Catholic Sensibility

I was catching news of the NCAA and self-imposed sanctions against Penn State football before hitting the road today. The list includes more than $70 million in fines and lost revenue, no bowl games, removal of a statue, and reduced scholarships for four years. There’s that “vacating” of wins for fourteen years. I think that’s an appropriate measure for the coach’s record. But it’s otherwise a silly gesture, even for a scandal like this. It strikes me as akin to a rewriting of history, erasing the public memory of events for a political purpose. Joe Paterno won more games as a coach than any other. He also allowed a sex predator to continue to molest and used the almighty power of college football to have his way. Maybe that’s embarassing for the NCAA to have Coach Paterno  at the top of the heap, but that’s the culture they’ve long-encouraged in big time college athletics. I hope they don’t think there aren’t other culture-of-football challenges ahead.

If the Catholic Church ever imposed sanctions on a diocese, let’s say Philadelphia, I was wondering today what that would look like.

Removal of the JoePa statue would sort of be like removing the burial remains from the cathedral crypt and putting them in an unmarked grave.

No bowl games for four years and an extra year of probation on top of that is like a generation in college sports. For a diocese, a generation would be like the active ministry life of a priest. No red hat and no metropolitan status for thirty to forty years.

Scholarships and fines … well, I don’t think you can take seminarians, priests, and money away from a diocese. Penn State will have a hard enough time paying fines without dipping into academics or women’s sports. Losing a bishop’s burial spot and a red hat? Man, that would hurt big time and there’s no money involved with that whatsoever. I guess the courts are already mandating abuse settlements, and dioceses are doing what PSU won’t be allowed to do: take money from innocent people.

Penn State football avoided the “death penalty.” Geez, what would that look like for Philadelphia? The actual archdiocese would be chopped up and reapportioned to Allentown, Harrisburg, and maybe even Camden, Trenton, and Wilmington. I think that’s under consideration in Ireland, though, a radical reduction in the number of bishops and dioceses.

There are still people who say that Penn State got off easy in all this. And many respected sports commentators are saying these were a little too strong. I’d have to concede that the NCAA and Penn State itself were far more serious about the eradication of the culture of silence around protecting sex predators. The Church would have to do a lot of distasteful things before it approached the impact of these penalties.

As always, I note the kind contribution of Richard Chonak who translated the Latin original of the second edition (1988). What do you make of the pastoral adaptation permitted below?

For like reason permission is given to choose among pertinent chants of the Proper of the Seasons, as for the proper text of the day another text of the same season may be substituted, if appropriate.

This seems sound to me, and an out for the “new music of the week” syndrome so often (and appropriately) criticized in the early post-conciliar years. The “like reason” is to “generously satisfy” the pastoral needs of any or all individual communities. By the standard of the Roman Gradual, it would be permissible to repeat a smaller repertoire of chant to permit the people a more gradual introduction to the singing of this music. The easy implementation would be to choose one Advent antiphon, for example, and employ different psalm verses on successive weeks. I wonder if anybody is attempting this as an alternative to choir-only implementation on Gregorian propers.

Also, norms for chant in the Mass already present in the introduction of the Graduale Romanum, are thus reexamined and amended, so that the function of each chant may be shown more clearly.

Comments?

Whew! Back from a weekend in the Twin Cities. The young miss should be enjoying her first evening under the pine trees of central Minnesota as I type. Before I forget, I thought I’d relate some Sunday liturgy observations from the pew, since I so rarely get that perspective.

Three blocks from our hotel, I found St Olaf Catholic Church. The family and I were wandering through the downtown Skywalk Saturday evening and we spotted the sandy colored exterior. 10AM Mass seemed to work best, and I seated myself in a pew near the organ console. As I paged through the bulletin, I noted that I landed in Lynn Trapp‘s parish. I figured I’d not be finding much amiss in the liturgy. And I was right. The order of worship was printed on the back page of the bulletin. I was looking around for the Carl Daw text on the Opening. I needn’t have bothered; it was projected on the white spaces on the interior balcony. It’s not a great text by Prof. Daw, but I generally turn my nose up at “gathering” texts. Too darned preachy.

The psalm settings, Liturgy of the Word and during Communion, were my first exposures to these settings of Psalms 23 and 107 from the Collegeville Composers Group. Very nice. Interesting. The Psalm 23 “went on forever” in the estimation of the organist and cantor (private conversation, post-liturgy). I didn’t mind. The refrain was  longish, and two lines (of the four) were repeated interspersed with the psalm verses. It was better than random, and it engaged the congregation in a way that probably requires more attention than a sung-through hymn setting of a psalm. It was definitely not an idle time of musical reflection. It was about the most active I’ve felt after the first reading in my life, even including times when I might have played two instruments on one piece. Every week, something like this would get tiring. Like I said, for Psalm 23 and as an occasional thing, this was okay for me.

Good homily and well-structured. A young pastor who spoke fast like people of his generation, but he paused often to let the thought sink in. I had to concentrate to follow him, but it was no worse than following an African-accented associate at my current parish. He had three points in the homily. I stuck with two, a mention of the Ignatian practice of a twice-a-day examen, and being open to the opportunity of being waylaid by ministry or service opportunities.

I was having a very hard time placing the verses of the Communion Psalm. No wonder. The 107th.

Interesting harmonization on “City of God.” I will have to utilize that. I note that the advantage of throwing the music up on the wall is that they were able to pick and choose verses–in this instance, they cut the third verse. I didn’t miss it.

You know, it’s very nice to get exposed to new music, especially psalm settings, and be able to pray them. My experience of this Mass bordered on delightful. The people sang pretty well, and they were quite willing to participate in the new stuff. The musicians started when they should for Communion. I might quibble that the psalmist didn’t sing from the ambo, or that they sang all three verses of preparation, even though the ritual action was complete after refrain-verse one-refrain. But when the overall sense of liturgy is excellent, one doesn’t mind trivial problems.