Editorial: Liturgical Music and the Restoration of the Sacred

The following address opened a Colloquium on Musica Sacra at Christendom College, June 28-30, 1991.

Permit me to confess that as I stand before you this evening, I feel a sensation similar to that which of old surely moved the pius pater Aeneas when he stood – or rather, sat, as Vergil says – among the courtiers at Carthage before the infelix regina, the ill-starred Dido, in response to her command to speak. The moment in which I now find myself, that instant betweenintroduction and response, was described by Vergil in the famous verse:conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant – All fell silent now, and their faces were all attention (Aen. 2/1, C. Day Lewis).

And the attention paid to Aeneas, the attention with which you sit here this evening, is such as to intimidate even the virum fortem et tenacem, even a brace and tenacious man. That is, of course, because this attention is motivated by a very particular expectation, aroused by the res dura et regni novitas which typify the situation of Musica sacra and its apostles in our own day and age. With that, we proceed from the overture to the exposition of our theme….

I. The Sacrum

It is surely a commonplace that the knowledge gained through rational discourse is often difficult to separate cleanly from extrarational knowledge: what Plato referred to as logos is in fact quite closely related to mythos understood in the fullest sense of that term. That which does not admit of precise verbal expression will, after long attention and ever deepening familiarity, arise “like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter nourish itself” in the soul.¹

In other words, man’s basic longing to discover meaning in the world is not stilled by reasoned thought alone, but also through myth and symbol as mediators of the transcendent to man’s level. In the Christian dispensation, this need is met and satisfied in an important way through the Liturgy, which embodies in its sacraments the eternal renewal of past events with their saving content of supernatural grace. Christian faith has replaced the mere mythic tales of ancient (and modern) paganism with the supernatural, with a personal God Who creates the world and all its creatures so that He can establish with both a relationship based on His transcendence and His personhood. The sacred symbols and myths of the Christian religion are a translation, so to speak, of the supernatural which is rendered present in the lives of Christians through the cult, through prayer, ritual, and a sense of the sacred community of believers. This is the sacred component, which is denied by the rationalistic, scientific, individualistic world of today.

It is admittedly easier to describe the sacrum negatively than it is to define it positively.²In view of our present purpose, it will be well to concentrate upon one salient aspect: that of mediation.³

Rudolph Otto’s analysis of religious experience tends to confirm the fact that the sacred or the “numinous” (to use Otto’s term) involves a living force, “an overpowering, absolute might of some kind,” as we observe in the Bible and in the Semitic religions generally.⁴(One thinks of the Hebrew qadosh, Greek hagios, Latin sacer, etc.). This numinous power originates in a source beyond the cult, a source which we call God. His divine reality is not made manifest to the senses in any direct and immediate way, for like Moses on Mount Sinai, we bare our feet, avert our eyes, and fall on our knees when the Almighty says, Vacate, et videte quoniam ego sum Deus: Be still, and know that I am God (Ps 45:11). Hence the need for mediation. Just as the Eastern Church refers to icons as “windows to God,” so too the sacred mediates between the supernatural on the one hand, and our openness and receptivity (theologically, our sacramental dispositions) on the other. The sacred has stability and permanence; it is able to elevate and ; to be transmitted and handed on, which is why “rite means rote.” The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum which lies at the heart of the numinous and its “aweful majesty” (Otto) explains why we feel a sense of awe before sacred objects or in sacred places (though not in many a contemporary church building); why we experience identical sentiments during the performance of sacred rites in sacred time using gestures hallowed by their transcendent significance.

This is not mere empty emotionalism, nor an appeal to credulity. It corresponds to a reality more real than what we commonly call `reality’. The unembraceable Divinity is present through the sacred, by means of which the Divinity transmits a force it does not employ in contact with humbler forms of life. We call it: grace…. ⁵

To appreciate the realm of the sacred we need to be aware of a reality placed by God between humanity and Himself “not as a filter, or a screen, or an obstruction, but as a mediator” (Molnar). In this basic sense, the sacred is an element in every religion, but the decisive difference between the Christian religion and all other creeds and their cultic symbols is, at bottom, the dogma of the Incarnation. For us:

Christ (Himself) is the axis mundi; the story of His birth is the one reference point of all other and later Christian stories …and the Cross replaces the intersection of cosmic forces. More than that, through the Incarnation Christ is now the only mediator between the divine and the human…. He is the truly sacred channel, present and mediating in every sacrament, in the Mass and its central elevation, the Eucharist. He is also present in artistic expressions, from roadside crucifixes to the pattern of cathedrals, from the retelling and reenacting of the birth at Bethlehem to Dante’s grandiose composition; .. ⁶

… and from the unassuming melodic miracles of cantus Gregorianusto the monumental double fugue which crowns the Gloria of Anton Bruckner’s E minor Mass.

Of course, all this is widely disputed in theory and practice by a generation which believes it has experienced the verification of Feuerbach’s prediction that the turning point of history would be the moment when man would realize that his only God is man himself:homo homini deus. . . .

Any attempt to explain the supernatural in terms of the natural, and to re-interpret the sacred in a scientific or socio- political perspective, runs the risk of destroying the extrarational or, if you will, the “mythic” foundation of the sacred, which results in the degradation of the cult to lifeless routine and in the perception of formerly expressive symbols as meaningless. Titus Burckhardt puts it thus:

In every collectivity unfaithful to its own traditional form, to the sacred framework of its life, there ensues a collapse, a mummification of the symbols it had received, and this process will be reflected in the psychic life of every individual.⁷

Though he refers exprofessoto cosmology and modern science, Burckhardt could well have written those words as a description of the malaise afflicting such wide areas of the Ecclesia hujus temporis.. . .

But the numinous has another visage, as what may be called a “social dynamic” (Molnar). This means that the sacred is directed toward a potentially universal assembly, toward a community and not toward one single person. Mircea Eliade has shown that manifestations of the numinous or emanations of power (hierophanies or kratophanies, as Eliade calls them) are by no means simply an individual affair, but essentially communal. God can of course dispense with the mechanism of mediation and reveal Himself directly. But even Moses, Paul and Francis went on to carry the good news and its palpable effects to a collectivity, the communio sanctorum, the fabled “community” of song and story.⁸  

Let us sum up our first point. The sacred or the numinous pertains to the sphere of mediationbetween the ultimately real – the Creator -and the world of men. And when God enjoins the people (in Deut 6:4-5) to love Him with heart and soul and all their might, He is also telling us that all the faculties and senses of the composite being “man” are to be enlisted in the act of worship, in the cult. And that brings us to the development of our theme.

II. Musica Sacra

Given the “scandal” of mediation⁹which forms the core of the incarnational principle, it is not difficult to understand why musica sacra may be regarded as a kind of “secondary cause” through which the believer, singing his prayer ante faciem Domini, can reach the transcendent God in worship while opening himself to receive the supernatural riches which God in turn wishes to bestow upon him.

But what sort of music furnishes the appropriate form for such supremely meaningful content? Plainly, a music which will permit man to feel that transcendent attraction or “pull” which elevates him to a higher level, or at least to higher moments. In practice, the matter is settled when we have given an honest answer to the one absolutely fundamental question: is the cult (and here more precisely, the Divine Liturgy) really a sacred action (actio sacra) in the strict sense, in the course of which God Himself becomes present in Jesus Christ? Or is it simply a matter of an event in which nothing real actually occurs, nothing which would in principle surpass the merely human? Once this question has been answered in the spirit of true faith, then nothing more need be said….

The point is worth repeating: if Holy Mass is indeed a sacrifice, an actio sacra praecellenter (as the last Council rightly termed it), then one of its necessary and integral parts will be a musica which perforce is also sacra (Liturgy Constitution Sacros. Concilium, art. 112). But if something else is being “celebrated,” for example the fraternal gathering of a given community or a merely commemorative meal, then a very different kind of musica will be required…. perhaps a “polka Mass,” or some “contemporary” music through which “the congregation (and each individual in it) becomes the Voice of God.”¹⁰

But how explain the widespread disregard of such a plain truth? Perhaps we can find a clue in some of the recent studies which have examined the “sutures” along lines where the Catholic concept and modern liberal society meet and encourage a fusion of Weltanschauungen. According to one such current analysis, this adjustment or aggiornamento“is not a process of mutual accommodation, but of imitation and adaptation to a dominant model.”¹¹It has been quite plausibly suggested that the ideology of modern society requires that the adjusting institution become:

– democratic in mentality structure;

-pluralistin its acceptance of other institutions, groups and movements; and

– ecumenical in reformulating its vocation, making place for other beliefs that share, at least outwardly, its own primary concerns.

It will perhaps be profitable to make use of this scheme for our own musico-liturgical reflections upon the state of musica sacra a generation after the last Council.

We begin with democratization. In our particular context it is widely believed that we no longer need choirs led by professionally trained musicians because now, in a misconstrued interpretation of actuosa participatio,“everyone sings everything.” Why then tolerate the “elitism” of the competent Kapellmeisterwhen the need of the hour is (allegedly) to do away with liturgical “mystification” intended to uphold the “theologically worthless ideology” of a cultic bureaucracy?¹²The thesaurus musicae sacrae is “out,” profane banalities are “in;”provided only that they be in unison (or at least include the omnipresent amplified cantor with his publicly-indulged libido dominandi).

Next, another of today’s great shibboleths: pluralism.During the World Synod of Bishops held at Rome in 1985, the assembled prelates described pluralism as “a juxtaposition of systems of belief that are fundamentally opposed to each other,” thus implicitly condemning it. Far from uncommon today is a “pluralistic” mixture of sacred and profane music which, by themessages and countermessages it conveys within one and the same liturgical service, completely obscures the true finality of the Divine Liturgy, cripples genuine participation on the interior level, and produces boredom and religious indifference in the communicants. Is it aberrant to ask whether we of the Latin rite do not have something to learn in this respect from our sister Churches of the East?¹³Liturgico-cultural pluralists claim, of course, that their agenda embodies the very essence of freedom and hence is not really an imposition upon any individual or group. Sadly, however, such persons overlook the fact thatfreedom of viewpoints and messages leads to the repression of the weak by the strong, elimination of the good by the bad, substitution of the profane for the sacred – and all in the name of freedom.

Finally, ecumenism. A practicing Catholic church musician and published composer has recently asked whether hymns with strong non-Catholic associations do not confuse or even antagonizethe Catholic faithful by furthering”a misunderstanding of the basic premise of Catholic evangelization.”¹⁴The matter is surely worth a moment’s reflection. And since the topical is the key to reality, let us consider some examples.

Many Roman Catholic hymnals published in this country during the past fifteen years include the Protestant “gospel” hymn “Amazing Grace,” presumably because the source of the “American traditional” tune (“New Britain” or “McIntosh”) is the “Virginia Harmony” published in 1831 by James P. Carrell and David S. Clayton, and most often sung today in the harmonization of Edwin O. Excell. The tune may be “American traditional,” but which tradition does the text reflect? ACatholic tradition? A current non-Catholic hymnal¹⁵prints “Amazing Grace” under the sectional heading “The Gospel – Repentance and Forgiveness,” and one can find the hymn in the topical index under “Grace,” “Salvation,” and “Testimony.” The author of the text, John Newton (1725-1807) was an evangelical divine in Great Britain who “in theology was a pronounced Calvinist,” as the standard theological reference works inform us. “Pronounced Calvinism” implies adherence to Calvin’s doctrine of the inadmissibility of divine grace and the certitude of salvation, as well as those basic doctrines characteristic of Lutheranism. One is therefore not surprised to find the personal pronouns “I-me-my” more than ten times in the text, which leads one to suspect that the author held a typically Lutheran reflexive faith.¹⁶Here, the legitimate liturgist cannot forbear to ask whether thearchetypical attitudes sola gratia or sola scriptura are in fact “specifically Catholic themes – those central to our Catholic identity” (Hubley)? If not, then could it be that the presence of such themes in a hymn text might eventually produce a “lulling effect upon our Catholic consciousness” (Hubley)?

If melodies like “Tu es Petrus” or “Ave Maria” or “Oremuspro Pontifice nostro” may be regarded as distinctively Catholic, then surely “Ein’feste Burg” (“A mighty fortress is our God”) is as characteristically Protestant. The text is based on Ps. 46(Deus noster refugium et virtus), though the original does not contain the rendy references to “guns and nuclear might” which one finds nowadays. It was in 1529, the year of the Diet of Speyer and the Colloquy of Marburg, that Martin Luther wrote this hymn as a truculent statement of Protestant identity. For Luther, man is justified by a kind of legal fiction. That is to say, God regards sinful man as righteous, owing to the merits of Christ, while in eality man remains as sinful as before. In this famous hymn, Luther expressed the idea this way:

Es ist doch unser Tun umsonst,

auch in dem besten Leben…. 

With might of ours can nought be done,

Soon were our loss effected. But for us

fights the Valiant One Whom God

Himself elected.

No wonder, then, that this hymn became (and remains) the “battle hymn” of the Reformation – and that not only in Central and Northern Europe.¹⁷

It is not without interest to note the “rubrics” under which the classic American Protestant hymnals present “A mighty fortress.” The Protestant Episcopal “Hymnal 1940” listed it as a “general” hymn, with the third and fourth verses of the Hedge English text marked by an asterisk, meaning that they could properly be omitted (by Episcopalians, at least?) without violating the sense. The “Service Book and Hymnal” of the Lutheran Church in America (1958) included the hymn in a section entitled “The Church,” while “The Lutheran Hymnal” of the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod listed it as a “Reformation” hymn and printed the original syncopated (“rhythmic”) form of the melody.

Again we must ask: if a hymn is laden with non-Catholic associations, why are Catholic congregations asked to sing it? And if it be answered that the text is patient of an orthodox Catholic interpretation, then why does one ask our people to sing ambiguous platitudes? This is a point to consider seriously, since even though the dogmas of the Faith remain, strictly speaking, unchanged, is it not likely that borrowings such as these tend in reality to deemphasize the importance of the core teachings of our Faith, and to reorientate them toward something more acceptable to the contemporary climate of opinion and belief? Given the context of the present day, it is perhaps not so far-fetched to perceive here traces of what one knowledgeable observer recently referred to as the “softer image” which is increasingly preferred to dogmatic “hardness.”¹⁸

On the basis of this brief analysis, we may perhaps attempt a recapitulation. Musica sacra worthy of the Ecclesiaorans as she performs the opus Dei inter nos should be:

– elitist and not merely “democratic” because musica sacra is related to the actio praecellenter sacra of the Christian cult like color to sunset, like thought to the mind.

Musica sacra raises the

MIND (hence, intelligent listening to the artistic music of the choir as well as an intelligent rendition of music suited to congregational singing) and raises the

HEART (hence, artistic music which will call up a valid emotional response)

to GOD (and not only to neighbor, for worship is

directed to God).¹⁹

– monist and not merely “pluralistic” because here on earth there is only one problem, and it was solved on Mount Sinai: it is the problem of adoration (E. Hello). The grace of the Redemption imparted in Baptism brings with it the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Pneuma Who enables the “new man” to intone the “new song.” So it is that Christians as members of Christ’s Mystical Body, in union with Him Who is the primus cantor Novae Legis, praise and glorify the Father in a “logocentric” manner. For after all, the God-Man Jesus Christ, Who alone can lovingly adore the Father in a completely adequate way, is in fact the logos tou theou, indeed the logos pros ton theon. He is the “fore-Word” to the word sung in the “New Song” (L. Ziegler). Just as men are cleansed of sin through the grace of Baptism, so too any music must be “purified” and thus “transformed,” which desires to “elevate” to the Father in the Pneuma. In the words of St. Pius X, musica sacra must needs be “free from all that is profane, both in itself and in the way it is performed.”

-firmly grounded in Catholic truth and tradition, and not in a vague and euphoric ecumenism, because the protological principle of religion and its cultic expression is that the truth coincides with or is convertible with Being, and that human truth is a participation in this primary truth, just as finite being is a participation in the ens primum. Is it in fact true that the reversion of the separated brethren to the true Church of God has now been replaced by the conversionof all confessions to the total Christ Who is found outside of them and in Whom all of them must converge? After all, there does exist a status of each Christian within which his personal religious perfection takes place and from which he does not need to transfer or convert himself to some other status. In other words, conversion – understood as the continuous progress of each Christian toward perfection – is necessary in itself for the work of reuniting the Church, but it does not constitute the essence of this work, since it is but one moment of each man’s personal destiny.²⁰

And thus we arrive at the coda.

III.Restoration ofthe Sacred?

The approach of the second millennium, and the profound and unexpected changes which have affected so many nations in the very recent past, have helped rouse a growing chorus of voices calling for a restoration of Christian culture, for example in Europe or in the West as a whole.²¹

But is there a truly realistic prospect of such a restoration in the foreseeable future? The question is surely justified, since the chief elements of such a potential restoration seem to be lacking. Perhaps it is not so much a question of certain new initiatives or of pursuing what is already there, but rather a question of the spirit. Is the challenge not one of spiritual presence?²²

The forms of culture depend upon something more than human decisions. Cultures derive their content and their contours from their cosmology, for communities form and organize themselves in accord with what they believe to be the transcendent reality of the cosmos²³But once the cosmos itself has become “opaque, inert, mute,” then it can no longer transmit a message, and as a result the metaphysical significance of symbols is no longer perceived.²⁴

To the degree that contemporary man considers himself absolute – homo homini deus, a view encouraged by modern science and ideology – man has no need for symbols, myths, or the sacred which formerly mediated man’s understanding of a transcendent Being. But many of our contemporaries hold that one cannot know being, but only signs: a thing is its perception by a perceiver.

And thus, when the mediating function of musica sacra is no longer appreciated in these latter days, the apostolate of the competent Kapellmeisterall too often seems “bound in shallows and in miseries.” And yet, he must not leave the “land flowing with milk and honey,” to follow the pied pipers of profanation into the city of confusion and the house of bondage.²⁵

What, then, is to be done? One should recall that the very word culture contains the word cult, and that “the Christian ideal lives and works in the ceremonies of the cult.”²⁶ The reason is plain: both cult and culture demand faith in the supernatural, and that total dedication to such faith which furnishes a solid foundation for religious belief as well as for artistic creation. It is the Church’s “firm grasp of the supernatural” (Molnar) which links individual experience with the collective phenomenon we call culture. The cultic energy of the Church cannot be renewed without our own absolute devotion to the supernatural through all those sacramental and sacred channels by which it is mediated to man. The cultic lies buried in the soil of faith, and it will not do to let this soil lie fallow.²⁷

To be sure, the propagation of the faith through catechesis, homiletics and formal instruction is not the primary apostolate of the church musician. But he too must do from his position at the crossroads where the final clash between Christ and the world takes place. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of this world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19). T. S. Eliot reminds us that the proximate cause of the fading of European culture is the enfeeblement of Christian faith.

If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again and you cannot put on a new culture ready-made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must live through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great grandchildren. And if we did, not one of us would be happy with it.²⁸

Of the “three which now abideth,” the Apostle rightly says that the greatest of these is charity. But the most topical for church musicians today is surely hope, because our apostolate involves a share in God’s redeeming action and is consequently a type of mediation. After all, it is from God that the cultic singer receives the words of prayer which he intones, and it is to God that the singer directs his prayerful song – but at the same time he passes this song on to others. Thus the cultic singer shares in the sacramental and liturgical action of Christ and the Church as His interpreter, His herald, His spokesman, as the intermediary who through sacred song interprets the signs of salvation by reflecting “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God (tes doxes tou theou) in the face of Jesus Christ. …” (2 Cor 4:6).

Our final cadence is therefore a hopeful one, even though contemporary church history, which studies the recent past, cannot escape the conclusion that the efforts made thus far toward realizing the intentions of the last Council have not produced the benefits envisioned by that Sacred Synod.²⁹A perceptible change will come about only through greater willingness toward interior conversion which leads to a new and more profound reflection on the spiritual level. Without this pre-condition, any “re-evangelization” will experience the same fate as did the Council.³⁰The true path to real change is indicated by St. Paul: And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind (tou noos hymon), that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom 12:2).

Therefore, “Say not the struggle availeth naught.” The soul of all culture is and will remain the culture of the soul.³¹And that way lies our hope, which is the last gift from Pandora’s box.