A hostile takeover in the Vatican's institute of sacred music?
March 30, 2012
The Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, long a bastion of the Church’s musical tradition, is being taken over by new leadership that will ignore that tradition, complains Sandro Magister of L’Espresso. The new regime, he argues, will be completely out of sympathy with the liturgical preferences of Pope Benedict XVI; yet curiously the Pontiff is not intervening to stop the takeover.
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Posted by: -
Mar. 31, 2012 4:15 AM ET USA
No reason why the 'schola cantorum' should sing chant without organ? What about 'because they should be able to do it without' or 'because that's the way it should be sung'? If they go flat, that's a problem, but an organ-crutch isn't the way to fix it.
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Posted by: Athelstan -
Mar. 30, 2012 11:37 PM ET USA
This is very disturbing news. Just when there seems to be a true restoration of the tradition of sacred music in the Catholic Church in the United States, the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music is being subverted. I pray that the reports from L'Espresso overstate the case, and in fact turn out to be quite wrong. Let us all pray!
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Posted by: koinonia -
Mar. 30, 2012 9:48 PM ET USA
It is hard to know with certainty what is going on. Sacred Music is something that is directed to God in justice. It is man's attempt at offering to Him that which is His due, and it is consequently the best and most beautiful humanly possible. If that specific goal is supplanted by other considerations including those that are profane (secular), it is difficult to predict what lies ahead for the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music.
