Father John T. Zuhlsdorf has written a biographical essay on Monsignor Schuler on the occasion of his sixtieth anniversary.

Don Capisco thinks that friends of Father Schuler will
be interested to check this link :
www.sinfonia-sacra.de/40319.html.

The Propositions emerging from the Synod are indeed making waves. In particular, #30 interests musicians (as rendered from Italian by John Allen): "Proposition 36 suggests that in international celebrations the Mass be said in Latin, apart from the readings, the homily, and the Prayers of the Faithful, and that priests be trained from the seminary to use Latin prayers as well as Gregorian Chant. It also recommends that the faithful be educated to do so as well."

Sandro Magister comments:

The Mass Benedict XVI celebrated in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, October 23 closed the synod on the Eucharist in an exemplary manner.

It was exemplary because it offered to all a model of the liturgy which also provides guidelines for the faith, according to the ancient patristic saying: “Lex orandi, lex credendi.”

Benedict XVI chanted the Mass in Latin, in his capacity as bishop of Rome.

The Gospel was chanted in Latin, but then also in Greek immediately afterward, by an Eastern-Rite deacon. This represents the unity of the Eastern and Western Churches, which preserve their different languages, rituals, and songs.

The first two readings were proclaimed in modern languages, and the Pope delivered his homily in various languages.

The songs were all performed according to the great tradition of the Roman Church: from Gregorian chant to ancient and modern polyphony. The voices were those of the “pueri cantores” of the Sistine Chapel, and of the choir of the cathedral of Ratisbonne. The only musical instrument was the organ.

The news is good from UPI, though the English of the document in question has not been published: The Synod "recommended that priests should be trained in the seminary to celebrate mass in Latin, and to sing the Gregorian chant." This echoes John Paul II's wish as stated in his recommendations for the Year of the Eucharist.

The statement from the Synod of Bishops XI Ordinary General Assembly Synod, insofar as it impacts on liturgy, is not different in substance from what the Vatican has said for 30 or so years: there is a serious problem in the Roman Rite with the way the liturgy is rendered, and the solution is a stricter adherence to the norms. Perhaps because it comes from the Bishops Synod, it will have a greater impact this time around. There is good reason , however, to continue to hope for something more specific and more effacious than a continued accumulation of statements of the following style:

Forty years after the Second Vatican Council we wanted to examine to what extent the mysteries of the faith are adequately expressed and celebrated in our liturgical assemblies. The Synod reaffirms that the Second Vatican Council provided the necessary basis for an authentic liturgical renewal. It is necessary now to cultivate the positive fruits of this reform, and to correct abuses that have crept into liturgical practice. We are convinced that respect for the sacred character of the liturgy is transmitted by genuine fidelity to liturgical norms of legitimate authority. No one should consider himself master of the Church’s liturgy. Living faith that recognizes the presence of the Lord is the first condition for beautiful liturgical celebrations, which give a genuine “Amen” to the glory of God.

Thanks, New Liturgical Movement.

I boarded a flight to Houston yesterday, thinking I would arrive in a painless two hours, happy to be headed to the Cardinal Newman School to participate in a course introducing music directors and others the Ward Method of music instruction. High hopes were soon dashed by long lines at security checkpoints, extreme heat, an overly crowded plane and the flight attendant's finally telling me that there was no room for my bag in the overhead bins; I would have to turn it over to her so she could check it in. What could I do but offer up my bag and the greater part of my disgruntlement. In the last few seconds before bag was whisked away I was able to reach in and retrieve my laptop and my Gregorian Missal.

The plane finally took to the air, and after the seatbelt sign was turned off, I began to look around for things to do. I had already taken a couple of minutes to thumb through the magazine in the pocket in front of me, and was disappointed to have seen that the only classical offerings on the in flight menu were Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man and something else just as forgettable. The young girl next to me, who had also managed to hang on to her laptop, was deeply involved in a beauty and shopping game of a virtual variety. Fascinating as it was, it didn’t hold my interest long. My pretzels were gone, and so was my plastic glass of water. What next? I had left my copy of Ratzinger's God and the World at home in order to save space and travel with a carry on only.

Then I remembered my Gregorian Missal.

I opened my well worn volume to the propers for Sunday next. Mode VII. This Communio should be a snap. Sitting near the back of the aircraft with engines roaring turned out to be the ideal place to sing. No one noticed. No one flinched. I was not heard.

Before long I had been swept into the beauty and mystery of the chant. Ten, or twenty minutes, or perhaps an hour had gone by, and I had sung through the all of the propers for that day, had returned to old favorites, and had even sung through some of the Credos to see which might be most viable in a small parish setting. One can open a book like this and become engaged and involved in each and every page, with no clear sense of starting or stopping; with no perceived need, in fact, to be saddled in any way to the time and constraints of our daily lives. Chant is prayer.

The captain’s voice startled me when he came on to announce the beginning of our descent into Houston. I raised my eyes from the book and became conscious for the first time of my right hand as it wound its way through the air around me, all in perfect imitation of the lines I had been singing. I looked out of the window and saw houses and streets below, and felt a sense of a reawakening to the physical world.

What had begun as an attempt at filling my time in a moment of inconvenience had become an occasion of Grace: one of the many offered us in our lives as Catholics and more specifically, in our lives as Catholic musicians.

Those who are concerned about the state of the Roman Rite will find Dom Gregory Dix's The Shape of the Liturgy (Dacre Press: London, 1978; ISBN 0 7136 0389 5) to be indispensable to their understanding of matters liturgical. Dix, an Anglican Benedictine monk of Nashdom Abbey, discusses in splended fashion the development of Christian liturgical tradition around a four action shape: offertory, thanksgiving, fraction, and communion.

Dix observes that Christ, in commanding us to "do this," did not give specific directives on how the Eucharist ought to be done, but rather left its exact development to His Church. In addition, he makes the welcome point that the Eucharist is not the re-enactment of the Last Supper, but rather the anamnesis of the entire Paschal Mystery. "Doing this," then, means not only the eating of a meal, but also involves a liturgical rite which expresses the entirety of Christ's Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, as well as the anticipation of the Parousia.

This Mystery, Dix says, is expressed primarily in the four action shape, and it is indeed the action which is most important. The accompanying prayers of the liturgy, e.g. those at the offertory, according to Dix, are secondary to the action, though certainly not unimportant, and their function is to lend an explanation of the meaning of the action that is taking place.

In the process of elucidating the shape of the liturgy, the author discusses many fascinating developments in the history of Christian worship, but the reader should be aware that, having been first published in 1945, this book contains some outdated scholarship. This unfortunate fact does not, however, compromise the overall integrity of the work. It should also be noted that Dix does not succumb to archaeologism but in fact supports the organic nature of liturgical development.

Throughout his book, Dix emphasizes the importance of the corporate aspect of the act of Christian worship. It is not a surprise, then, that he takes a dim view, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, of a number of late Medieval liturgical developments and asserts that the prevalence of the Low Mass, along with the popular devotions of the laity, factored greatly into the 16th century Protestant Reformation. He is, at the same time, quite critical of the Protestant "said" liturgies which disrupt completely the four action shape. Cranmer's Zwinglian-influenced liturgies are particularly criticized by this monk of Anglo-Catholic tendencies.

Every word of this 752-page tome weighs a pound, and the Catholic reader must sift through some of the points carefully, particularly with respect to Dix's Eucharistic theology, which is sometimes quite faulty. Therefore, I would not recommend this book to any Catholic who has less than a thorough understanding of this subject.

Nevertheless, the four action shape described by this good monk ought to be one of the basic elements of contemporary liturgical discussion. For example, applying Dix's principles specifically to the Roman Rite, we could ask the following. Do the present offertory prayers of the 1969 Missale Romanum express the meaning of that liturgical action? Do the words and manner of administration at Holy Communion express the meaning of the reception of the Eucharist? Are each of these parts in harmony with the whole of Roman liturgical tradition?

It wouldn't hurt, either, for modern liturgists to consult Dix's depiction of the liturgy of the sub-apostolic period, which shows the participatio actuosa of the faithful of that time to be of a quite solemn nature. Those early Christians most definitely did not strive after a party-like disposition or the atmosphere of a hotel ballroom meeting, both of which can be found at Masses today.

In the closing chapter, Dix eloquently sums up his own book and documents how Christians throughout two millenia have fulfilled the Lord's command to "do this for the anamnesis of (Him)":

"Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth.........The sheer stupendous quantity of the love of God which this ever repeated action has drawn from the obscure christian multitudes through the
centuries is in itself an overwhelming thought." (pp. 744-5)

There is now a new edition of this work available, published by Continuum International, ISBN
0826479421, which can be found on amazon.com. It is enthusiastically recommended.

A Solemn High Mass to celebrate the
Sixtieth Anniversary of the Ordination to the Holy Priesthood of
Monsignor Richard Joseph Schuler

Ten a.m. on Sunday, October 30, 2005
at the Church of Saint Agnes
548 Lafond Avenue
Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Pauken Mass by Joseph Haydn will be sung by
the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale with orchestra