Congregation for Divine Worship Reformed – New Art and Music Section

The Secretariat of State agreed on the Congregation’s restructuring last 3 September with Benedict XVI’s approval: the reorganization of the Congregation of Divine Worship involved the creation of new offices that will  become operational as of next year. The main change is the establishment of an office, specifically dedicated to liturgical art and music (which Vatican Insider predicted in a previous article), which will provide guidelines to ensure that hymns sung during mass and the structure of new churches are adequate and correspond to the mystery being celebrated.

Full story at Vatican Insider here.

 

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18 responses to “Congregation for Divine Worship Reformed – New Art and Music Section”

  1. Charles Jordan

    Archbishop Antonio, formerly of Toledo, also lead the post 1998 work on the English translation of the 3rd typical edition of the Roman Missal: http://www.adoremus.org/0409LiturgicalTranslations.html

    One wonders!

    Reply
  2. John Robert Francis

    And he barely speaks English, AT BEST.

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  3. Jack Feehily

    One more effort to subvert the law of subsidiarity. How could we folks out here in the provinces possibly know what kind of songs comport with the sacred liturgy?

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    1. Scott Smith

      @Jack Feehily – comment #3:

      Well, there have certainly been some which have failed at that task over the years, so it can not be that easy.

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    2. George Lester

      @Jack Feehily – comment #3:

      Perhaps we could know what kind of songs to sing by reading conciliar documents. And by looking at and drawing from the wealth of sacred music the Church has accumulated over the centuries.

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      1. Scott Pluff

        @George Lester – comment #7:
        Plus we could listen to the people we serve, asking what kinds of music helps them to pray. Or we could not do that, I suppose.

    3. Jim Pauwels

      @Jack Feehily – comment #3:
      “One more effort to subvert the law of subsidiarity.”

      I expect we’ll have to wait and see. According to the article, this new office is supposed to operate within the parameters of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the new missal. Those documents have some subsidiarity baked in. For example, GIRM 387 entrusts to diocesan bishops responsibility for the construction and ordering of churches. GIRM 390 and 393 assign to national conferences responsibility for the texts of chants and for musical settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, people’s responses and acclamations, and special rites throughout the liturgical year.

      Reply
  4. Paul Inwood

    This is, I think, the third time this has been reported, and it still hasn’t happened.

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  5. Philip Sandstrom

    This seems to be just one more example of the “Curial Proverb” — “We make the laws, and the Anglo-Saxons keep them” — or they are ‘expected to do so’.

    And it is one more step in the ‘growing centralization/ultramontanism’ of the Roman Church — a Church structure which explicitly insists: “the right Rite is the Roman Rite”, with absolutely no space for ‘local Churches’ and ‘less and less space’ for the Eastern Churches in Union with Rome. The general arrogance is amazing — and dangerous for the Church.

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  6. Jim McKay

    Does this mean they will be rebuilding St Peter’s in Rome?

    Old St Peter’s copied multi-purpose basilicas, apparently a no-no today. It’s replacement came along with the Reformation and Trent. How is it “designed for liturgy”? (honest question; when I suggested SC offered some principle that could be reflected in Architecture, some said those were liturgical principles, not architectural. So I am curious how one could design for liturgy.)

    Besides, the article says BXVI prefers to give an example rather than impose a liturgical law, so St Peter’s seems like the place to start.

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  7. John Ainslie

    “Another new office for legal and disciplinary issues will also be established and the office for liturgical art and music alongside these. The latter will not deal with sacred art and music but just with art and purely liturgical music.”

    I’m trying to make sense of the last line. What do they think “purely liturgical music” is, I wonder.

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  8. Charles Culbreth

    John Ainslie : I’m trying to make sense of the last line. What do they think “purely liturgical music” is, I wonder.

    Can we say “Bartolucci?”

    Reply
    1. Paul Inwood

      @Charles Culbreth – comment #11:

      That is hilarious, Charles!

      Reply
      1. Charles Culbreth

        @Paul Inwood – comment #12:
        Well, Paul, you cracked me up quite a bit in bunches of old NPM breakouts back in the day (Sacramento in particular). I’ve not been able to resist a “straight line” since I was a kid.
        Irony is that my joke’s probably not far from the mark, and that ain’t gonna be funny. sigh….

  9. Brendan Kelleher svd

    Don’t expect much, so probably won’t be disappointed. Heard many attempts, over the years, to use more Latin chants, which is probably part of the ‘hidden agenda’ behind this move, in the liturgy here in Japan, and they haven’t been particularly successful. Extra seats and “titles” for careerist clerics. Moving the deckchairs on a sinking ship is a shared comment among some people I network with – including a couple of higher ranking clerics – here in Japan.

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    1. Dunstan Harding

      @Brendan Kelleher svd – comment #13:
      I have no gripe with the pope nurturing the arts, traditional or otherwise, and I welcome it. However, having an office to impose what is clearly his own taste. a fixed liturgical repertoire, enforcing Latin, and fostering a marble and gilt template for churches, and a Baroque liturgy to go with it, is laughable and absurd.

      Can more steps to save western civilization on the scale of resuscitating the Syllabus of Errors, and The Index of Forbidden Books and Films be far behind? Maybe a “Court for Enforcing Orthodoxy” with cardinals Burke and Pell presiding be next?

      All of this comes after seven years of the groundwork being laid by anxious- to-please prelates encouraging churches to embrace what they see as the “Benedictine” ideal. Are great sins being committed in the pope’s name by ambitious toadies, or is Benedict possibly out of the loop here?

      A manifestation of Benedict’s ” orthodoxy” as the underpinning for saving us from consumerism and Barack Obama set to music and sculptured in stone has been unfolding with the rise of these mass-produced, look-a-like churches. With plaster of Paris kitsch in the pre-Council- style now making a huge comeback. This makes Father Vosko’s efforts in the 70s to redo churches in a post-Vatican manner appear miniscule by comparison.

      It’s as if Rome had come up with a plan to duplicate the King Victor Immanuel “wedding cake” monument in Rome, or encourage exact copies of Milan’s Centrale Station to be built in every town and village.
      Similar to Mussolini’s bureaucracy in the 20s bent on stamping out any vestige of Dadism and Expressionist art of every kind.

      Reply
  10. Alexander Larkin

    There’s was a pope who objected to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and wanted it painted over. A Roman committee deciding on art and architecture for Asia and Africa will be a great resource for the new evangelization – but then this is what they did the last time around, exporting Europe!

    Reply
    1. Charles Culbreth

      @Alexander Larkin – comment #16:
      Mr. Larkin, that pope (doubtless like many before and after him) held reservations about Buonarrati’s depiction of wee-wees and unveiled caricatured derision for demigogic prelates, that were then restored by other wiser prelates.
      That formality does not speak contrary to your very apt observation of how the West has drastically misunderstood and underestimated the East and southern hemisphere of Catholicsim.

      Reply

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