Cardinal Arinze • “Recent Latin Mass Restrictions”

Corpus Christi Watershed · November 11, 2024

RANCIS CARDINAL ARINZE served as Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 2002 to 2008. The following video was sent to us this morning. We’re told it was filmed recently. We hope anyone with knowledge of its original source will contact us.

Here’s the direct URL link.

Update (12 November 2024):
Father Clemens K. wrote to us, telling us the original video seems to be from several years earlier:

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

For The Record …

For the 2nd Sunday of Advent, we are singing the COMMUNION ANTIPHON from the O’Fallon Propers (created at the splendid motherhouse of the Precious Blood Sisters in O’Fallon, Missouri). Their English adaptation strikes me as quite beautiful and very “Adventy”—for lack of a better term.

—Jeff Ostrowski

PDF • “Advent Kyrie Accompaniment”

Several readers saw the William Byrd “Choral Extension”—listed on the music list for 9 December—married to the Advent Kyrie (Kyrie XVII: In dominicis Adventus et Quadragesimae) and asked whether my harmonization was available in different keys. If such a thing interests you, feel free to download that organ accompaniment in both F-Major and D-Major.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Music List • (Immaculate Conception)

This coming Monday—9 December 2024—is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In the United States of America, it is a holy day of obligation. Some have expressed interest in perusing my “ORDER OF MUSIC.” If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. The Offertory hymn we’re singing a cappella—set to the tune of FREUEN WIR UNS ALL IN EIN—is particularly beautiful and its text is extremely ancient. The Entrance Antiphon is also quite striking.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Epiphany Proclamation 2025

Each year, without fail, someone asks me to typeset the Epiphany Proclamation, an announcement of moveable feasts chanted each year on the feast of the Epiphany. As a result, you may now find an archive of 23 such proclamations in PDF ready to print HERE.

—Veronica Brandt

The Breviary in the Life of the Laity

Recently I have been enjoying looking through the inaugural (1927) edition of a 20th-century liturgical magazine called Orate Fratres. The July 1927 issue included an excellent article by a Chicago laywoman named Ellen Gates Starr entitled “The Delights of the Breviary: From the Point of View of a Lay Woman.” As we in the 21st century have recently undergone a (blessed!) re-translation of the missal into English, and as we await with joyful hope (please God, before Jesus comes back!) a similar re-translation of the breviary, the opening of her article reminded me of that old saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Nearly a hundred years ago, she penned words that could just as easily have been written today: “It is indeed a privilege to be allowed any participation, however slight, in the liturgical movement in the Church – the movement to bring back the classics of devotion, the Missal and the Breviary, into general use by the laity. The wonder is that they should ever have fallen into disuse. Nothing can take the place of these great universal prayers of the Church, the prayers of the Mass and the divine Office. One has only to know them to find them indispensable. And alas, how few of the laity know them!” I know that I have been tremendously nourished by regular praying of the breviary as of late, and my wish is that you and I, dear reader, may continue to nourish our interior lives with the official prayer of the Church, which present to us (in the Mass) and extend (in the Office) the fullness of Christ’s greatest gift to us – the gift of Himself – in the Most Holy Eucharist.

—Daniel Tucker

Principles vs Preferences

I ran into this idea recently: principles vs. preferences in planning out a curriculum or music lineup. In this idea, it is imperative to not misconstrue personal preferences into principles—that the music (or subject matter) is great because: “I have good taste, and I like it.” De gustibus… Education, study and docility to the Magisterium of the Church on matters of liturgical music must be present in those who make the music at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Hours. Who knows? Maybe you might start to prefer the music that is fitting according to the principles Catholic Sacred Music?

—William J. Fritz

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