Not a debate blog post…but simply pointing you to another fine, informative blog post from Fr. Martin Fox, a pastor (of two parishes) in Ohio, who’s tending to liturgical matters:

As regular readers will know, I’ve taken an interest in the quality of our parish liturgies, particularly trying to have an appropriate dimension of catholicity–being part of the whole Catholic tradition, not just what has been current in recent decades.

So, we have incorporated some prayers and hymns in Latin, precisely as Vatican II called for; for my part, I try to chant the prayers as I can; we make full use of all our Catholic, “special effects” which add so much meaning to prayer, such as candles, incense, carefully executed ritual, and so forth. The music director for the two parishes I pastor has been an eager and inspiring leader in this effort; he has called together a schola which is focusing on Gregorian chant and polyphony, and it is growing; he has more men than women, and participants of all ages, including a couple in high school.
There have been some objections, and I’ve handled it several ways. I’ve given explanations, in the bulletin, from the pulpit, in conversation and letter. I gave a series of talks on Sacramentum Caritatis, the holy father’s exhortation on the Eucharist, which seemed as good a setting as any to address any neuralgic issues such as chant, incense and Latin. I’ve included exerpts from the U.S. bishops recent document, Sing to the Lord, while having some unevenness, nonetheless strongly recommends the very things we’ve been doing and therefore makes clear this isn’t just my wild hare.
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