Views from the Choir Loft

Tenth Anniversary Celebration • “Summorum Pontificum”

Fr. David Friel · August 13, 2017

HE TENTH anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, is being marked in a variety of ways in different places. Some parishes and universities have hosted lectures, concerts, and discussion groups. Others have arranged for solemn Masses to commemorate the historic promulgation.

The occasion will be marked in Philadelphia with a solemn Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form on September 14, 2017, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. This is the date on which the motu proprio came into effect, after having been published on July 7, 2007.

This Mass will be offered by Most. Rev. Joseph N. Perry, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter & Paul (18th Street & Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia).

Philadelphia’s Cathedral will also be the site for this week’s solemn high choral Assumption Mass, organized each year by Mater Ecclesiae Parish (Berlin, NJ). Music for this celebration will be provided by the Ars Laudis Festival Chorus and Orchestra, under the direction of Dr. Timothy McDonnell. The Mass Ordinary will be Franz Schubert’s Mass No. 3 in B-flat Major.

Mass for the Blessed Mother’s feast will begin at 7 PM on August 15, 2017 in the Cathedral Basilica. All are welcome.

One decade removed from Summorum Pontificum, now is a good time to go back and re-read the document and the accompanying letter. Both texts are noteworthy for the pastoral concern that prompts and shapes them.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

“Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)

I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Yahweh” in church songs?

My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Music List” • Pentecost Sunday

Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Antiphons Don’t Match?

A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).

—Corpus Christi Watershed

When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962

There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop

—Veronica Brandt

The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum

Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.

—Daniel Tucker