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The priorities of what we should sing at mass are full of surprises for some. I hope in the end that the greater “surprise” will be in how our prayer is formed by what we sing. I hope this will be the most pleasant surprise of all.
“The singing of the Proper texts rather than the endless substitution of songs and hymns, are only now being seriously considered and implemented.” — Executive Director of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL)
Could there be room for legitimate changes to the Missal of 1962, the last typical edition of the traditional Roman Rite of Mass or the “extraordinary form”?
“The Church asks those who will lead and shepherd her communities of Faith to give up the possibility of marital love as a prophetic witness that there is something even more important to our happiness than even beautiful intimacy possible in Christian marriage.” — Archbishop Naumann, 18 May 2013
Rev. Fr. Guy Nicholls, an internationally-renowned expert on Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony, speaks about the Mass Propers in a “live” phone interview.
The notion that the texts are there “to remind us that we should be singing something else” could not be further from the truth.
I took out my iPhone to record his exact words (“we don’t have any more airplanes”) and he called security on me. Classy.
The Sacred Congregation of Rites and the Consilium issued a joint statement on December 29,1966 prohibiting profane music in church. When Consilium spokesman Monsignor Annibale Bugnini was asked at a press conference what was meant by “profane” music, he said that this referred to such things as “jazz” Masses and instruments such as the guitar.

