Video: Larry Chapp Interviews Bp James Conley of Lincoln About the Reform of the Liturgy.

For a broader look at the Diocese of Lincoln, in which I'm blessed to live, may I direct you to Why Aren't Other Dioceses Looking to Lincoln?

From Fr Z's Blog

You will find this video quite interesting. Larry Chapp interviews Bp. James Conley of Lincoln about the reform of the liturgy.

Please let me know your high points. For me: communion rails, communion on the tongue, the Roman Canon. They talk about MUSIC.  There are great points about “New Evangelization”.  Toward the end, “liturgical principles” and “sentimentality”.

Listening to these guys talk … one would think they’ve been reading this blog.

They got the issue about “concert Masses” dead wrong, but that’s about the only place where they put their feet wrong.

BTW, you two, you got the quote of Augustine about music wrong. Augustine did not write, “He who sings prays twice”.

He wrote something similar: “cantare amantis est… Singing belongs to one who loves” (s. 336, 1 – PL 38, 1472). This is the citation for qui bene cantat bis orat in the primitive edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 1156.

In the edition of the CCC we are sent to footnote n. 26 (oddly, this is note 21 in the newer English edition, which adds a confer reference to Col. 3:16 – which is not in the Latin CCC). Latin CCC 1156, note 26 reads: Cf. Sanctus Augustinus, Enarratio in Psalmum 72, 1: CCL 39, 986 (PL 36, 914).

The Corpus Christianorum Latinorum (CCL – a vast series of volumes of Latin authors) vol. 39 shows us what Augustine really said:

Qui enim cantat laudem, non solum laudat, sed etiam hilariter laudat; qui cantat laudem, non solum cantat, sed et amat eum quem cantat. In laude confitentis est praedicatio, in cantico amantis affectio…For he who sings praise, does not only praise, but also praises joyously; he who sings praise, is not only singing, but also loving Him whom he is singing about/to/for. There is a praise-filled public proclamation (praedicatio) in the praise of someone who is confessing/acknowledging (God), in the song of the lover (there is) there is deep love.

Augustine is saying that when the praise is of God, then something happens to the song of the praiser/love that makes it more than just any kind of song.

The object of the song/love in a way becomes the subject.

Something happens so that the song itself becomes Love in its manifestation of love of the one who truly is Love itself.