In his 5 November decree, McKnight wrote "It is now clear that an authentically synodal process of greater consultation did not occur prior to its promulgation".

He said he had ordered a "more comprehensive consultation with the relevant parties within the diocese" related to sacred music.

The move will now include the views of musicians, music ministers and "everyone else who has a perspective on the music used in liturgies across the diocese".

He is looking to have a decision by August 2025.

"I am excited about moving forward with an open mind and an open heart" McKnight says.

"Music is such an important part of who we are as Catholics … I am eager to hear from everyone, in a synodal process of deep listening, as we embark on this process together."

Through this, McKnight aims to determine how best to use sacred music to encourage active liturgy participation.

Forbidden hymns back for now

In his decree of October 24, McKnight listed a dozen commonly used contemporary hymns that were to be "absolutely forbidden" in the diocese after the end of the month.

He obtained that list from Father Daniel Merz, a diocesan pastor and chairman of the diocesan liturgical commission. After several years of research and consultations with priests ministering in the diocese, Merz recommended banning the hymns.

McKnight's new decree notes it is "important to recognise that some hymns in current distribution may not be appropriate for use in Catholic liturgies".

Unlike his October decree, the new one does not include the names of any of the previously banned hymns.

Instead, it describes the criteria set by the US bishops' Committee on Doctrine that must be considered when determining whether a hymn is suitable for the liturgy.

McKnight acknowledges the "spirited discussion" on social media and various media outlets following the publication of the banned hymn list.

Banned composers stay banned

The new decree retains a diocesan ban on the use of any music composed by persons who "have been found by his or her diocesan bishop or competent authority to be credibly accused of sexual abuse".

It specifically mentions hymns and music by David Haas, Cesaréo Gabarain and Ed Conlin.

"It is vital that we ensure the greatest care be taken to prevent scandal from marring the beautiful celebration of the Eucharist" McKnight noted.

Source

• CNA

The organisation says the October conference will celebrate the Catholic Church's musical treasure.

It says the weekend conference aims to help and give tools to anyone involved in a music ministry.

According to the Catholic Catechism, when a person sings, they pray twice.

"Address . . . one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart." The person "who sings prays twice." (Number 1156.)

Keen on beauty in the Liturgy, Pope Francis recently said in a letter that the liturgical elements - aesthetic and artistic features surrounding the liturgy must foster prayer and a sense of communion.

Quoting the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium 112, the organising group says the musical tradition of the Universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art.

It says the main reason for this is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy."

In 1963 Sacrosanctum Concilium of the Second Vatican Council directed that "bishops and other pastors of souls must be at pains to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs.

"To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs.

"Full and active participation of the people is a recurring theme in the Vatican II document.

"To achieve this fulsome congregational participation, great restraint in introducing new hymns has proven most helpful."

On February 21, Francis further tightened the screws on Catholics over the use of traditional Latin Mass.

He rebuked bishops who had allowed it to be said in parishes without previous permission from the Vatican.

The Auckland Latin Mass Chaplaincy operates with permission from the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, Stephen Lowe.

A panel of experts in liturgy and sacred music from New Zealand and abroad has been selected to help conference attendees with their music ministry - regardless of the attendees' personal experience.

Speakers' panel

• Rev. Fr Jeremy Palman (NZ): Jeremy was ordained in 2014 and has been serving in the Diocese of Auckland ever since. He is currently the Parish Priest of Holy Family Parish.
• Rev. Fr Antony Sumich, FSSP (NZ): Antony was ordained in 2008 and has worked in Nigeria, Canada, US & NZ. He speaks English, Croatian, French, German and is learning Maori. He is currently the chaplain for the Auckland Latin Mass Chaplaincy.
• Helen Tsang (NZ): Helen will share her testimony on her conversion to the Catholic faith. Helen's conversion to the Catholic faith is due to the Church's beautiful church.
• Ronan Reilly (AUS): Ronan is one of the founders of the Australian Sacred Music Association. Besides travelling widely to teach schools and about their musical heritage, he is the choirmaster of St. John Henry Newman Parish in Melbourne.
• Dr Robert Loretz (NZ): Robert is the former Head of Music in Massey High School, Auckland. He is described as "an extraordinary speaker and an accomplished church musician".

Source

• Auckland Latin Mass Chaplaincy
• Reuters
• CathNews
• Sacrosanctum concilium
• Catechism of the Catholic Church

A small, but quite significant part of that spiritual nuclear winter has been the profound collapse of Sacred Music.

Votaries of the "spirit of Vatican II" (in today's au courant vernacular, "the New Paradigm") knew well the power of music in liturgy.

If their "reimagining" of Christianity was to settle its roots deeply in the souls of Catholics, music was the key.

They learned well the perennial wisdom of Plato when he wrote in The Republic, "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul."

Or Aristotle in The Politics:

Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore, by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and various kinds of music based on the various modes, may be distinguished by their effects on character—one, for example, working in the direction of melancholy, another of effeminacy, one encouraging abandonment, another self-control, another enthusiasm, and so on through the series.

Almost 800 years later, Boethius echoed these great giants of natural wisdom when he wrote, "Music can both establish and destroy morality. For no path is more open to the soul for the formation thereof than through the ears."

Added to these, they observed the great success that Arius enjoyed in winning the masses by composing hymns.

Whole populations found themselves praising the Arian Christ, no longer God, but only like God.

Stevedores sang these Arian hymns as they loaded cargo on ships anchored in the harbours of Alexandria, Carthage, or Thessalonica.

In this way, Arius' poisonous heresy swept over fourth-century Catholicism like a mighty tidal wave. So swift was this heretical deluge that it prompted the now famous, albeit terrifying, lament of St. Jerome, "The world awoke and found itself Arian."

For all these reasons, we could justifiably add to the venerable theological axiom lex orandi, lex credendi a new one: lex cantandi, lex credendi.

Or, more idiomatically, "We begin to believe the way that we sing."

When Catholics in a typical parish are served lounge music instead of sacred music, their souls suffer a kind of dry rot.

They experience not the "fear and trembling" of Calvary but only the wispy breezes of the musical theatre.

This is no longer religion but vaudeville.

Worse still, when the music descends to mimicking the rock concert, the soul undergoes a proportionate excitation. And not to divine things.

If a Catholic denied traditional music is not allowed to be struck to the depths by the likes of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" or Franck's "Panis Angelicus," then he is left to be drowned beneath the indulgent waves of sentimentality.

The former hymns steel the soul for supernatural contest, the latter for mindless self-absorption.

Sacred Music is the indispensable instrument of the Holy Spirit in leading souls in their march toward Heaven: it is gravity and solemnity wrapped in the stunning beauty that only music can offer.

Looking at music in general, or sacred music more particularly, we see two principles at work.

One has to do with simply being human, the other with being a Catholic.

Both reasons go directly to the soul of man and his civilisation.

For those who think narrowly, music in Church is a kind of mood setter, cute but irrelevant.

An ampler mind recognizes that music acts like an earthquake upon the soul, unleashing powerful forces for good or ill.

On a purely natural level, music is the sheen that glistens over life's quotidian dreariness.

It is a part of beauty.

Without beauty, man's life becomes flat and self-absorbed.

Music lifts man's soul out of its prosaic circumstance and sends it soaring to heights it would not know without it. Or depths. Music's power is so potent that it can arouse passions able to perform heroic actions or debased ones.

Almost twenty years ago, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to play only soft classical music throughout its Manhattan Bus Depot because psychologists had proven it would lower crime.

On the other hand, nightclub owners know to play loud, percussive music, piquing the passions and producing the emotional abandon that sells liquor and facilitates sexual license.

No human heart is exempt from racing to the stanzas of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" or any march of John Philip Sousa.

Music has its own grammar and vocabulary. Differences of language, age, and race cannot impede its impact.

Once again, such an impact was duly noted by Plato.

In The Republic, he teaches, "No change can be made in styles of music without affecting the most important conventions of society." It was exactly for this reason that he forbade music in his Republic.

As Michael Linton expresses, Plato spoke brilliantly to this subject when he taught that "music does not merely depict qualities and emotional states but embodies them."

A performer singing (or a hearer listening) "about the rage of Achilles, for instance, would not only be depicting the emotional states of anger and violence and the personal qualities of Homer's hero, but he would be experiencing those things himself."

In 1570, France's Charles IX created the Académie de Poésie et de Musique. In his lettres patents, the King declared,

It is of great importance for the morals of the citizens of a town that the music current in the country should be kept under certain laws, all the more so because men conform themselves to music and regulate their behaviour accordingly so that whenever music is disordered, morals are also depraved and whenever it is well ordered, men are well-tutored.

Music is not only integral to a full human life, but it possesses the power to shape human life; though Plato expresses it with philosophical brio, each one of us already knows this. One need only consult your own experience.

Thus, sacred music builds civilisation and ennobles character.

It does, however, even more.

When music is composed to honour the Blessed Trinity at Holy Mass, it is called Sacred.

Under that purpose, music consummates its highest end.

It not only brings man to the heights of beauty; it brings man to Beauty Itself, Almighty God.

Man is never so intoxicated than when he is surrounded by Sacred Music.

This music transforms him and pierces man's soul to the core of his being. Often, it produces contrition so profound that a man's life can take a wholly different course.

St Augustine attests to this in Book IX of The Confessions: "How I wept to hear your hymns and songs, deeply moved by the voices of Your sweetly singing Church! Their voices penetrated my ears, and with them, truth found its way into my heart; my frozen feeling for God began to thaw, tears flowed and I experienced joy and relief."

On these grounds, Mother Church has encouraged the most exquisite Sacred Music known to man.

Not only that, she has felt it her grave obligation to protect it.

The stakes could not be higher.

Man's soul hangs in the balance.

If the music is wrong, the teaching of the Church will be wrong, and men will go wrong.

So it is that in this century, the popes have devoted much energy to defining and carefully regulating the conduct of Sacred Music.

They also appreciated the corrupting forces in the last hundred years militating against dogmatic truth and trumpeting sentimentalized subjectivism.

It was this awareness that clearly inspired Pope St Pius X to promulgate his masterpiece on sacred music: Tra Le Sollecitudini, whose one-hundredth anniversary Pope John Paul II honoured with an appropriate tribute.

In that document, Pope St Pius X taught that the three properties of Sacred Music are universality, goodness of form, and holiness.

He declared that those properties are perfectly fulfilled in the Gregorian Chant of the Church.

They also become the paradigm of all Sacred Music.

They raise it above the idiosyncratic in cultural forms (universality), possess the high marks of the grand music of the ages(goodness of form), and excite in souls a hunger for God (holiness).

Pope St Pius X teaches, "The Church has constantly condemned everything frivolous, vulgar, trivial and ridiculous in sacred music—everything profane and theatrical both in the form of the compositions and in the manner in which they are executed by the musicians. Sancta sancte, holy things in a holy manner" (Tra Le Sollecitudini, # 13).

The Church's Sacred Music are the wings that carry Christ into man's soul.

Remember that when you hear choirs singing the jewels of the Church's treasury of Sacred Music. You are witness to a great moment. Culture is being changed, and starved souls are being filled with God.

Victor Hugo once remarked that a man has the power to make of his soul a sewer or a sanctuary. Music does too.

• Fr John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John's Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies.
• First published in Crisis Magazine. Republished with permission.

The Pantheon's International Organ Festival seeks to create an artistic programme that is both catechetical and an entryway to the mystery of Christ, according to the priests organizing the event. Read more

The melodies of Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers will be played on the organ this month in an effort to use beauty to reconnect people with the mystery of God.

The Pantheon's International Organ Festival seeks to create an artistic program that is both catechetical and an entryway to the mystery of Christ, according to the priests organizing the event.

"God is the perfection of beauty and every time man realizes something beautiful he participates in a certain way in the mystery of God," Msgr. Franco Sarzi Sartori said. Read more

Speaking at the weekend's international meeting of choirs in Rome on "Music in the Liturgy and in the Catechesis for the New Evangelisation," Francis said liturgical and sacred music can be a powerful instrument of evangelisation.

This is because it gives people a glimpse of the beauty of heaven, he told the over 8,000 singers and musicians from around the world at the meeting.

"Your music and your song are a true instrument of evangelisation insofar as you witness to the profoundness of the Word of God that touches the hearts of people, and allow a celebration of the sacraments, especially of the Holy Eucharist, which makes one sense the beauty of Paradise.

"Never stop this commitment [to music] ... in moments of joy and sadness, the Church is called to always be close to people, to offer them the company of faith."

Francis told those at the meeting music has the ability to make a deep impression on moments in people's lives, preserving them "as a precious memory that has marked their existence."

Others attending the meeting included Monsignor Marco Frisina who moderated the gathering.

On Saturday evening Frisina conducted the Choir of the Diocese of Rome, of which he is Director, along with a seven thousand strong polyphonic choir and orchestra.

The concert, which also featured the most representative songs of the sacred and liturgical tradition, was dedicated to St. Cecilia who is the patron saint of music.

Source

• Crux Now
• Vatican News
• Image: Crux Now

Tauranga's Colin and Stephanie Smith discovered the manuscript 10 or 12 years ago in a pile of music bought decades earlier as part of an auction lot from an estate in Christchurch. Read more

Sir James MacMillan will conduct singers in his St Anne's Mass at the 5.30pm Mass in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on 23 July.

He will speak later at the Music Centre adjacent to the church. The event runs from 4-8pm, starting with rehearsals.

A CD of MacMillan's work was recently featuring in the top ten on Radio New Zealand Concert's Classical Chart.

He has previously conducted the NZSO, but on this visit to New Zealand he is conducting the National Youth Orchestra.

"I have always enjoyed working with young musicians, and have written for them over the years in various ways. I'm always keen to find out what new music is like in the various countries I visit."

"I especially enjoy performing new work by my younger colleagues"

MacMillan was first internationally recognised in 1990. His prolific work has since been performed and broadcast around the world.

He was Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2000-2009 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie until 2013.

MacMillan composed a congregational setting of the Mass which was used when Pope Benedict XVI visited the UK to beatify Blessed John Henry Newman.

He is a committed Catholic and his music reflects his Faith, Scottish heritage, social conscience and close connection with Celtic folk music.

The Catholic Herald named him Catholic Herald's Catholic of the Year 2015.

"We are honouring him for his fight against the new secular establishments, in the United Kingdom and especially in Scotland, that mock and marginalise the Catholic faith that Sir James has always upheld, whatever his political leanings."

Source

• Catholic Diocese of Christchurch
• New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
• New Zealand Catholic
• Voxy
• Catholic Herald

Image: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

"Sometimes a certain mediocrity, superficiality and banality have prevailed, to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of liturgical celebrations," he said at the conference organized by the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Council for Culture. Read more

The first recital on Sept 10 celebrated organist and Director of Music James Tibbles' 40th year as a professional musician.

WHAT: Organ Recital Series
WHEN 6pm: Sept 10, Oct 8 , Nov 5
WHERE St Patrick's Cathedral, 43 Wyndham St, Auckland City

Read more (scroll down)

The Mass they will sing is one specially composed for them by New Zealander Andrew Baldwin.

Notre-Dame de Paris is an historic Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in Paris.

The cathedral is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, and it is among the largest and most well-known church buildings in the world.

It is part of a European tour

The concert in the Sacred Heart Cathedral was part of a series pre-tour farewell concerts that the Youth Choir is performing.

At the end of June the choir heads to Europe for its 2016 European Landmark Tour.

On the way it will stop off in Singapore to perform in the recently refurbished Victoria Concert Hall.

The Youth Choir will fly on to Prague en route to the International Festival of Academic Choirs in Pardubice in East Bohemia.

This 4-day Festival, which began 48 years ago, has been host to choirs from many countries but this will be the first time a New Zealand group has taken part.

After the Festival the youth choir will travel to France.

Before singing in Notre Dame there will be a concert in Le Quesnoy in Northern France.

It will celebrate the liberation of the town by the NZ Division in WW1 and the town's friendship with New Zealand over the last 100 years.

The choir will then go on to the UK and perform at Oxford University in the Church of Church of St Mary the Virgin, St Georges Chapel Windsor, St John's Smith Square in Westminster, Ely Cathedral and St John's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Source

• choirsnz.co.nz
• listener.co.nz
• Image: static.panoramio.com

Sacred Music Radio which plays 24 hours a day, features religious and sacred pieces of music from the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Islamic faiths, as well as music not directly connected with any specific religion.

Michael Vakil Kenton, one of the founders of the station, says: "Music has the ability to cut through cultural dividers, going beyond borders and boundaries, creating an atmosphere that can be subtle and indefinable, or joyous and transcending.

"Our vision is that, as a result, by appreciating the music of diverse faiths, people may find themselves realising their common ground." Continue reading