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The Glorious Chant of "Angels and Saints at Ephesus"

The Glorious Chant of "Angels and Saints at Ephesus" | Christopher S. Morrissey | Catholic World Report

A beautiful new album from the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, helps us make room in our lives for truth.

Everybody likes singing Sisters. I remember as a child hearing the music that my mother liked to play. They were vinyl records and sometimes my memory can still recreate the voices of those women religious.

Today the delivery method has changed. Direct digital downloads are now possible. Recently, some liturgical chants have been finding their way out from the Priory of Our Lady of Ephesus and into the world by way of the digital path.

The Sisters there live a life of union with God in prayer according to the Rule of St. Benedict. They have a love for the traditional liturgy and devote themselves in a special way to prayerfully interceding for the sacred priesthood and to making vestments and altar linens. Founded in 1995, this young, monastic order of Sisters sings together eight times a day, chanting the Divine Office in Latin.

Their previous album with De Montfort Music and Decca Records, Advent at Ephesus, was a big hit last year. This week, their new album, Angels and Saints at Ephesus, is released. It contains a nice selection of hymns and chants from various liturgical occasions.

Nine-time International Grammy-winning producer Christopher Alder (from Germany) and two-time Grammy-winning engineer Mark Donahue worked together to capture the sound of the Sisters in their contemplative environment. Because the music comes forth from the genuine liturgical life lived by the Sisters, it has an authenticity and purity that gives it a special charm.

I think that if we make a deliberate effort to integrate this sort of music into our own daily practices, we can, when we listen to it, create a space in our lives that helps us replace ugliness with beauty. We can thereby dwell in a place where we become better able to contemplate truth and to grow in our understanding of truth.

The reason I emphasize this link between beauty and truth is because Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal, made a very important speech on this theme. It was called, “Wounded By the Arrow of Beauty,” and it is still available in a book from Ignatius Press.

“The encounter with beauty can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the soul and thus makes it see clearly, so that henceforth it has criteria, based on what it has experienced, and can now weigh the arguments correctly,” said then-Cardinal Ratzinger.

Beauty thus serves a great purpose. It educates our perceptions in order that we may proceed to grasp truth better. As Ratzinger explained it, beauty “brings us into contact with the power of truth.” The danger, however, is that an album such as Angels and Saints at Ephesus becomes just another commodity in the marketplace. And if we are honest, we will observe that such has often been the case with previous instances of hit records of sacred music. (Anyone remember the Gregorian chant craze from a while back?)

The problem is that people sample an exotic new thing only for a while. They enter into its spirit only in a superficial way. They soon move on to something else that becomes a newer source of distraction or excitement in their lives.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Renaissance of the Mass Propers

The Renaissance of the Mass Propers | J. J. Ziegler | Catholic World Report

After years of neglect in many American parishes, chanted Mass propers are making a comeback, thanks in part to new online resources.

The publication of the new English translation of the Roman Missal has helped revive interest in the use of chant in the ordinary form of Holy Mass. The Roman Missal includes many more chanted texts than did the previous edition, allowing clergy and people alike to “sing the Mass, rather than merely to sing at Mass,” as Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, executive director of the ICEL (International Committee on English in the Liturgy) Secretariat, said in a 2010 address.

The new Roman Missal includes a new translation of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), which also has fostered greater interest in chant. CitingSacrosanctum Concilium (the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) and subsequent curial documents, the GIRM states that “the main place should be given, all things being equal, to Gregorian chant, as being proper to the Roman Liturgy.… Since the faithful from different countries come together ever more frequently, it is desirable that they know how to sing together at least some parts of the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin, especially the Profession of Faith and the Lord’s Prayer, according to the simpler settings” (nos. 41-42).

When Catholics think of Gregorian chant at Mass, many tend first to think of chants associated with the Ordinary of the Mass—that is, the parts of the Mass that tend not to vary from day to day—for example, the Kyrie, Gloria, Profession of Faith (Credo), Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

But there is also another set of chanted prayers at Mass: the propers, that is, five chants that are proper, or specific, to each Mass. The past two years have witnessed a revival of interest in the propers in parishes in the English-speaking world.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Benedict’s Finale with Beethoven: A “Heroic” Moment

Benedict’s Finale with Beethoven: A “Heroic” Moment | Msgr. Daniel B. Gallagher | Catholic World Report

Pope Benedict’s pontificate comes to a fitting musical conclusion with a performance of Beethoven’s magnificent Eroica Symphony.

The last weeks of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate will be filled with many “lasts.” Ash Wednesday was his last public Mass. February 14 was his last meeting with priests and seminarians of the Diocese of Rome. February 24 will be his last Angelus. His last general audience will take place on February 27 before his final transport to Castel Gandolfo via helicopter on February 28.

February 4 also marked a “last,” perhaps one that will not go down in the annals of history as it should. Everybody knew it would be the last Vatican concert for Giorgio Napolitano, president of the Italian Republic, before he finishes his term as Head of State, but nobody imagined it would be the last concert for Benedict XVI as Supreme Pontiff.

The Italian Embassy to the Holy See offers the concert each year in commemoration of the Lateran Treaty. The orchestra Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, directed by Zubin Mehta, performed the overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. It is a pity this magnificent concert will forever be overshadowed by the events that followed in its wake. Benedict and Mr. Napolitano, both avid music fans, enjoyed similar occasions in the past, most notably at Castel Gandolfo last July when Daniel Barenboim directed the West-East Divan Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.

As grand as those pieces are, they simply do not match up to Beethoven’s revolutionary Third Symphony in E-flat major, also known as the Eroica (“Heroic”) Symphony.

The “Great Man” and what lies beyond the grave

Too often sensational tales about the composer’s life distract us from his music. For one just getting into Beethoven, it would be best to listen to his symphonies before picking up a biography. Knowing something about his life would certainly help, but if we could go back in time and sit down with him, Beethoven would be much more interested in playing his latest composition than in rattling on about himself.

In no small part, his eagerness to play rather than chat would be motivated by the increasing deafness that began to assail him at the robust age of 30. It eventually prompted him to write a letter to his brothers Karl and Johann now known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” It is Ludwig’s excruciating apologia for a reclusive lifestyle and the terrible misunderstandings it caused. Ludwig begs his brothers to have his physician publically declare his condition after his death so that the world “may become reconciled to me.”

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Ignatius Press Sale | Save on Books, Films, Music

Great Books, Films and Music at incredible low prices!. Offer ends Monday December 31th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST. These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Ignatius Press has assembled a fabulous list of wonderful books, films and music for an incredible end of the year sale. Beautiful art books such as The True Icon, novels from Fiorella de Maria and T.M. Doran and books by and about Pope Benedict XVI are being offered at unbeatable prices. Films and music are also being offered at low prices! Hurry and take advantage of the sale today, offer good only until December 31 or while quantities last! To see the entire listing of sale items, click here.

Singing Star Collin Raye in Christmas Concert on EWTN Thursday night!

Join country music star Collin Raye this Thursday, December 20th at 11pm EST on EWTN as he presents some of the most cherished songs of the Christmas season. Andrea Thomas lends her beautiful voice to this uplifting Christmas special. For more showtimes, check your local EWTN listings.

(Sale items below the fold.)

Requiescat in pace: Dave Brubeck, jazz giant and convert to Catholicism from "nothing"

Dave Brubeck, legendary jazz pianist and pioneer, died earlier today on the cusp of his 92nd birthday. From the Chicago Tribune:

Dave Brubeck, a jazz musician who attained pop-star acclaim with recordings such as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," died Wednesday morning at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., said his longtime manager-producer-conductor Russell Gloyd.

Brubeck was one day short of his 92nd birthday. He died of heart failure, en route to "a regular treatment with his cardiologist,” said Gloyd.

Throughout his career, Brubeck defied conventions long imposed on jazz musicians. The tricky meters he played in “Take Five” and other works transcended standard conceptions of swing rhythm.


The extended choral/symphonic works he penned and performed around the world took him well outside the accepted boundaries of jazz. And the concerts he brought to colleges across the country in the 1950s shattered the then-long-held notion that jazz had no place in academia.

As a pianist, he applied the classical influences of his teacher, the French master Darius Milhaud, to jazz, playing with an elegance of tone and phrase that supposedly were the antithesis of the American sound.

The New York Times has a lengthy obituary that highlights Brubeck's long, active, and prolific life as musician and composer:

In 1954 Mr. Brubeck was the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. That same year he signed with Columbia Records, promising to deliver two albums a year, and built a house in Oakland.

For all his conceptualizing, Mr. Brubeck often seemed more guileless and stubborn country boy than intellectual. It is often noted that his piece “The Duke” — famously recorded by Miles Davis and Gil Evans in 1959 on their collaborative album “Miles Ahead” — runs through all 12 keys in the first eight bars. But Mr. Brubeck contended that he never realized that until a music professor told him.

Mr. Brubeck’s very personal musical language situated him far from the Bud Powell school of bebop rhythm and harmony; he relied much more on chords, lots and lots of them, than on sizzling, hornlike right-hand lines. (He may have come by this outsiderness naturally, as a function of his background: jazz by way of rural isolation and modernist academia. He was, Ted Gioia wrote in his book “West Coast Jazz,” “inspired by the process of improvisation rather than by its history.”)

It took a little while for Mr. Brubeck to capitalize on the greater visibility his deal with Columbia gave him, and as he accommodated success a certain segment of the jazz audience began to turn against him. (The 1957 album “Dave Digs Disney,” on which he played songs from Walt Disney movies, didn’t help his credibility among critics and connoisseurs.) Still, by the end of the decade he had broken through with mainstream audiences in a bigger way than almost any jazz musician since World War II.

In 1958, as part of a State Department program that brought jazz as an offer of good will during the cold war, his quartet traveled in the Middle East and India, and Mr. Brubeck became intrigued by musical languages that didn’t stick to 4/4 time — what he called “march-style jazz,” the meter that had been the music’s bedrock. The result was the album “Time Out,” recorded in 1959. With the hits “Take Five” (composed by Mr. Desmond in 5/4 meter and prominently featuring the quartet’s gifted drummer, Joe Morello) and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” (composed by Mr. Brubeck in 9/8), the album propelled Mr. Brubeck onto the pop charts. ...

As a composer, Mr. Brubeck used jazz to address religious themes and to bridge social and political divides. His cantata “The Gates of Justice,” from 1969, dealt with blacks and Jews in America; another cantata, “Truth Is Fallen” (1972), lamented the killing of student protesters at Kent State University in 1970, with a score including orchestra, electric guitars and police sirens. He played during the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in 1988; he composed entrance music for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1987; he performed for eight presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton.

Much more about Brubeck's life and discography can be found on the All Music Guide site. As Deacon Greg Kandra points out (and I noted in this May 2011 post), Brubeck was also a convert, in 1980, to the Catholic Church. This 2009 article in St. Anthony Messenger states:

Musica Sacra: James MacMillan and his sacred music for our time

Musica Sacra | Kevin McCormick | Catholic World Report

James MacMillan and his sacred music for our time

In September 2010, when Pope Benedict made his historic and transformative visit to the United Kingdom, his first stop was Glasgow, Scotland. There, as he inaugurated the first-ever official state visit by the pope to the UK, he celebrated the opening Mass to the sounds of newly commissioned liturgical music. The music was thoughtful, joyful, singable, yet richly musical. It was the premiere of a work by a man well known in the contemporary classical music community but less known to those outside it: Scottish composer James MacMillan.

James MacMillan has accomplished the seemingly impossible for a contemporary artist of any medium. The Scottish composer and conductor has created a deep repertoire of compositions spanning from small chamber pieces to orchestral works and full-blown operas. His music successfully blends modern compositional expressions with a traditional musical understanding. His work is respected by the avant-garde and well-received by the customary classical concertgoer. His compositional style is praised by performers, conductors, and other composers. He maintains an active and internationally renowned musical life as a highly commissioned composer and heavily-booked guest conductor. And somehow he is able to reserve time to work regularly with his own parish choir in Glasgow.

All of this at the relatively young (for a composer) age of 52. The son of a welder and teacher, MacMillan’s childhood included study of piano and trumpet. He began composing at an early age, and by secondary school already had a penchant for the sounds of Renaissance church music. Eventually making his way to undergraduate work at Edinburgh University, he passed on the opportunity of the more focused conservatory life for the broader experience offered in the university setting. 

This early choice is indicative of MacMillan’s interest in a wider appreciation of the language of music, a trait which informs much of his writing. Like his British predecessor Benjamin Britten, he composes compelling vocal melodies with rich choral arrangements with ease. And like Debussy, he possesses an evocative musical vocabulary which allows him great latitude in his compositional structures. Perhaps not coincidentally he shares with both of those composers an enthusiasm for the sounds of the East Asian hammered-bell instrument called the gamelan, which sometimes overtly, other times more subtly, finds its way into his music. That is not to say that his music shares the trance-like meditative quality of much of the music of East. He infuses an intensity into his scores, one which reflects the fundamental struggle between good and evil inherent in the human drama.

Against the fad, with the grain

Though his early writings include Marxist leanings from liberation theology, MacMillan admits in his more recent interviews that he is a “lapsed lefty.” MacMillan has been courageous in confronting the “liberal assumption” that is often militantly and sneeringly guarded by captains of the “Arts élite.” Growing up in a community that he regarded as often hostile to his Catholic religion and its community, MacMillan knows the struggle of living in contradiction to the majority around him. 

Perhaps it was this struggle which allowed him, from the earliest stages, to compose more freely and with less concern for being blown by the whimsical winds of the avant-garde. Whatever the case, MacMillan’s solid grounding in classical compositional structures have provided him a freedom in blending styles and moods into a synthesis which is historically contiguous with past masters.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

20% off in preparation for Advent, plus newly released book, films, music

20% off in preparation for Advent, plus newly released Books | Offer ends Tuesday November 27th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST. These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Newly released books by Milton Walsh, Msgr. William Smith and William Kilpatrick are now available. The topics of these books range from the threat of Islam, writings of the Fathers of the Church to moral matters and all are so well-written, everyone should take advantage of them at 20% off! Also available at this discount are books, films and music to help prepare oneself for Advent. Whether you are looking for something for yourself, your children or a friend, we have something for everyone.

20% off Best-selling Books, Films and Music

20% off Best-selling Books, Films and Music  | Offer ends Tuesday November 13th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST.
These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Each month Ignatius Press features top selling DVDs, books and music on our website. It's always interesting to see who's reading what, isn't it? Well, we've decided to take a selection of our top selling titles from the month of October, and are making them available to you at 20% off! From The Price to Pay, the highly acclaimed feature film The 13th Day, to the inspiring new music album His Love Remains by Collin Raye, we're excited to share some of our best-selling books, films and music albums at 20% off.

Two notable, upcoming events in the Los Angeles area

First, in early November:

The Magnificat Foundation, in association with the Diocese of Orange, is pleased to announce “The Magnificat Day of Faith” on November 3, 2012, at the Crystal Cathedral, the future Christ Cathedral, in Garden Grove, California.

This October the Church will enter into the Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI. In response, the Magnificat Foundation is offering a unique and historic day of prayer and communion—the first major Catholic gathering at the future Christ Cathedral. Under the leadership of Pierre-Marie Dumont, president of the Magnificat Foundation, the Day of Faith is a celebration of what the pope calls “the joy of believing” and will feature a series of presentations highlighting the faith in its many facets. Keynote addresses will be delivered by Mrs. Clara Gaymard, daughter of the Servant of God Jerome Lejeune, the father of modern genetics, and Fr. Peter John Cameron, o.p., editor-in-chief of Magnificat, the monthly Catholic worship aid. Other speakers include Dominican Father Michael Morris, professor of art history at Berkeley and a regular contributor to Magnificat, and Jesuit Father James Kubicki, national director of the Apostleship of Prayer. Father Robert Reed, president of the CatholicTV Network, will serve as master of ceremonies.

Music and song will be at the heart of this family Day of Faith. Music director Christopher Vath, a composer and choir director who has given a private piano recital for Pope Benedict XVI, will direct both the choir (with soloists) and the assembly in singing Morning Prayer, the Angelus, and Evening Prayer, accompanied by the Cathedral’s organ (the fifth largest in the world). Other musical offerings include a special performance of Bach’s Magnificat by the acclaimed Pacific Chorale led by artistic director John Alexander, and a rendition of the Benedictus by the De Angelis vocal ensemble. The Day will culminate with the singing of the Salve Regina by the choir and the assembly.

“The Magnificat Day of Faith” is a special opportunity to observe the Year of Faith and experience how “faith expands our hearts in hope” (Pope Benedict XVI).

For more information, and to register, please visit: www.magnificatday.com

And in December:

"Christmas 'Round the World" benefit concert

Saturday December 8, 2012 at 2 P.M., Wilshire Ebell Theater, Los Angeles, California
 
Featuring the combined choral efforts of the Kobzar Ukrainian National Choir, the Yevshan Ukrainian Choral Ensemble of New England, selected members of the Trembita and Koliada Ukrainian Choirs of San Francisco and the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra.  Never before have Ukrainian artists both both sides of the country joined together for such an inspirational concert program. For your enjoyment, several guest soloists including Elin Carlson of the Los Angeles Opera Company, Stefan Szkafarowsky of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Ivanna Taratula of the L'viv Opera Company will be joining the 175 + members of the choir and orchestra.  Also attending will be Hollywood starlets of Ukrainian descent.

All the performers are generously donating their talent to assist the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation to raise funds for the Ukrainian Catholic University.  All proceeds from this Benefit Concert are being donated to the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation. 

Tickets may be purchased by calling our ticket hotline at 909-860-2102.  For additional information please contact Gregory Hallick at ghallick@aol.com or by calling 951-234-2939. Poster and additional information online here.

20% off new Books, Films and Music from Ignatius Press

Offer ends Tuesday October 16th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST.
These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com



20% off new Books, Films and Music!

Great new products are now available at 20% off! Included in these new releases is the latest album from Jackie Evancho, Songs from the Silver Screen. The young singing sensation from America’s Got Talent lends her voice to classic songs such as What a Wonderful World and more.  An inspiring and courageous story, The Price to Pay tells the story of Joseph Fadelle’s conversion from Islam to Christianity. Teach your children about their faith using the new DVD series featuring Brother Francis. Get these and other great new books and films all at 20% off!

This Thursday, October 11, 2012 marks the beginning of the Year of Faith as called for by Pope Benedict XVI. During this Year of Faith, we as Catholics are called to deepen our knowledge and practice of the faith.  These outstanding items can help you and your friends to grow in faith.

About those two new Doctors of the Church...

From Pope Benedict XVI's homily yesterday, given during the Mass, in St. Peter's Square, that opened the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelisation:

At various times in history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only think of the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it, that is, on the one hand the Missio ad Gentes or announcement of the Gospel to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of salvation, and on the other the New Evangelization, directed principally at those who, though baptized, have drifted away from the Church and live without reference to the Christian life. ...

At this point, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the two saints who today have been added to the elect number of Doctors of the Church. Saint John of Avila lived in the sixteenth century. A profound expert on the sacred Scriptures, he was gifted with an ardent missionary spirit. He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for humanity. A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action. He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a view to a fruitful reform of the Church.Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an important female figure of the twelfth century, offered her precious contribution to the growth of the Church of her time, employing the gifts received from God and showing herself to be a woman of brilliant intelligence, deep sensitivity and recognized spiritual authority. The Lord granted her a prophetic spirit and fervent capacity to discern the signs of the times. Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and was learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and faithful love for Christ and the Church.

Read the entire homily. Also see some of Benedict's remarks on St. Hildegard, given in in September 2010.

Medievalist Sandra Miesel, in her CWR essay, "Hildegard of Bingen: Voice of the Living Light" (Jan. 25, 2012), remarked upon the visions of the great German mystic:

Nothing would have seemed extraordinary about Hildegard for the first half of her long life. She did not wish to publicize the visionary experiences she had been having since the age of three when a blaze of dazzling brightness burst into her sight. A diffuse radiance which she called her visio filled her field of vision for the rest of her life without interfering with ordinary sight. Hildegard came to understand this phenomenon as “the reflection of the living Light” which conferred the gift of prophecy and gave her an intuitive knowledge of the Divine.
 
Hildegard’s visions were not apparitions or dreams. She scarcely ever fell into ecstasy but rather perceived sights and messages with the “inner” eyes and ears of her soul. She dictated what she “saw” and “heard” to secretaries while fully lucid. Because the astonishing images she described and directed artists to illustrate feature sparkling gems, shimmering orbs, pulsating stars, curious towers and crenellated walls, modern psychologists have suggested that Hildegard suffered from a form of migraine called “scintillating scotomata.” The debilitating illnesses that preceded or accompanied her visionary episodes might have been migraine attacks. Because supernatural communications are received according to the capacity of the receiver, neurology can offer insights on Hildegard’s particular repertory of forms. But it cannot explain away her experiences or the religious meanings she assigns to them. These were genuine occasions of contact between Hildegard and God.   

And Dr. Christopher Morrissey penned, "A Beginner’s Guide to the Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen" (June 25, 2012):

It will cost you somewhat more to download Hildegard’s entire musical output from iTunes. But if you wish, you can start your downloading project with only a few selections taken from the Sequentia treasure chest. After all, unless you have the musical skills of a Mozart, being deluged with St. Hildegard’s lifetime musical achievement will probably be overwhelming for you. So why not start with a playlist of 12 of her best?

Allow me to give you that recommended playlist, below. I will list 12 downloads for which you need only pay about $0.99 each. This custom playlist introduction is the best way I can think of to get you started, short of recommending one of the “desert island” albums that I already mentioned above.

And this playlist is not just for beginners. This is my own custom “Hildegard highlights” iPhone playlist, and it probably resembles the playlists on the iPhones of other advanced chant enthusiasts.

By the way, if you ever do move from a beginning to an advanced comprehension of Hildegard’s entire musical corpus, you will want to compare the different recorded versions of every single one of her works. Thanks to the Internet, this task has never been easier, as an exhaustive and well-ordered discography of every recording of Hildegard’s music is available.

The 2004 Homiletic & Pastoral Review article, "Saint John of Avila and the Reform of the Priesthood" by Sr. Joan Gormley is a helpful introduction to this great reformer:

St. John of Avila was a parish priest and theologian in 16^th century Spain who exercised some influence over ideas concerning the reform of priestly reformation at the Council of Trent. Avila linked the priesthood closely to the Eucharist and regarded  holiness as the preeminent quality of a priest, who must serve as a mediator between God and man. To this end, he recommended painstaking selection of candidates followed by rigorous spiritual and intellectual formation within a community. For Avila, renewal of the priesthood demanded the priest's conformity to Christ as both Good Shepherd and High Priest.

Sixteenth century Spain was a golden age of sanctity during which a veritable procession of saints appeared on the scene before and after the Council of Trent and contributed in a multitude of ways to the reform and renewal of the Church. We might mention, for example, such saints as Ignatius of Loyola, Peter of Alcantara, Teresa of Avila, Francis Borgia, and John of God. All of these saints were religious who renewed the life of the Church by founding or reforming communities that became renowned for holiness of life and apostolic zeal. Less often noticed, but definitely a participant in the procession of sixteenth century Spanish saints is St. John of Avila,[1] a diocesan priest who labored as a preacher, confessor, spiritual director, catechist, evangelizer, educator, and theologian and knew and helped each and all of the saints mentioned above.

Venerated in Spain as the patron of diocesan priests, John Avila was a major figure in the reform of the life and ministry of parish priests who, as shepherds of Christ's faithful, have direct influence on the holiness of the Church. His teaching on the priesthood and its renewal continues to be illuminating for the Church, especially in the contemporary situation in which profound questions have been raised about priestly life and ministry. Avila was profoundly convinced of the holiness of the priestly state and of the holiness of life required of each and every priest. He considered the very holiness of the Church and its members to depend on the careful selection and formation of candidates for the priesthood so that they might be holy and exercise their office of sanctifying others.

Introduction to St. John of Avila

John of Avila was born on the feast of the Epiphany in 1499 in Extremadura in the ecclesiastical province of Toledo, the only child of his parents. [2] He spent four years at the University of Salamanca studying law (1513-1517), and then returned to his parents' home where he lived in seclusion for several years. On the advice of a Franciscan priest, the young man left his solitude and matriculated at the University of Alcala, an important center for humanistic studies in Spain, where he studied from 1520-1526. After ordination to the priesthood in 1526, Avila went to Seville to prepare for departure as a missionary to the new world. While waiting to set sail, the newly ordained priest engaged in catechesis and preaching, so impressing the priest with whom he lived and worked, Father Fernando Contreras, that he urged the Archbishop of Seville to keep Avila in Spain, where an enormous mission field had opened up with the end of Muslim domination. Thus, John Avila began the missionary work in Southern Spain that would earn him the title, "Apostle of Andalusia."

Read the entire piece on IgnatiusInsight.com.

Lord of the Dance

Lord of the Dance | John B. Buescher | Catholic World Report

Grounded in Gnosticism, dubious historical scholarship, and hyper-individualism, liturgical dance is by its nature unsuited to Catholic worship.

“Medicine-man, relent, restore—

Lie to us,—dance us back the tribal morn!”

—     Hart Crane, “The Bridge: The Dance”

Please take “Lord of the Dance” out of your hymnbooks, assuming you don’t attend a Gnostic church.

Sydney Carter wrote it in 1963, based on the apocryphal, second-century Gnostic Acts of John, where Jesus is supposed to have led his disciples in a round dance before his death. As the Lord of the Dance, he was simply an avatar of a cosmic principle.

In line with Gnostic thought, Jesus was not both true God and true man, but only a kind of pure spirit, who disguised himself in a cloak of matter. Because he wasn’t really a man, he couldn’t really be killed. So, for Gnostics, some kind of trick occurred at the crucifixion: some taught that a switch was made, so that a surrogate or disguised stand-in (some said Joseph of Arimathea) was crucified instead, while Jesus watched from far off.

Other Gnostics made Jesus’ body a kind of puppet that appeared to undergo torture and death, while in fact the “real” Jesus, residing in pure spirit, laughed at their foolishness, and eventually sprang away from the cross. (“I am the dance, and the dance lives on.”) This Jesus, a sort of cosmic trickster and shape-shifter, is captured in the Acts of John.

The round dance and its little song were supposed to be part of an initiation ceremony after the Last Supper, in which Jesus, standing in the middle of a circle, sang in order to achieve an ecstatic separation from his body in preparation for his Passion (thereby “supplementing” Matthew 26:30: “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives”). This is the Gnostics’ secret teaching on the Last Supper, assumed by them to have been kept out of the Gospel accounts because it was the true heart of the events described, and could not be told to the unworthy.

Dancing in the sanctuary?

In Exodus 15, “Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing.”  In 2 Samuel 6:1-5, David “and all the house of Israel,” as the Ark of the Covenant was being rolled into Jerusalem, celebrated “with all their might before the Lord, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” And in Psalms 149 and 150, we read that “they shall dance in praise of his name, play to him on tambourines and harp!” and, “Praise God in his holy place…Praise him with tambourines and dancing.” This might in theory be an inspiration for dance as part of worship in His holy place, which is to say (in line with Exodus 32:19, in which the Jews dance before the idol of the golden calf), in the place where worship is directed to the true God. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that dancing was ever a part of Temple worship.

There was dancing at annual Jewish religious festivals (outside the Temple itself), and done in groups separated by gender. Certainly people danced after weddings, just as we do today (Matthew 11:16-17 says, “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’”). Then there was the banquet celebration for the Prodigal Son’s return. And, of course, there was what Salome did for Herod, but that would hardly qualify as something to inform Christian worship. Apart from the spurious round dance in the Acts of John—that’s it, for dancing.

In medieval times and later, there was folk dancing at festival celebrations outside churches, drama reenactments of miraculous scenes in the lives of the saints or of Bible stories, and mystery plays. And there were pilgrimage processions, such as the Corpus Christi procession or the touring of neighborhoods by decorated statues or relics brought from churches, sometimes done with participants coordinating their steps or other movements, with everyone having a joyful time.

This is all quite robustly Catholic. But none of this dancing actually intrudes into the sacred liturgy of the Mass itself, just as dancing was not part of Temple worship in ancient Israel. Until recently, Catholics had always saved their dancing for outside the church—or at least not during the liturgy itself.

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Sola Gratia: The “Prog” Foolishness of Neal Morse

Sola Gratia: The “Prog” Foolishness of Neal Morse | Bradley J. Birzer | Catholic World Report

How an angry young musician has become a committed Christian and influential artist

As progressive rock continues to regain ground in terms of sales and respectability, Neal Morse’s name simultaneously gains increasing recognition in our larger culture as well.

As well it should. Morse has served as one of the most important figures in the current revival of the progressive rock scene, which began to re-emerge nearly two decades ago, since its recognized heyday of the early 1970s, prior to the rise of disco and punk. Over the last two decades, a number of acts, including Big Big Train, Dream Theater, Spock’s Beard, The Flower Kings, Porcupine Tree, Agents of Mercy, Frost*, Gazpacho, Tin Spirits, Ayreon, the Fierce and the Dead, and Riverside have produced albums every bit the equal of those by Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in the early 1970s. For better or worse, prog (as its followers call it) has been characterized by elaborate lyrics and stories, long (rarely less than six minutes) songs, intricate time changes, and immaculate audio production. Every aspect of the release matters for a prog artist, and the genre tends to attract an inordinate number of perfectionists.

As a master of the style, Neal Morse's longest song is the baroque “The Whirlwind,” written with his bandmates in Transatlantic, clocking in at just four seconds shy of 78 minutes, the limit of music a CD can hold. It tells the story of a modern culture willfully ignorant of Christianity. The New Jerusalem arrives, catching most citizens of the Earth unaware. This is not just a song, it’s an epic. And, as an epic, it needs to be 78 minutes long.

To make Morse and his reputation even more interesting, he has become an important, if unusual, Christian evangelist for our time. In that strange twilight realm where Christian culture and secular culture awkwardly meet as suggested by the very title of “The Whirlwind,” there stands Morse, beckoning anyone and everyone to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

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Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam | Joseph F. Martin | Catholic World Report

The reissue of Sam Phillips’ classic album Martinis & Bikinis invites a reconsideration of her Christian-pop roots and what drove her away from them.

Contemporary Christian Music will probably always languish under an association with easy answers, clappy-happy choruses, and kitsch. But for the born-again baby boomers that grew up in the 70s amidst the rapid proliferation of radio pop, it began as a bona fide spiritual lifeline, a way for teenagers to merge seemingly disparate passions for Christian faith and the world of rock. Once upon time a Zion curtain really did effectively muffle any exchange between cultural worlds. So much so that when Amy Grant pioneered a joint distribution agreement between her label and A&M Records, Billboard magazine ran an ad that rightly informed its secular readers, “You may not know this artist by name, but millions know her music by heart.” Fast-forward to today, when magazines like Christianity Today weigh in with reviews of albums ranging from Hillsong to Bruce Springsteen indiscriminately. We have morphed into a media- and market-driven age where “Christian & Gospel” is a marketable category on iTunes right up there with “Dance” and “Hip-Hop and Rap,” and where songs by CCM bands like Switchfoot can fall into the Top Forty without a note of a ripple. Now it sounds nostalgic to explain to a rising generation just why it provided any sort of rush to hear Paul Davis sing “Do Right” on commercial airwaves for the first time, or why Bob Dylan’s Christian infatuation with faith ever proved a sensation. At some point in the preceding decades a Wall of Sound fell. So “Christian Hipster,” once an oxymoron, is now a demographic.

Those early days came to mind as I scanned the e-mail I just received from CCM expatriate Sam Phillips announcing her landmark 1994 album Martinis & Bikinis is getting the full reissue treatment on CD and—we are talking hipsters after all—double LP, with the first 1,500 copies to be pressed on white vinyl. The infamous cover art for Martinis—showing her strewn, in feigned exhaustion, across a bed that hides the still-warm corpses of her former Fundie fans—remains an iconic indictment of the frequent conflicts between religious conservatism and art. But despite her protests, Phillips’ debt to her Christian past remains evident, and later critical laurels never quite managed to propel her beyond early notoriety. Nonetheless, her discography proves her to be not just lead vocalist in an episodic memory play but formidable artist in her own right as well. Hot house flower, haunting performer, or perhaps more than a little of both, a fresh round of Martinis provides a fitting occasion for a retelling of her story, if not quite a toast.

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On Music and the Priestly Life

On Music and the Priestly Life | Fr. Gary Selin | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Since music imitates the inner life of the soul, it follows that good music imitates and evokes sentiments that are consistent with a virtuous life, while music that evokes vicious sentiments is detrimental, and even destructive, to the soul.

The subject of music is a great pastoral challenge for priests, who often realize that what they preach at Mass can be quickly undone by the destructive forms of music which the baptized faithful listen to at home. Modern culture operates on the unquestioned premise that we will be massaging our emotions throughout the day by listening to music. This explains why music is being blared in virtually all places, from malls, to grocery stores, to restaurants, to doctors’ offices, to personal music players, and in almost every car driving down the highway. This noise-filled world of ours profoundly undercuts virtue, for God is heard primarily in silence, as the saints continually tell us. Having to be continually plugged in to music makes us “affective cripples,” unable to live in joy without having some sound going into our ears. 1  What is more, the type of music we listen to also has an impact on our life of virtue.

Priests need to be aware of how to engage, with courage, the people on this topic while maintaining authentic pastoral charity and understanding. It is my hope that this essay will help priests—and seminarians—to reflect deeply on the type of music they listen to and the role it plays in priestly life.

At the moment of priestly ordination, the candidate prostrates himself at the foot of the altar.  This is an act symbolic of dying to the world and its delights, even to those things that are not in themselves sinful, yet may not be fitting for a priest, in that they would hold him back from an intimate union with the Triune God.  The priest has the supreme duty of striving for, and achieving, with God’s grace, divine contemplation and resplendent holiness. In imitation of St. John Marie Vianney, the priest must be fully immersed in a life of prayer in his ministry. Here, we look to the Holy Eucharist as the source and goal of all priestly ministry, as well as the exemplar for the priest in his relationship to the world:

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Pope Benedict XVI, the "Mediocre" Marksman

by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Catholic World Report

“Of course, the Gebirgsschüzen (Territorial Marksmen), whom I was only able to her in the distance, deserve special thanks, because I am an honorary ‘Schütze,’ (marksman) even though I was once a mediocre Schütze."

— Pope Benedict XVI, Bavarian Evening, Castel Gandolfo, August 3, 2012.

“Now, as we ‘thank you,’ I can only impart my blessing to you, but let us first sing the Angelus together, and if we can the ‘Andachtsjodler’ (a hymn in the form of a yodel).”

— Pope Benedict XVI, Last Words in German at the Bavarian Evening.

The present pope, we know, is a man of many talents. We usually think of these talents as primarily intellectual, even his taste in music is classical. No one ever told us that he was a marksman, albeit mediocre, or that he could yodel. The idea of yodeling a hymn would go over big on country and western stations of the old school, no doubt. Google has many sung versions of this quite beautiful hymn that anyone can listen to. After listening to it, I can see why the pope added “if we can” as the music is quite lovely.

On August 3, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich arranged at the Pope’s Villa at Castel Gandolfo for an evening of music and friendliness in the Holy Father’s honor. In his remarks, the Pope said that he was truly dahoam, which means in German to be “at home.” He kidded Cardinal Marx a bit over the word: “I must compliment Cardinal Marx because he always pronounces the word (dahoam) so well.”

The Holy Father took the occasion to recall his homeland. Bavarian culture is “a joyful culture.” It is not “rowdy” but it is “full of fun.” Anyone who has been to an Oktober Fest in Munich will have a suspicion of what this means.  Of the Bavarians, Benedict says, “we are not a boorish people.” He does not mean “amusement,” that they merely amuse themselves. The people are “joyful.”

Benedict then reflects on why this joyful characteristic might be present in Bavaria.  “The joyfulness of the Bavarian culture is based on the fact that we are in tune with Creation.” That is an expression mindful of the English title of one of Josef Pieper’s books: A Theory of Festivity: In Tune with the World.  The good is ultimately “a person.” This is where true joy can only be located.

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Paint-by-Number Hymns

Paint-by-Number Hymns | Anthony Esolen | Catholic World Report

Why, when we have a trove of profound, beautiful, and poignant hymns, do we have to endure what is banal, clunky, and silly?

“Are you interested in painting, sir?” asks the cheerful curator of the modern art museum.

“No, not me,” says the detective.  He passes his hand across his rumpled hair.  “Now, Mrs. Columbo, she’s different.  That woman is into everything.  She does a little painting herself.”

“She does?”

“Oh, yeah, all the time.  She buys these kits where you put the color in according to the numbers—you’ve seen them?  They actually come out pretty good.”

I like the joke there on modern painting, which to my eye sometimes looks as if the artist could have used a few numbers here or there. But because I have spent all my adult life studying and teaching poetry, from Homer to Robert Frost, I want to cry out to people who try their hands at it, “Please, please, study the masters!  Don’t embarrass yourselves!  It’s a lot harder than you think.” Indeed, my next book will be on the poetry of Christian hymns; I wish to show ordinary people who attend Mass and who want to lift their hearts in song just how rich the best of those poems are. I want to turn their attention to the artistry, both linguistic and theological. I’d like to be their guide, so to speak, saying, “Look over here—see what he’s done! Isn’t that stupendous?”

We do have a rich treasury of hymn-poems to read, to sing, and to keep close to the heart.  Some of them are almost as old as Christianity itself. They come from Latin and Greek, from our own English, from French and German and all the languages of Europe. Some were written by saintly divines with a fine ear for poetry: John Henry Newman (“Praise to the Holiest in the Height”), Charles Wesley (“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”). Many were written by the great Dr. Isaac Watts, who set the psalms to English meter and rhyme. Some rose up from an anonymous lyricist among the folk: “What Wondrous Love Is This.” Some entered our language by the skill of great translators, like John Mason Neale and Catherine Winkworth. Some were the work of pious laymen who meditated upon Scripture all their lives: so the blind Fanny Crosby gives us “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” Just as many of our most beautiful melodies were written by the finest composers who ever lived—Bach, Handel, Haydn—so too many of our hymn lyrics were written by poets of some renown: George Herbert, Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Milton.

So why, then, why do we have verse-by-numbers lyrics posing as real poems in our hymnals? Why, when we have such a trove of the great, the profound, the beautiful, the memorable, the poignant, the splendid, do we have to endure what is banal, clunky, clumsy, dull, vague, and silly?

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A Beginner’s Guide to the Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen

A Beginner’s Guide to the Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen | Christopher S. Morrissey | Catholic World Report

A playlist of beautiful compositions by the soon-to-be Doctor of the Church.

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1089–1179) will soon be the Catholic Church’s 35th Doctor. The formal proclamation will make her the fourth woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church, joining the ranks of Saints Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Therese of Lisieux.

Pope Benedict announced on Pentecost Sunday during his Regina Coeli address that now, after having formally declared (on May 10, 2012) Hildegard’s sainthood by way of “equivalent canonization,” he will proclaim (on October 7, 2012) that Hildegard is an official Doctor of the Church.

Benedict seems to have a soft spot for Hildegard. Back in 2010, he devoted not one but two of his Wednesday general audience talks to her. Perhaps this is related to his well-known love for all the best music.

Consider this: For how many saints can you say that you have a playlist of audio files? But with St. Hildegard, Benedict has amped up the ranks of Church Doctors who can teach us about what sacred music at its best sounds like.

Hildegard’s music had something of a “pop culture” moment back in 1994, when Richard Souther’s album Vision: The Music Of Hildegard von Bingen became a hit. It ended up winning the Billboard Classical/Crossover album of the year award.

Purists recoiled at Souther’s blending of Hildegard’s Gregorian chants with electronic effects and additional modern instrumentation. But who is to say that future artists should rule out any similar innovations as they rediscover Hildegard’s music for the 21st century?

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Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot

Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | Catholic World Report

Asians are sending a message to America. Are we listening?

News of the cancellation of the Lady Gaga concert scheduled for early June in Jakarta, Indonesia is receiving a lullingly uniform spin in the American and international media. It is, we are told, a morality play about the triumph of radical Islamism over artistic freedom, and a disturbing omen of Indonesia’s supposed slide into religious fanaticism.

In reality, however, the negative response to Gaga’s hypersexualized and iconoclastic performances was not isolated to extremists, nor to the country of Indonesia. Gaga’s religion-insulting concert tour and other, similar forms of entertainment are increasingly ill-received throughout the region of Southeast Asia and beyond, and reflect a growing indignation at what is perceived as an American cultural imperialism that treats the moral values of other countries with contempt.

Blame for the Jakarta fiasco is being assigned to an organization known as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line Muslim group known for its clashes with Christians and its strict interpretation of the Koran. According to the International Crisis Group, a peacemaking organization whose verdict on the affair is being quoted by the Associated Press, it is “clear that there wouldn’t have been a thought of canceling the concert” if the FPI and other extremist groups hadn’t “mobilized” to stop it. 

The FPI and kindred groups, however, were not at all alone in their opposition to the Jakarta concert.  In fact, it was vigorously opposed by a dozen other Islamic organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest Muslim authority in a country known for its moderate religious temperament.

Moreover, opposition to Gaga’s performance didn’t stop at the border of Indonesia. In fact the tour, dubbed the “Born this Way Ball” in reference to Gaga’s scientifically-unsubstantiated claim that homosexuals are born with their “gay” orientation, has provoked protests in multiple countries in the region, mostly by Christian groups.

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Here's why I'm happy that Dion has the blues

One of my hopes and goals for Catholic World Report is to have some regular reviews of not just books and movies, but also of good music. (Or, on occasion, of really bad music crying out to be exposed from empty note to empty note.) This post isn't a review, per se, but a short note about Dion DiMucci and his new album, A Tank Full of Blues.

Although I'm something of a music buff (50,000+ songs in my iTunes library—don't tell my wife!), I've never been much of a blues fan. And I confess, with some shame, that I only started to really listen to Dion's music a couple of years ago. But I do enjoy Dion's blues, which feature his impressively strong and clear vocals, economic and expressive guitar playing, a palpable sense of joy and gratitude, and a wry, knowing sense of humor. Some cuts, such as "Ride's Blues (for Robert Johnson)", have a more raw and gritty sound, while others, including "My Michelle", harken back a bit to Dion's blues-tinged rock music produced for Columbia in the early 1960s. In fact, the roots of Dion's interest in the blues goes back to those fifty-year-old cuts, as evidenced by the songs "Troubled Mind" and "Sweet Papa Di", as well as by the title of a collection of those cuts: Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962-1965).

The final cut of Dion's new album is "Bronx Poem", a spoken word piece that is uniquely Dion: poignant, humorous ("Man, I've got a wife who drives me sane!"), thoughtful, and—again—joyful. It captures a man of faith who is also a musician full of life, love, and laughter. All Music Guide gives the album 4.5 stars out of five, stating:

Accompanied by his own haunting guitars and Robert Guertin's quietly shuffling drums, Dion celebrates humanity in the light of his spiritual convictions. In doing so, he comes full circle to meet himself as a street corner poet in the 1950s, and reveals his wisdom as the result of his experiences in the past and the present. He has no need to romanticize or apologize; he remains the keen-eyed, tender-hearted observer he has always been. Tank Full of Blues may be the late entry in a catalog of great work by Dion, but it stands with his best recordings. In fact, it is the album he's been waiting an entire career to make.

I recently e-mailed with author Mike Aquilina, who helped Dion write his 2011 book, The Wanderer Talks Truth and also co-wrote several cuts on A Tank Full of Blues:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.