Correspondence
Correspondence Trilogy tribute Winston-Salem, N.C. To the Editors: We found the resurrection trilogy in your issue of April 5 beautiful and meaningful, especially the Melkite Rites of...
...To the Editors: I would be less than candid if I did not admit a vested interest in the discussion of contemporary Catholic hymnody by Thomas Day and his correspondents [March 8 and May 3...
...This point is admittedly a technical one...
...What keeps the biblical writers from falling into solipsisms and spiritual privatizations is not the use of particular pronouns but the context of their use...
...Was it not at Mass that one said the rosary and other prayers privately and silently before God...
...I work full time as director of liturgy and music at the Paulist Center in Boston...
...status" and "statute," while similar in sound, are legally entirely distinct concepts, as my article attempted to explain...
...We wish that next Easter might find us sharing the worship of that Eastern Rite congregation...
...There is a special depth of joy, a sense of immediacy, revealed in the prayers and procession described, with a spirit of hope and renewed faith in all that resurrection means to a pilgrim church...
...Above all, his message is a clear challenge for all who serve the Black Catholic communities, and to us as leadership, to enable, challenge, and raise up indigenous leadership in the mission of the church...
...If that were so, then one would have to conclude that the Holy See did not "recognize the existence" of the U.S...
...But while acknowledging essential "philosophical and political" differences between the Soviet system and ours, I am inclined to see national security interests and not ideology as the primary factor motivating Soviet behavior...
...He accuses the "Kitsch revival" of snobbery and elitism...
...for close to a century (and of England for a much longer period) and still "refuses to recognize" quite a number of palpably existing countries today...
...Both Irani and Fr...
...I usually point out that Catholics sang, and sang well, but not at Mass...
...The problem I would have with both of their interpretations of the pope's words is that they posit on the text a causal link between the birth of the State of Israel and the plight of Arab Palestinian refugees when, in fact, the pope himself notes only a temporal one:'' at the same time a sad condition was created...
...ROBERT C. ESTES Missing the mark Washington, D.C...
...On the one hand, Day attacks contemporary texts, on the other he is inveighing against the churches and people who pray with these texts...
...And yes, the search for arms control may well be accompanied by confrontation and crisis in other arenas...
...To the Editors: The comments by Richard J. Krickus [May 31] on my article entitled "Yuri's Usurpers" [March 22] are both thoughtful and thoughtprovoking...
...Louis-Jesuits, Isaac Watts, or Ambrose of Milan, are only partially dependent on their texts for their meaning...
...Should your readers desire more information about ARCC, they should write to P.O...
...The Hebrew Scriptures, in particular, have a pronounced sense that the individual is never isolated but forever in covenant relationship with God and the other members of the covenant community...
...It seems far too early to rule out of order a whole genre of liturgical hymnody simply because some very early examples are weak either textually, musically, or both...
...Has Day really avoided this in his own thought...
...George Irani's letter of April 19 on my article "The Pope and Israel [January 11...
...Thus, underlying a rather serious article is a tone of ridicule directed not only at the texts but at the Commonweal: 414 communities who employ them...
...If hymns are heartfeltly sung by congregations, if texts direct us to God as members of God's covenant community, if they open believers to each other rather than close them off in isolated cells, then are they guilty of the charges Day brings against them...
...Lines such as these not only undercut what could have been a serious critique of contemporary hymnody, but also veil a hostility which goes well beyond textual criticism...
...Meaning is also derived from context...
...To the Editors: We found the resurrection trilogy in your issue of April 5 beautiful and meaningful, especially the Melkite Rites of Easter portrayed in "He Tramples Death" by Dr...
...Liturgical hymns, be they of the St...
...Happily, as of 1980, an organization exists that is dedicated to struggling for such a goal...
...Edward Flannery [March 22] (from different points of view) wish to underline the second sentence of the pope's 1980 homily (not "speech") at Otranto, even though my article did specifically refer to it...
...Contemporary composers have done a great service in enabling Catholic people to once again reclaim the communal dimensions of worship through song...
...The Holy See does not call for an "internationally guaranteed, special status" for Jerusalem as it did prior to 1967...
...I am especially reminded of these boyhood memories when at workshops I am told,''Catholics just don't like to sing...
...To the Editors: For the record, I would like to respond briefly to Dr...
...REV...
...His thoughts are provocative at times, but speak truth...
...EUGENE J. FISHER An accurate picture Washington, D.C...
...As one who grew up in New York in the fifties, I can still remember my earliest introduction to church music largely in terms of the Monday Miraculous Medal novena and Sunday afternoon public rosary and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament...
...Such a conclusion, I would affirm, does not reflect the subtleties of international law...
...JEFFREY W. HAHN Action from below Philadelphia, Pa...
...To focus on texts such as "They'll Know We Are Christians" and "Whatsoever You Do" as characteristic of contemporary hymnody is a little akin to parents who keep speaking of their children as infants long after they have grown into adulthood...
...This, I would assert, is their main contribution to liturgical renewal in our generation...
...While one may quibble about particular texts or melodies, it should be noted that contemporary compositions are primarily designed for active, con gregational participation and not for performance...
...Father Braxton, has, I think, touched the heart of the matter and gives an accurate picture of us as black and Catholic...
...Irani's second point depends on whether the sole form of de jure or de facto recognition is that of the exchange of ambassadors on the highest level...
...JACQUELINE E. WILSON Yes, Catholics sang Boston, Mass...
...I am also a composer of contemporary hymnody...
...PATRICK CONNOR, S.V.D...
...I also think the professor has been unfair in focusing his critical attention on early compositions of the "contemporary" genre, many of which are no longer even used because of their textual inadequacy or passe quality...
...KEN MELTZ No wishing it away Villanova, Pa...
...Irani's final point misses the mark entirely...
...That same sweet sentimentality, mat same tender emotionalism of the old kitsch hymns is experiencing a revival today...
...F. Ellen Weaver...
...But from the important evidence adduced in Flannery's letter it would seem to me to have been very wise on the pope's part to have refrained as he did from entering the highly complex historical question of who did what to whom to "cause" the movement of a minority of the Arab community from the boundaries of the newly created state...
...We apparently agree that the goal of military superiority over the USSR is illusory...
...What saddens the reader at this point is not that Day is critical of certain liturgical texts, but that he appears so estranged from and hostile to a different style of worship...
...Day objects to texts which use the first person singular pronoun...
...To think that competition between the Soviet Union and the United States would disappear if the two sides were more ideologically homogeneous ignores the evaluation of polycentrism in both East and West (especially the relations between Communist Russia and Communist China...
...In one of the great ironies of liturgical history, the Mass had long since become (Continued on page 414) Commonweal: 386 Correspondence (Continued from page 386) the arena of private devotions...
...To the Editors: I read the article by Father Edward Braxton ["Authentically Black, Truly Catholic, February 8] and have enthusiastically passed it on to many leaders in my constituency here in the Washington Archdiocese, and to my colleagues who work in the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center...
...MRS...
...Box 3932, Philadelphia, Pa., 19146...
...I think Day is a bit too harsh in his reading of the devotional material and history...
...Nonetheless, having admitted my particular interest and vantage point, I would still like to respond to several of the points raised...
...Yet, even a cursory glance at the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, will reveal that such use of personal language is close to the heart of our biblical heritage...
...This, it seems to me, is at least a starting point for responding to the issue raised by Day...
...This is one of the first thorough efforts to write a "State of Black Catholic America, 1984...
...Indeed," he writes, "what we have is music for the trained soloist or group — those warm, wonderful people who are always conspicuously displayed up front, thriving on attention...
...Rather it calls for a "special statute" (per peculiare statutum), internationally guaranteeing the religious plurality of the city...
...In any event, those Arabs that remained have certainly fared much better in Israel than their counterparts who placed themselves in the hands of Arab governments, which still refuse them even basic citizenship...
...To the Editors: Indeed, "Boff is onto something big," when, as you write ["The Natural Font of Authority," May 3], he argues for a ' 'major decentralized reconstruction of church order.'' This devoutly to be wished consummation will not occur without massive action "from below" in the church...
...It is ARCC — the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church — and it lists on its board some of the best-known names in American Catholicism, names like Gerard Sloyan, Teresa Kane, Sidney Callahan, Denis Geaney, James Coriden, et al...
...Devotional practices, such as novenas and Benediction, on the other hand, provided the real arena for community prayer, and despite their shortcomings, devotional hymns forged a spirit and sense of community long absent from the official liturgy...
...The real "flight from reality" which the writer mentions is to be found among those who think that international peace would result if only the Soviet Union weren't Communist...
...Professor Day compares recent liturgical compositions to the devotional hymns popular in the earlier part of the century: "The spirit of the old kitsch novena hymns lives on, stronger than ever, in the parish folk Mass, in the gentle pieces by singing priests and nuns, and in a large number of newer hymns...
...I would like to suggest that Catholic devotional hymnody of the period, however mawkish and sentimental, did not privatize Catholic life but rather tended to sustain a sense of community and collective spirituality...
Vol. 112 • July 1985 • No. 13
