A comment on the Holy Father’s Mass at Nationals Stadium

Click HERE for a link to the USCCB blog entry on this Mass.

It is my understanding that people are posting comments on that blog about the Mass, but the Moderator is removing them as quickly as they are posted. I fully understand moderating comments. I remove comments too. But not all of them! I let criticisms through all the time. Close the combox, for pity’s sake and stop pretending!

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I don’t know precisely what is planned for the Mass in NYC. Perhaps it is the intention of the organizers to counter-balanced some of what we saw and heard in Washington.

I have live feed from the USCCB (they talk way too much) and also CTV.

The greatest gift that Vatican TV or Radio, EWTN, or the USCCB could give us is an option to stream live feed without ommentary. Then they could chatter away on the regular stream.

Some of the music for the Mass in Nationals Stadium was simply dreadful. For example, the Responsorial Psalm… well… it reminded me of something one might hear during an episode of The Twilight Zone taking place at a carnival.

In no way am I faulting the musicians, who were clearly well-trained and, obviously, focused for this event. They did their part, I think.

I must ask why the very best music was reserved for before the Mass began, for example, when the emense choir sang Tu es Petrus or the whole stadium sang Grosser Gott wir loben Dich? Tremendous! But as Mass went on, it was fairly clear that they got all the obviously Catholic music out of the way at the beginning.

The Mass seemed over consciously multi-cultural. To my mind, it was terribly self-conscious. I had the feeling that this was a stage event, a show moving from one episode to another, at least until the Eucharistic Prayer began. Then it settled down a bit.

The distribution of Communion was, under the circumstances, fairly ordlerly, I suppose. Communion was given in the hand even by the Holy Father. The yellow umbrellas over the priests with the ciboria not only marked the station but acted as a kind of ombrellino.

But what was that horrible caterwalling during Communion? It might be partly because we were hearing the live feed and it was overly amplified, but… oh my.

It is almost as if the organizers of this Mass had never read a single thing of what Joseph Ratzinger has written about sacred music and liturgy.

I am not bothered by some Spanish or other enthic expressions, but this was so self-conscious, so multi-culturally in your face, so much like a show tune review.

Then there was a token handful of dirt thrown out with a phrase from Ubi caritas.

It was terribly distracting. It was distracting to hear Gregorian chant, frankly. The whole thing was distracting.

Obviously the theme of the whole thing was "new Pentecost" thing, with all sorts of languages and tongues. But… for pity’s sake.

Even when the great Placido Domingo sand Panis angelicus, every bit as well as one would desire, it still gave me the impression that this was the next moment in the review.

At the end of Mass I was somewhat amazed to hear that the Pontiff was to bless a cornerstone for a new High School to be called "John Paul the GREAT". (ADDENDUM: The USCCB website doesn’t say John Paul "the Great." But I thought I heard this announced during the Mass. Did my ears deceive me?) So, this seems to be a sort of approbation of that title. I wonder how this fits with the cause for beatification.