My Dear Friends,

Last Sunday was the choir ’s last time singing at Mass until the fall. They did a wonderful job as usual. I am grateful for all their hard work and dedication to helping us enhance the celebration of Mass. This past year, especially, has been a challenge since Dan Ringuette left us to pursue another position in Litchfield at St. Louis de Montfort parish. With his leaving we also lost some choir members, but the choir members who remained did a marvelous job under the direction of George Murphy (in Immaculate Conception Church) and the Immaculate Heart of Mary choir remained steady under Loni Birkenburger, all held together under the direction of AJ Bunel, who willingly stepped up to play at all Masses until we find someone who can assist him.

Now is an opportune time for me to ask you if you are interested in joining our choir or cantoring at Mass. You will have all summer to reflect and pray on it. Singing at Mass is a way for us to not only enhance the Mass but also to fulfill the directives of the Second Vatican Council and the Catholic Church in the United States. I will offer a very short history lesson (books have been written about this subject).

Historically and traditionally, the normative celebration of Mass has always been a sung Mass. It was only a recent development in the history of the Church that Masses were celebrated without any singing. Most of those Masses were done quietly due to the danger of persecution, for example in the Irish and English churches where if found out the priest would be killed for celebrating Mass, as Catholicism was illegal in many of those areas. At other times in history in other places, the same held true. Of course, smaller rural parishes would also have minimal singing due to the lack of personnel to help enhance the celebration.

Even though the desire for all Catholic Masses to be sung began in the early 20th Century, it was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962-1965 that there was a real desire for true reform to bring back singing at all Masses. The Council did admit for times when a spoken Mass would be desirable, but those Masses were supposed to be daily Masses, and even then the Church desired that even daily Masses had some singing. But every Sunday Mass and other feasts and holy days were required to have singing. Before the Council there was usually only one Sunday Mass that would be a sung Mass and the rest were the low Mass (spoken). Again, this was not normative for centuries of the Roman Mass. And it was understood, in history as well as at the Second Vatican Council that we do not sing at Mass, but we sing the Mass. Our choirs and our cantors help all of us to join our voices together in song.

Interestingly, in the documents that have come out of Rome and out of our U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, there is a hierarchy of what should be sung during Mass. They are three degrees, and it is understood that the second and third degree are not to be sung unless the first degree is sung. The parts of Mass that should be sung every Sunday are the three presidential prayers (the prayers that the priest prays at the beginning, offertory and post communion), the dialogues (The Lord be with you. And with your spirit), the preface dialogue and the preface with the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy), the Our Father and its conclusion, the sign of peace, and the final blessing and dismissal. The second degree of texts that are to be sung next are the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Creed, the Lamb of God and the Prayers of the Faithful. The last degree, which should only be sung if the previous parts are sung are the entrance, offertory and communion antiphons and the Alleluia. Since the early 20th Century, and especially since the reform of the Mass in 1970, the antiphons were replaced by hymns, but this option has always been the last option (the antiphon or a psalm should be sung in the hymns’ place). Catholics, though, have understood and experienced the singing of the hymns as the normative way of singing at Mass. And in some parishes, these are sung while the parts of the Mass in the first and second degree are not sung at all. God deserves our best, and our best in the Roman Rite tradition is one of song.

As St. Augustine writes, “Singing belongs to the one who loves.” On this Father’s Day and as your spiritual father, I sing for love of God and of the Mass and I sing with joy as we all come together to worship our Heavenly Father. God bless.

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