I’ve long enjoyed various forms of Christian chant. Gregorian chant is excellent, of course, but Byzantine chant is also fascinating. One of the things I feel Protestant denominations have largely lost is a sense of the mysteries of the faith, of the gravitas of ancient history. There is almost a mournful component – and I use this word for lack of any other I can use to describe this phenomenon. It is a difficult thing to explain. Listen to these two chant videos and see if you can pick up on what I mean:
At times, my Protestant upbringing protests that such things are frippery; meaningless ceremony. But I do not feel they are meaningless when I witness them, even in the local Catholic church my wife and I visit. There is something in both the Catholic and Orthodox branches of the faith, something that at least I feel is lacking in the church of my birth (Seventh Day Adventist).
If only the Pope wasn’t a near-Communist, I suppose. Otherwise my wife and I would probably find a Catholic church of the Byzantine rite and heal the Great Schism in our own household.
This is a thing that has been on my mind for years. We’ve witnessed the Leftist convergence and subversion within God’s own house, the perversion of the church as a vehicle for personal political aggrandizement. To me, this is as bad as the moneychangers peddling their wares in the Temple. Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this mixing of the profane and the sacred. Whatever you may call it, our faith is the poorer for it.
Protestant churches likewise suffer this, though often in different and less direct ways. My father attended a church that conducted a campaign to modernize the hymns, to add a pop and/or rock element to them to make them popular for millennials. More mixing of the profane and the sacred. That, and the whole thing just came off as cheesy, in my opinion. But it is excessively common in many Protestant churches around the country. The temptation to change things out of a perceived desire to cater to social popularity is ancient and will always be with us. Compare such ‘modernized’ hymns to this chant:
The sacred is mystical, somewhat incomprehensible to us mere mortals, and possessed of gravitas, the very presence of the divine. It is both sorrowful, for the fall of man, and hopeful, for the promise of salvation. It transcends the profane, the political and social fascinations of the moment. To me, it is to touch, however briefly, a much greater universe that is otherwise quite beyond our understanding.
Whatever it means to you, and whatever branch of faith you subscribe to, the separation is important. Leftists often like to criticize Christianity on the basis of the Crusades, and bleat on about the separation of church and state, while attempting to suborn churches from within and make them arms of the state. Consider the contradiction for a moment. And consider where a Crusade, if any is to come, is likely to originate, or what its political ideology would be.
Whipping the modern day moneychangers and driving them from the Temple is an imperative.
In the meantime, I hope good Christian chant appeals to you as much as it appeals to me.
Excellent! There is a definite mournful note detectable. You might enjoy the Mormon Tabernacle Choir also.
Grew up Catholic going to morning mass with my Grandmother and loved the hymns in Latin. I thought it took away something in changing to English.
In the 70’s the Catholic church in America lost it’s mind. The week after I was married we went to church and they had drums and a guitar. Went to a different church after that. After my divorce dated a girl who went to a Pentecostal Catholic church, complete with speaking in tongues.
I agree mixing the Sacred with the profane is very wrong. If you’re going to do that you might as well stay home and go fishing. One of the main reasons for subverting a religion is to justify sin. Rather than owning that you are committing sin you come up with excuses and when that doesn’t work you try and tear down the institution.
There’s a philosophical gulf between the Christian musical forms of yesteryear, especially the chants, and the sappy, dumbed-down “Christian music” of today. The former was an explicit attempt to create beauty and praise as an offering to God. The latter is an exercise in feelgoodism.
Yes, like many others who received a Catholic education, I was taught that “He who sings prays twice.” Yet we were taught to sing in key, in harmony, and in rhythm. Those who couldn’t do so were admonished to remain silent. We were also encouraged to aspire to more advanced musical forms; Gregorian chant was only one of them. But in our “everyone is special” era, I suppose it would be too much to expect an emphasis on beauty rather than inclusion for inclusion’s sake.
I’ll tell you this, you ain’t seen nothing of religious controversy until your read up on the Byzantine “nature of the trinity” controversy they had or the good times of “Iconoclasm” before the turn of the millenia.
Maiorana, “the guitar mass” was the greatest curse civilization has ever seen.
Full disclosure I am a LC (Lapsed or Lazy Catholic), and a member of the ex altar boy association or as most of society would say a knave and rapscallion!
While reading the Bible I read “Call no man father but your father in heaven.” When I asked a Priest why we call priests father when scripture indicated you shouldn’t I was told it was a mystery of the church. Another reason I left Catholicism.
Yeah, the Church always had a lot of “mysteries” which they should have worked on a long time ago. One of my favorites was “Limbo”. A place where the people to righteous to go to Purgatory or Hell went when they died to sort of hang out until JC’s second coming then they could proceed on up to Heaven. They don’t have that anymore, but it was disturbing that the Church had dancing going on in the afterlife.
I’ll bet you that bizarre contradiction is an artifact of translation. If memory serves, the New Testament was written first in ancient Attic (Athenian) Greek. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the phrase was mistranslated, either directly or by some shade of meaning.
TBH, I don’t put much stock on what’s written in either the Old or New Testament. There are a few gems of wisdom in there, but it’s the overall MESSAGE of the church that matters to me and how one behaves in accordance or not with that message & why.
Example: my mother almost never goes to Mass. She finds it depressing anyway, as she’s used to how mass was performed when she was growing up in Italy. But every once in a while, my mother will say a quiet prayer at home; also, she occasionally goes to the church, makes an offering, lights a candle and says a prayer. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough of a demonstration of faith. All that stuff about going to church every sunday and periodically going to confession is not important to me.
You have to read carefully when reading the Bible. An example. God is perfect and can do no evil is a given. But in Genesis when Moses is trying to get Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. God supposedly hardens Pharaoh’s heart repeatedly. Even after Pharaoh agrees to let them go. Since the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God is obviously an evil act this must be a mistranslation. Surprisingly after 500 yrs this has never been corrected by mainstream Christianity.
On a different note. Cecil B. DeMille got it wrong in the Ten Commandments. The Israelites left Egypt in 1446 B.C. At that time Thutmose III was Pharaoh not RamsesII.
I didn’t realize Edward G. Robinson was that old; “Where’s your Moses now”.
Sorry I couldn’t resist.
YO! Lapsed catholic here as well.
The current pope needs to be bitchslapped. Three times. Then kicked out of office.
I don’t know the byzantine/orthodox chants, though clearly there are some beautiful ones. There’s something more…..eastern about them. Love the Gregorian chants, though they can be very much a downer sometimes and need to be made fun of once in a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4q6eaLn2mY
and
What is your quest?
Tim the Philosopher
WHAT is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
European or…………
As a lifelong Catholic, I’d like to be able to argue that Pope Francis is not hopelessly compromised by his Leftist background.
I cannot. It is not a new problem in the Vatican, but it is a source of heartache for me and many other Catholics.
In general, the Catholic in the pew (those that show up regularly) are relatively traditional. We are there, not because the Church is providing such excellent leadership, but because we believe that our membership and participation is what Christ commanded us to do.
The current philosophical mish-mash and the moral laxity of too many in leadership positions doesn’t negate our responsibility to follow Christ’s command. Even if it seems hopeless. Even if our input seems to be wasted.
Check around. There are traditional, good priests, and parishes that fulfill your yearning.
If you don’t mind my asking, where are you located? I might know someone who could recommend a church.
Ifox328,
“If you don’t mind my asking, where are you located?” Were you asking me? If so I’m now in Colorado. I thank you very much for the thought, but it’s really not necessary for me to go to any given church.
I’m sure there are a few priests and nuns still doing the right thing.
But I’m also sure that without truly radical reform within the next generation, the Catholic Church will simply die.
The church is deeply corrupt at the highest levels. I’ve seen plenty of monasteries in Italy where the priests and nuns do nothing to maintain their facilities. As one of many examples: the monastery of Mont’Oliveto Maggiore has orchards that lie fallow, and the book restoration facilities for which the monastery was once famous are now farmed out to professional practitioners while the Benedictines monks spend their time “contemplating the holiness of Jesus.” If it were me, I’d send an auditing crew to every church and monastery, point out where the priests and monks could do some productive work and give them ONE YEAR to turn a profit. Those that fail get their head monk EXPELLED into the private sector and a new one is given the same job with the same conditions until the situation is fixed.
The second reform involves priests and nuns and their vow of celibacy. I would restrict celibacy to only a few of the orders – perhaps a selection amongst the benedictines, jesuits, dominicans, franciscans and such. All the rest should be REQUIRED to have worked in the private sector for a minimum of 10 years AND be married and have a family before they are granted the PRIVILEGE of serving as a priest or nun in the church. This will ensure that there are no more CHILD RAPISTS in the ranks. The fact is that the celibacy requirement attracts the wrong kind of people.
It’s true that the Church has reformed over the centuries enough that the original provocations for the catholic-protestant split are, to the best of my knowledge, all resolved in official church doctrine in favor of the Protestant view. Thus, Christianity stands on the verge of potentially healing a great schism in its ranks. But the church must undertake truly radical reforms, and RIGHT NOW.
You (and others) might find it to be of interest that the Church didn’t require priests to be celibate until the 11th Century. Prior to that, Bishops had to be celibate, but priests could marry and have children. The story behind priestly celibacy is a long and interesting one…and it has nothing to do with any other necessity of the priesthood.
YO – gotta bring marriage back into the priesthood and nun-hood. MUST BE DONE.
Truth is that the pedophile priests that were revealed should have been burned at the stake. Yes, I mean that.
Oh, I agree that allowing priests to marry is critical. (Nuns, not so important, but maybe it would be an improvement.) My point is that relative to the history of the Church, priestly celibacy is a recent phenomenon. When the Pope claimed that it was something the Church would not change because it could not, I found myself wondering if he knew the history of the thing.
For those interested in the cause of priestly celibacy, look up the word benefices. They were they key to the whole deal. Really.
Unfortunately the pedophile problem does not reside solely in the Catholic church. A few years back in the LDS church, Chattanooga Stake ( roughly equivalent to a Catholic Diocese) there was a youth leader charged with pedophilia while exercising his church calling. He was promptly excommunicated.Marriage unfortunately didn’t prevent this.
Funny thing about Bishops being celibate. 1Timothy 3:2 states one of the things a Bishop must be is the husband of one wife.
I have heard it claimed the practice of celibacy originated with Augustine over his rejection by a woman he fancied.
Former atheist of 25 years, now uber-devout Catholic. I’m a Pope B16 convert, myself.
Yes, I sadly agree that our Pope is a bit of a leftist chucklehead. However I remain Catholic because the faith and Tradition are greater than any one who occupies the see of Peter. While I would love to love my Pope like I did Benedict , I won’t leave the one and true faith.
The Christian Church is filled with sinners, some much worse than others. But that doesn’t make it any less real, true or beautiful. The light remains lit for you, Thales, and I pray that you come home. For all the dirt and garbage in the Catholic Church, She existed back at the time of the apostles. Go deep into history an you will find her. Go deep into the Bible and you will find her formal beliefs (despite the blatherings of some of her priests, bishops, cardinals and even popes). And you will find religion, and not “spirituality”.
But I didn’t drop by to preach to you, but rather to share with you in kind. Here’s an Aramaic chanting of Psalm 51 – I’m sure this echoes in Heaven:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=locW-9S00VU
And I will continue to enjoy your 2nd musical selection…
Chant is one of the most soul-rending forms of music there is; it rises like layered wings of richly colored double-damask, deep-woven, up out of stone-encompassed shadows into the pure simplicity of starlight on Night. Truly, it opens the heart of the believer more fully to the mystery of God.
You make very valid points regarding beauty and many Protestant churches lacking in that, although not all. I visited a conservative Anglican church that sings Psalms.
Regardless, the reason you shouldn’t go to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy has nothing to do with the Marxist pope. It has to do with the lack of the gospel. It doesn’t matter how pretty your service is if the gospel isn’t being preached.
I was wondering if you could do a post on the calls to Christians to just let any immigration in (“children being ripped from their parents”) and your old concept of weaponized empathy. While I’m not sure what the appropriate thing to do is in regards to refugees, I also have an uneasy feeling that we are getting played.
You might be happy to know that the traditionalist orders, who hold to the Latin Mass, are the one group in the Catholic Church that is growing. There are Latin Masses being said daily all over the US, and they reject the modernization of the Church. All is not lost. The Pope is not the Church. And we’ve survived worse Popes that Jorge Bergolio.