Views from the Choir Loft

Formed in Beauty Lectures

Fr. David Friel · January 27, 2019

EDICATED to “beauty, evangelization, and the greater glory of God,” the Catholic Art Guild is a lay apostolate that seeks to restore the sacred in the visual arts. The Guild’s home is Chicago’s Church of St. John Cantius, well-known to many of our readers for its extraordinary commitment to sacred liturgy and the arts.

In each of the last two years, the Catholic Art Guild has hosted a “Formed in Beauty” conference and gala that has featured several eminent speakers. In 2017, Sir Roger Scruton, Duncan Stroik, and Denis McNamara were among the speakers, and the 2018 conference included Alexander Stoddart and Peter Kwasniewski.

For those of us who were not able to attend the conference in either year, the good news is that videos of the presentations have been posted online and are freely available.

Videos for the 2017 conference

Videos for the 2018 conference

Each of these presentations is well worth a listen.

The Catholic Art Guild is to be commended for organizing such interesting conferences and for making these rich lectures so easily accessible.

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

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski