SAINT JOSEPH CHURCH, MACON, GEORGIA, SOLEMN FAURE’S REQUIEM FOR ALL SOULS’ DAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2015 IN THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM—YOURS TRULY, CELEBRANT

 Please note what I post below the video which I posted originally on the 2015 post about technical glitches in this video…

I thank Lovel Miguel who digitized this video for us. Unfortuately due to a technical glitch, the first 17 minutes of the video did not have sound!!!! Yes, you read that correctly, no sound for the first 17 minutes of the video. So Lovel in this technical brilliance spliced Faure's Introit from our last year's Faure's Requiem into this years.

Unfortunately, the subdeacon chanting the First Lesson is not heard as the splice from last year goes immediately from the Introit to the cantor's chanting of the Gradual! We were not able to dub the chanting of the first lesson. Last year's Dies Irae continues following the Gradual although I think somewhere along the way the Dies Irae picks up with this year's. The chanting of the Gospel by the deacon  is actually this year's plus all that follows.

MODERN MASS LITURGICAL SUBJECTIVITY REIGNS AND FOR THOSE WHO NOTICE, JUST A HANDFUL OF LITURGICAL NERDS, IT DRIVES US CRAZY!

From the dancing crucifix to the number and arrangement of candles, modern papal Masses are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. There are no rules, just subjectivity. This is the fatal flaw or wonderful gift, depending on your subjective evaluation, of the Modern Mass. 

My question has to do with whose subjectivity is it? The pope’s? The Master of Ceremonies? 

For the most part, under Pope Francis, the altar arrangement at St. Peter’s remained basically that of Pope Benedicts with the candles more angled and to the side and a smaller central crucifix.

During Pope Francis’ dying, the papal MC began to play around with the placement of the crucifix. Sometimes it was the Processional Cross placed to the side of the altar but not always and this continued into Pope Leo’s Masses, although the use of the processional Cross seems to have fallen  out of favor as the altar cross. 

It appears, at this point, that the most solemn arrangement is for high events, like canonizations where the huge candles are used, seven of them, and a huge crucifix. The crucifix is on the left side of the altar and the episcopal candles on the right. 

Last week’s Mass with university personnel (the last two photos below) saw the very short candlesticks with a short but odd central cross which seems to be the arrangement and choice of candles when no Mass is being celebrated there as the vandals have knocked off the nicer arrangement for tourism. 

At that Mass, when the pope approached the altar at the beginning of Mass to incense it, he looked toward his left for the tall crucifix and realized the one odd one dead center was what he should incense first. He’s done that a few times, looking for the crucifix as it has appeared in different locations. 

Here are some of the examples of the subjectivity of the Modern Mass and its altar arrangement and now on steroids at papal Masses:

THERE ARE LITURGICAL SPECTACLES AND THEN THERE ARE LITURGICAL SPECTACLES…ONE POISONOUS THE OTHER NOT

 Recent celebrations of the Mass, all are spectacles: