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Fr. Robert C. Pasley is a priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, and rector of Mater Ecclesiae Mission, the equivalent of a non-territorial parish, where he celebrates daily Mass and the other Sacraments according to the Traditional Latin Rite. He has been a member of the Latin Liturgy Association for over 25 years and is on the board of directors of the Church Music Association of America. In September 2004 he was installed as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.

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Since the mid-1960's, Catholics in North America have witnessed "folk Masses" with acoustical guitars, "polka Masses" with accordion, and "Teen Life Masses" accompanied by amateur rock bands. Did the Second Vatican Council call for this sort of experimentation? What do the conciliar documents actually say about liturgical music?

Fr. Robert Pasley: No, they did not call for this type of music. The documents talk about allowing new compositions in the vernacular. Even before they say that, however, they declare that Gregorian chant has pride of place in the liturgy. They also approve of other works of our heritage, polyphonic choral music especially, which is closest to chant. Even compositions for choir and orchestra are permitted, as long as they don't detract from the Mass and become a performance in themselves.

The most recent official Vatican document on church music was in 1967, Musicam Sacram, and that never mentions anything about rock bands or guitar Masses. It actually sets down priorities as to what parts of the Mass are to be sung. First of all, if anything is sung at the Mass, it should be the opening sign of the cross, the priest's orations, the responses between the priest and the people, the Gospel acclamation, the preface dialogue, the preface and the Holy, Holy, the Lord's Prayer, and the dismissal. The second degree of singing is then added, which is the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Agnus Dei, then the Creed, and the prayer of the faithful. Finally, the third degree of singing is added, and this includes the song at the entrance and communion processions (by song it means the introit and communion of the Roman Gradual, or the Psalms in the Graduale Simplex, or the entrance and communion antiphon found in the Roman Missal), The songs after the readings (the Responsorial Psalm, or the Gradual or Tract from the Graduale Romanum), the Offertory verse from the Graduale Romanum, and the readings, including the Gospel. The document says that if all these things have been accomplished, then hymns may be admitted.

Almost everything mentioned in Musicam Sacram was ignored and the thing that was the exception and [supposed to be] admitted last, the hymn, is the first and only thing that is ever sung. It has brought in all types of secular music and tonality that were never even envisioned.


Isn't it a contradiction to expect Gregorian chant and polyphonic choral music at Mass and at the same time to demand active participation on the part of the congregation?

Fr. Pasley: Well, it depends on what you mean by active participation. The words of the Council have come into English as "active participation", but the [Latin] words are participatio actuosa or "actual participation". When they talk about that, they really are reflecting the mentality of Pius XII as expressed in his encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei [1947]. Mediator Dei says that during the Mass there must be participation of the people, that they're not just passive spectators. That participation, though, is primarily internal and secondarily external.

Even in the traditional Mass there are parts that the people could sing: for instance, the Kyrie. It's Greek, it's very simple: "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy." There would be nothing for them learn. Then the Sanctus: after a few times they would know what the Latin words mean. The same with the Agnus Dei. Perhaps the Gloria and the Creed would be a little difficult for them to understand at first, but there are two aspects to this: First of all, even in the most recent General Instruction on the Roman Missal, the "GIRM" of 2000, it states that the choir alone may sing the Gloria and the Creed. (I might add, it says that the Creed should be "sung or said" – note the priority.) The choir can sing the long Latin text, while the people can have a refrain. That's an instance of external participation. But more importantly, if the people in the pews have a translation next to the Latin, they can sit there and meditate on those words while the choir – the experts – are singing them. Most people don't have good singing voices and feel funny singing. Oh, they might sing a hymn that they're familiar with, with the support of the organ. But true active participation occurs when they're meditating, using their sense of hearing to listen, their sense of sight in reading, when they're conjoining themselves with the cantors who are trained to sing, when they're lifting their hearts up to God, so that the result is not constant activity, but actual participation. The Second Vatican Council did call for more participation, but I think that they meant more singing of the chant and the introduction of some newer sacred music that would be similar to chant, in the same spirit.


A lot of the Church's most beautiful traditional music was shelved when it became possible to celebrate Mass in the vernacular. How would you explain the hostility to music with Latin texts among some of the clergy even today?

Fr. Pasley: I think that there was a rejection of Latin as a foreign language that people didn't understand, as something too difficult and too challenging.

It was also a symbol of the past. His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote a book entitled A New Song for the Lord. In it he asks, what is this opposition that has been set up between post- and pre-Vatican II? It's as though a chasm existed between the two. Really there is supposed to be a continuity, and yet many people look at it as a break. The arch-traditionalists look at it as a break from tradition; the arch-liberals or modern-thinking priests look at it as a break with the past, but it's not supposed to be. Sometimes an ideological mentality was behind this complete rejection of Latin. It was too "formal". We live in an age when everything is supposed to be very communitarian, very informal, with no sense of anyone having separate places; it's all supposed to be common. And so the formality of Latin was viewed as a barrier. In practice, if you get rid of the Latin text and the people are not used to hearing the Latin any more, then you don't do the Latin music any more, because that is even more formal. It is part of the heritage of Western civilization, and many people through the ages have honed this down with great precision. It just doesn't go along with the "Hey, guys, I'm your buddy" mentality of the modern era. [Laughter.]


Again this year on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you celebrated a Solemn High Mass in the cathedral church of your diocese, with a trained schola cantorum [group of cantors] intoning the proper prayers in Gregorian chant and a choir of professional musicians singing Palestrina. What is the reason for this custom? How do you justify the considerable expense for this magnificent choral Mass?

Fr. Pasley: One day I was talking with the music director at Mater Ecclesiae Mission, and I said, "It's a shame that our chapel is so small; I would love to do a Mass by Haydn or Mozart. I guess we'll never be able to do that." He said, "Why don't we try to have a big choir Mass at the cathedral on a feast day when nothing else is scheduled?" Now the Assumption is a feast when everyone is down at the New Jersey shore to bless the ocean. I also thought that this would be a good way for the parish to show its connection to the diocese, and also for the diocese to recognize that we are a canonical part of it. It would be a Mass of thanksgiving for the establishment of Mater Ecclesiae Mission, and it would be an opportunity to highlight sacred music. So I went to Bishop DiMarzio, the ordinary of Camden Diocese at the time, and he just loved the idea. That was in 2001, and this year we celebrated our fifth annual Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving.

When Mater Ecclesiae Mission was founded, one of our reasons for existing, one of our apostolates, was to foster good liturgical music according to what the Vatican wants. And really, what Vatican II says is not very different from what Pius XII said, except for a little more emphasis on the vernacular; it's pretty much the mainstream of teaching coming from Pius X.

Now I have always loved chant and been involved in church music. And so when I was appointed as rector of Mater Ecclesiae Mission, which formerly was a Latin Mass chapel, I thought that this would be a good vehicle, because Latin is used intensively and therefore we can use the traditional music. We already had people attending who were interested in the chant, so we have our own schola and people in the community who like to join in the singing. But for the choral music, we do put out an expense to hire professional singers.

We feel that our people do give to charity. They give to the Knights of Columbus, who collect food and goods for the poor and the mentally handicapped. We make sure that one of our goals every year is to give generously to the Bishop's charity fund, and we have even exceeded our goal every year that we have participated. We also make sure that we provide money for needs around the parish, janitorial maintenance, material aid to the poor, and so forth. We believe that we have taken care of those duties (we can always do more, everybody can). Yet we feel that in this age, because of the poverty of liturgical music, we need to serve God and serve the Church by making an investment in good liturgical music. The Church spends money on social programs, administration, vestments, architecture and art; I think that it should also put its money into the greatest art, the one that has an integral part in the liturgy, and that is sacred music. All the other arts are auxiliary and help us to worship, but only one art is called an ars integra, something that is part of the liturgy itself, and that is music.


In what other ways does Mater Ecclesiae Mission help to preserve traditional liturgical music?

Fr. Pasley: We have Gregorian chant every Sunday at Mass. We also have a system of getting donations for special feast days throughout the year. We celebrate from 20 to 25 feast days, for example, in the Fall, St. Michael the Archangel, the Feast of the Holy Rosary, Christ the King, All Saints and All Souls Day, Christmas. We make sure that we have special choir Masses for those days. We ask people to give a donation, which we stipulate in the bulletin, to have a choir Mass offered for their intention, and we have musicians come in to sing the Mass.

We have also started a children's Gregorian chant choir, directed by Nicholas Beck, our music director and a recent graduate of Westminster Choir College. About ten young people sing in that choir. We also are about to begin our own adult choir. They have been doing a magnificent job singing hymns at the Low Mass at 9:00 on Sundays, and now they're going to start learning chant and other choral Masses, so that we can use their voices more. We're also building up a liturgical music library. I also hope to make a connection with the great library of sacred music that Msgr. Schuler, at St. Agnes Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, has formed. I'd like to see what we can do to utilize that.


A Tridentine Mass association in Europe called "Juventutem" sent a delegation to the 2005 World Youth Day and celebrated a Traditional Latin Mass in nearby Düsseldorf every day that week. Do you expect the Latin liturgy to flourish during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI?

Fr. Pasley: I hope so. So far there have been many good signs. The Holy Father's first speech to the Cardinals after he was elected Pope was in Latin. The Mass of his installation and the earlier funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II were both beautiful, very dignified and very moving. The translation of the body from the Sala Clementina to St. Peter's Basilica was just stunning, with the Miserere and all the chant being sung, so I was really very pleased with that. I know that Benedict XVI has already said that people should know basic prayers in Latin. So I do think that some wonderful things will happen. Again, he has to work against the tide. And yet, just as St. Benedict, the founder of monasticism, started little communities that began to change Europe, I think that there are little communities starting up all over the world that are going to do the same thing.