Grassroots Liturgist

The road trip has continued, this time to Budapest - a beautiful city.  We attended Sunday morning Mass at St Stephen's Basilica, architecturally a magnificent building (though far too ornate for my taste) which had something I have never seen before. An area of contention in parishes is the issue of hymnals.  The advantage of them is that you have a convenient collection of hymns and Mass settings, easily accessible, week after week for a one-off (if substantial) investment.  But the disadvantages are many: no hymnal will contain every single hymn or Mass setting that you wish to use and as soon as a hymnal is printed it is out of date anyway; also hymnals result in many of the congregation, often not confident singers, looking down rather than up. One solution is to take out a  license that allows you to use a very wide range of music and print the words on a sheet for each Mass.  When done well, this means that you can hand out one convenient pamphlet wh...

I have been on the road for much of the last couple of months, which gives me an opportunity to see how other parishes "do" liturgy - I'm always keen to pick up ideas.  My own parish does not have a Book of the Gospels - the Gospel being read from the Lectionary, as with the other readings.  However, two of the parishes that I visited do and I noticed one key difference been the two. Both parishes had a deacon who held the Book aloft during the Entrance Procession and who proclaimed the Gospel.  Both parishes had a simple but dignified procession of the Book of the Gospels to the Ambo (the correct term for what is commonly referred to as the lectern).  But it was after the Gospel had been proclaimed where they differed: In one parish, the Book of the Gospels was processed to a stand/lectern where it was placed, open, facing the congregation; whereas in the other it was simply closed and placed, unceremoniously, on a table adjacent to the Ambo, on top of other books...

I  previously mentioned my experiences of the Sign on Peace at youth Masses back in the early/mid-80s.  Although the days of raucously singing "Let there be peace shared among us" have long-since (mercifully) gone, it is still a part of the Mass that I don't feel we quite get right.  Too often it becomes little more than a "good morning" - a chance for limited social interaction.  Indeed, the sound of brief conversation can sometimes be caught. What is it that we should be doing here? The General Instruction tells us that in the Rite of Peace "...the Church entreats peace and unity for herself and for the whole human family, and the faithful express to each other their ecclesial communion and mutual charity before communicating in the Sacrament." (GIRM 82)  So, in the Sign of Peace we are recognising the union, fellowship, love and dignity that we share as members of the Church.  Our faith is not a 'private love affair' between ourselves a...

The  Society of St Gregory aims to promote study, understanding and good practice in the music and liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church in the UK.   One way in which it does this is through the discussion forum , which was how I first came across the Society after an internet search on some liturgical topic.   Another way is through the annual Summer School, from which I recently returned.  This was my third Summer School in four years and I have greatly enjoyed and gained from each one. People from all over the country – from cathedral music directors to guitarists in small parish music groups, choristers, cantors, psalmists, lectors and servers – headed towards Leeds, some taking as much as eight hours, thanks to chaos on the motorways, to share a few days with other like-minded individuals.   Old friendships were renewed, new friendships forged, smiles etched on everyone’s face – even this gruff northerner’s. There are three reasons why the Summer S...

Included in the second tier of importance of things to be sung at Mass are the Entrance Procession, Gloria, Psalm, Communion Procession and post-Communion. The Gloria is the great hymn of praise of the Triune God and, personally, I am a little disappointed that it only makes the second tier.  That said, it is still considered more important than singing during the Preparation of the Gifts (Offertory) and the Recessional - and it is a daring parish liturgist that would miss out those!  There would be revolts in the pews!! Not so long ago, before the New (English) Translation of the Missal, it was permissible to sing a setting of the Gloria (and, indeed, all the Mass parts) that paraphrased what was actually in the Missal; the Peruvian Gloria, for example, proved popular with many.  That is no longer the case, as I found out myself when I submitted my first Mass setting (High Peak Mass) for permission to be used outside of my own parish; permission was at first withheld...