He said, “We go to a very liturgical Baptist Church.” I’m not quite sure what he meant, but he assured me that they had had an Ash Wednesday Service and they were ‘very liturgical’.

I expect he means what my Presbyterian mother means when she tells me her church is ‘liturgical’. She means they are starting to observe Advent and Lent. They have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve with classical music and a printed order of service. In fact many Evangelical churches are beginning to go ‘high church’. The preachers sometimes wear robes, maybe they chant the odd psalm, have some candles here and there and they pick and choose other liturgical stuff they like and put together their own mish mash of a ‘liturgical’ service.

Far be it from me to criticize them. I think it is rather nice that some of our separated brethren want to be ‘more liturgical’, and I don’t really mind if they shop in a sort of ecclesiastical thrift store to find some bargains and take them home.

What interests me more is how American Protestant denominationalism is disintegrating. Can anybody really tell the difference anymore between a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian? What is happening is that all the mainstream Protestant denominations are being ‘Anglicanized.’ In other words, the same range of opinion and practice that used to be the ‘big tent’ hallmark of Anglicanism is now commonplace in all denominations.

So you have low church and high church Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodist and Lutherans. You have radical liberals and radical conservatives in all the denominations. You have those who are ‘Catholic’ in their beliefs and practices and those who are ‘Evangelical’.

Yes, a ‘high church’ Baptist is still lower than a ‘high church’ Lutheran or Episcopalian, and a ‘low Church Evangelical’ Episcopalian is not quite as low as an independent Baptist, but the fine distinctions are secondary to the overall trend that there is no longer a clearly identified denominational style. If you say ‘I’m Baptist’ we used to know pretty much what that meant. Now you have to say, “I’m a liturgical Baptist” or “I’m an Evangelical Lutheran.”

I suspect what is true of their practice is true of their beliefs as well. Do you have to be a Calvinist anymore to be a Presbyterian? I doubt it. Do you have to believe in consubstantiation if you want to join a low Lutheran Church. Probably not. If you are a Baptist do you still have to deny infant baptism? Probably not always.

As a result, what identity do any of the denominations have? They are increasingly defined not by their historical theological or liturgical or ecclesiological views, but by their stance on moral and theological debating points. So Presbyterian Church USA is liberal and Presbyterian Church of America is conservative. Consequently each has more in common with other denominations (either liberal or conservative) than they do with each other as fellow Presbyterians.

PCA members will be closer to Missouri Synod Lutherans and PCUSA members will be closer to the main Lutheran body.

The point of these observations is this: can a particular ecclesial body maintain itself once it loses its identity? I suspect we will see the disintegration of these large Protestant denominations as each congregation increasingly asserts its own identity–and that identity will be determined by the sincere, but individualistic choices of its leadership.

Thus Protestantism will become a collection of independent local churches doing Christianity however they see fit.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – 2

March 11, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I wrote about the words of hymns. Now about the music:

Why do we feel the need to imitate worldly music in church? Even if this were to be a good thing (and there is no reason why it should be) we do it so badly. The much loved Eagles’ Wings sounds like a bad Barry Manilow number. The other trite stuff is written in a pastiche style which imitates Broadway or Bob Dylan or Joan Baez.

Many of the worship songs were written as either arranged choral numbers or ballads to be sung by a soloist with a guitar. ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” is a perfectly nice ballad sung by a hip folk singer with a guitar, but the rhythms and phrasing are pretty much impossible to be sung by a congregation.

The music for a hymn is a unique art form in itself. A good hymn tune could be nothing else but a good hymn tune. It is written by an expert for congregational singing. Much contemporary Catholic music could be (with changed words) an advertising ditty, a folk song from Sesame Street or a tune from a third rate musical show.

A good hymn has a thumping rhythm and a simple, but memorable tune. It can be sung happily by the simplest of people. “Now Thank We All our God, With Hearts and Hands and Voices.” Now there’s a hymn that works.

Arguments against such hymns: 1) “It’s old.” This is a red herring. ‘Old’ or ‘New’ is irrelevant. We should ask instead whether it is good or bad. The only thing necessarily good about an ‘old’ hymn is that it is more likely to have stood the test of time. 2) The young people don’t like it. Another little red fish. Age has nothing to do with it. Some young people like new hymns and some don’t. Some old people like new hymns and some don’t. Some young people like old hymns and some old people like old hymns. What the young don’t want (in my experience) is being patronized and told that new hymns are ‘for them’. They especially cringe when they go to Mass and the only ones singing the ‘new hymns’ which are ‘for the young’ are their parents and other plump middle aged folks. 3) the words are too hard for the young to understand. According to this argument we should scrap Chaucer and Shakespeare and give the kids comic book versions of the classics. Forget Algebra and Calculus. Let’s keep them adding apples and subtracting the candy that Billy gave to Johnny. 4) These old hymns are Anglican or Methodist. Another red herring. So what if they come from another tradition? Evaluate them according to whether they are good or bad not who wrote them, but if this did matter has anyone stopped to check the denominational pedigree of Marty Haugen? Liberal Lutheran. What about the much loved Amazing Grace? Methodist. How Great Thou Art? Baptist.