tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post6269169518170476452..comments2024-03-24T05:54:23.612-05:00Comments on Weedon's Blog: A Conversation TodayWilliam Weedonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01383850332591975790noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-18406843745675928322011-02-22T15:46:55.190-06:002011-02-22T15:46:55.190-06:00I appreciate Mr. Garner's comments about the l...I appreciate Mr. Garner's comments about the liturgy in times of persecution. <br /><br />I'd also suggest that a problem within Lutheran circles is an over-reliance on sermon preparation. The sermon should be a preaching of the Word, not a religious speech. I would encourage a fairly simple recounting of the text, explaining difficulties, and applying the text to the listeners, a manner often used by Luther. Gimmicks, speech techniques, dramatic inventions, etc., have no place in the explication of the text and can detract from the Word of God.<br /><br />I wonder if preachers shouldn't beware of those who praise their sermons. Such praise sounds wonderful, but I sometimes wonder if memorable sermons get in the way of hearing and understanding the Word.Jim Huffmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16666507238123326223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-40652507540027659542011-02-22T08:55:05.605-06:002011-02-22T08:55:05.605-06:00To touch on something Pastor Weedon said, I think ...To touch on something Pastor Weedon said, I think an enormous benefit of having some reasonable continuity in liturgy is that it takes the pastor out of the role of having to "get it all always right." Even where the pastor errs, the use of agreed upon liturgies (hopefully in whichever setting) keeps the Faith straight.<br /><br />One of the interesting things we found in the Eastern Church is that when the Church was persecuted either under Islamic rule or under Commmunism the faith continued roughly uninhibited. Were there problems that crept up? Sure. But even where freedom to write, study, learn and catechize the Faith was severely suppressed, the liturgy carried the Faith on. I have on rare occasion seen how this works among Lutherans as well -- where the pastor lacks gifts of clarity in preaching and teaching, the liturgy fills that void. I would suggest this is a rarer problem among Lutherans because of the emphasis on good preaching, but I've been in Lutheran Divine Services where the preaching was not as good as it could have been, but the liturgy was still strong.<br /><br />Take that away, or leave it to the pastor to formulate his own liturgy according to his whim, and what happens is it is ALL dependent on the pastor -- not only the homily, but the liturgy and hymnody as well. To me, that is a real danger that is unnecessary when Lutherans maintain those rites they have been given.David Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-46159414262442101162011-02-21T19:59:47.128-06:002011-02-21T19:59:47.128-06:00For us, the Sacrament is what it is by the power o...For us, the Sacrament is what it is by the power of the Word to do what it says. This is not the case with the RCC; or, from an RCC POV, it is the case but with a different understanding of how that works out, or is mediated if you like words like that.<br /><br />The Word does what it says by a properly ordained priest doing a properly drawn up rite, by the simple doing of that work -- ex opere operato. Properly of course meaning according to the RCC. The right stuff happens, and minimally being present for that is what you do. Hence the 20 minute Mass, etc. Or even at an all out smells and bells, it is the action of Christ in this way that is paramount, and singing and speechifying and such is what Protestants do when they have lost that.<br /><br />Nonetheless, the RC experience does show us that simply the celebration of a Eucharist at not just every Sunday but very service every day does not of itself bring about liturgical fidelity and reverence or catholicity. The largely false ideas of the RCC as to how the power of the Word is mediated in the Eucharist do not change that; they may falsely understand how and bread and the fruit of the vine become the Body and Blood of Christ, but they no less than we believe that it is the Body and Blood of Christ that result. And if our understanding is correct, and I believe it is, that means that their Masses nonetheless have the Body and Blood of Christ too, so the point holds.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-49014486416930220872011-02-21T08:07:14.166-06:002011-02-21T08:07:14.166-06:00Not sure if the RC example makes a point for or ag...<i>Not sure if the RC example makes a point for or against. Were it not for the Eucharist at every RC Mass, their services might well be even worse.</i><br /><br />In a Lutheran context perhaps not. In the RC context the liturgical movement as it played out has been far less than successful. Catholics are not adhering to their own church's teaching. Confession (oops, pardon me, the "Sacrament of Reconciliation") has crashed and burned and the understanding of the Real Presence needs some heavy review.<br /><br />That, plus the fact that every Catholic is under obligation to "hear Mass", even if he/she doesn't receive Communion continues the Roman error of the Eucharist as a sacrifice on behalf of the living and the dead.<br /><br />My husband still remembers the 20 minute low masses he used to attend, in and out with all due haste. Not much room for breaking open the Word there, huh?<br /><br />ChristineAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-68041189365299689452011-02-21T07:43:53.723-06:002011-02-21T07:43:53.723-06:00Christine,
Not sure if the RC example makes a po...Christine, <br /><br />Not sure if the RC example makes a point for or against. Were it not for the Eucharist at every RC Mass, their services might well be even worse.joel in ganoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-63979754231370759972011-02-20T22:46:59.330-06:002011-02-20T22:46:59.330-06:00Ha! Used to be the "Red Eye" Mass was t...Ha! Used to be the "Red Eye" Mass was the noon one. Now it's the night before, to "get it out of the way" as they say. Communion at every one of them.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-85545265644548399702011-02-20T21:16:52.795-06:002011-02-20T21:16:52.795-06:00I suspect if more Lutheran churches valued the Lor...<i>I suspect if more Lutheran churches valued the Lord's Supper enough to celebrate it every Sunday, our liturgies and catholicity would automatically improve.</i><br /><br />Well. Can't say that's the case with novus ordo Rome. The Saturday vigil mass was the worst. A low mass if I ever saw one, the Gloria was spoken, not sung, and we were out the door in 50 minutes. But we had Communion at every mass. <br /><br />I have no objection to weekly Communion but I'm not sure that's the cure for bad liturgy. Better twice a month with reverence than every Sunday without.<br /><br />ChristineAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-38871694669001724562011-02-20T15:39:33.114-06:002011-02-20T15:39:33.114-06:00Has anyone else noticed a correspondence between i...Has anyone else noticed a correspondence between inferior liturgy and the lack of weekly Communion? I suspect if more Lutheran churches valued the Lord's Supper enough to celebrate it every Sunday, our liturgies and catholicity would automatically improve.joel in ganoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-12081445826822720462011-02-20T01:10:57.121-06:002011-02-20T01:10:57.121-06:00It makes your point well, David, and I agree with ...It makes your point well, David, and I agree with it.<br /><br />Re freelancing liturgical pastors, indeed, if entire committees of scholars go afield why not a pastor in his study? Which I think gets to Pastor Weedon's point about trusting the collective wisdom rather than personal judgement. And too, many pastors, including some Lutheran ones, see no collective wisdom to trust. Some in the sense that liturgy is unimportant, or at least secondary, and some in the sense that, and I heard this all the time in WELS, it's all adaiaphora so back off treading on my Christian Freedom dude.<br /><br />But, catholicity is compromised not just when one freelances, but also when one contrives collectively something new, and this is something I go on about all the time. Lex orandi lex credendi indeed; we now have on equal terms a Lutheran version of the traditional Western liturgy, which is to say in our belief the Western liturgy pared of its anti Scriptural accretions over time, and a Lutheran version of the Vatican II novus ordo missae, which is not at all the traditional Western liturgy pared of its anti Scriptural accretions over time, but the novus ordo and with earlier Lutheran sources diligently compared, to paraphrase the KJV.<br /><br />Not at all the same thing. And, it is hardly understood at all that the novus ordo arose in the Roman church as a Roman reaction to a Roman problem -- which the Lutheran Reformation had long since addressed. And, having had a ringside seat for all this in one of the "liturgical movement's" hotspots, it was clearly understood that the shift being made overall could not happen within the traditional liturgy, that a shift in credendi of necessity involves a shift in orandi.<br /><br />So, when we Lutherans attempt to take this an endow it with a Lutheran content, we are no different than those who take other non-Lutheran forms of worship coming from other church bodies, say American "evangelicals", and attempt to endow that with a Lutheran content.<br /><br />It's the same process whether one looks to Rome or to Willow Creek, and having done the former, the door is open to those who want to look to anything else too. In neither case do we proceed as the Confessions indicate, retaining for the most part the ceremonies previously in use.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-2837851501973029342011-02-19T21:32:17.735-06:002011-02-19T21:32:17.735-06:00That's not how I read the Lutheran Confessions...<i>That's not how I read the Lutheran Confessions, and it SURE isn't how I read Revelation.</i><br /><br />Agreed.<br /><br />The WELS is decidedly pietistic, one of the reasons I never considered it when I left the Catholic church. <br /><br />I love the catholicity of Divine Service III in the Lutheran Service Book, same Common Service I remember from my Lutheran childhood. <br /><br /><br />ChristineAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-13347957733517444992011-02-19T19:33:56.011-06:002011-02-19T19:33:56.011-06:00Past Elder,
Your point about the Kyrie is well sa...Past Elder,<br /><br />Your point about the Kyrie is well said. And my point about Lutheran catholicity is precisely this -- if the hymnal committee can get something that wrong (CW has many, many more errors than that, as you certainly know), how much more so a lone pastor doing whatever his heart desires?<br /><br />One of the changes our last pastor made in the liturgy he developed was the omission of the Preface. We no longer confessed that we sang the Gloria "with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven" (or, in the lingo of CW, "with all the saints on earth and hosts of heaven"). Guess what? At a Bible study, it became readily apparent to me that no one else believed that either. It was suggested that the departed saints "don't know what we are doing here on earth." Now, I'm not talking about asking for their intercession -- I'm saying that it was suggested they were locked up in heaven behind a firmament and had no knowledge of the Church on earth! That's not how I read the Lutheran Confessions, and it SURE isn't how I read Revelation.<br /><br />IMHO, it was the loss of catholicity that led to the false doctrine. Had they just maintained with what they had been given, it would have been much easier to say "hey, we sing this in the liturgy!" I said it anyway, but to no avail, since when I said it, no one had heard those words in years. Lex orandi, lex credendi. This is far from the only such instance I could give, but I hope it makes the point I'm trying to make.David Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-45054349253574968492011-02-19T13:48:01.171-06:002011-02-19T13:48:01.171-06:00Well, David, that's good, because I am not abo...Well, David, that's good, because I am not about to debate what is the fullness, as they say now, of the faith of Christ here either.<br /><br />Which is the point -- absent a conversion re what is the fullness of the faith, other desirable factors such as liturgical continuity and harmony are secondary, unless they become functionally primary.<br /><br />I do not know of a single LCMS church hereabouts where, for example, it is not Vatican II For Lutherans with DSI and the novus ordo/RCL-based lectionary, and were it not for my time in WELS I would never have been to a Common Service at all, ever.<br /><br />You might appreciate the humour in this. Back at the miserable cesspool of festering revisionism and creeping modernism from which I came, I watched as they Greeked up the Kyrie thinking it drew us closer to apostolic and patristic roots, only to make it a penitential make over of the Confiteor -- for the times we have (insert sin), Lord have mercy. Then in WELS in the common Service in CW they likewise mistook the Kyrie as penitential and relocated it before the Absolution.<br /><br />But in DSI of LSB, a development of Setting One of LBW, they actually do restore the Kyrie to something of its function in the First Litany, with "In peace let us pray to the Lord" and its first three petitions each followed by :ord have mercy.<br /><br />Which, on the one hand, allows me to tolerate DSI which is pretty much the new Common Service hereabouts, but on the other, some years ago when I wrote programme notes for a choir Carlos Messerli was directing he gave me an LBW after examining which I thought If this is all the Lutherans have I'd be better off in postconciliar Rome with the original novus ordo!Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-64881247646438227632011-02-19T08:52:16.351-06:002011-02-19T08:52:16.351-06:00Past Elder,
Completely understand, and we likely ...Past Elder,<br /><br />Completely understand, and we likely would have ended up in the same place but for the fact that in attending an Orthodox parish, we became convinced Orthodoxy was, in fact, the fullness of the faith. Out of respect for Pastor Weedon and the fact that this is a Lutheran blog, I won't get into the reasons why. This really isn't the time or place for that. But I did want to point out that we didn't just jump in with both feet and ignore confession. We struggled with it for nearly 8 months before we decided to be chrismated.<br /><br />DavidDavid Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-56170937830999999992011-02-19T02:28:23.796-06:002011-02-19T02:28:23.796-06:00Your story resonates with me, David. When I becam...Your story resonates with me, David. When I became Lutheran, it was in WELS. At first I just assumed WELS was always as it was in the mid-90s when I came in, and that WELS in the mid-90s was everywhere else like it was in my parish.<br /><br />Man did I have a lot to learn!<br /><br />And in learning it, I went LCMS.<br /><br />I did not even consider going back to Rome, or, as many RCs did in the wake of Vatican II, going EO or what seems to be emerging as WO -- Western Orthodoxy, though we have two parishes of the "Antiochan" outfit here in town.<br /><br />Why not? Continuity is fine, it really is, but continuity, whether across time or across space in the same time, is continuity OF something. Much as I may seek continuity in both senses, if a place has continuity but continuity of something I do not believe, the continuity, while admirable for them, means nothing to me, I don't believe what is being continued.<br /><br />IOW, I believe the BOC is a true and accurate statement of the faith of Christ and his church as revealed in the church's own book, the Bible. Therefore, no church body that does not confess that faith, at least officially however wanting in practice, whatever admirable things I may find in say the RCC or EO, and while there is overlap in what they and we confess, the bottom line is they do not confess what I do, they do not continue what I believe is to be continued, and I would in no way go there.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-27838580119724131852011-02-18T09:48:48.550-06:002011-02-18T09:48:48.550-06:00True, nor should anyone else outside the Roman See...<i>True, nor should anyone else outside the Roman See</i><br /><br />David, I was a member of "Holy Mother Church" for fourteen years. I have, however, intentionally chosen to return to my Lutheran roots so in the eyes of "Mother Church" I am a "naughty" Catholic. Suffice it to say that I no longer regard myself a Catholic, naughty or otherwise.<br /><br />Your points about the "catholicity" spoken of in the AC are well taken and I have no argument with them. I am fortunate to have found an LCMS parish that takes them seriously. However, having seen the upheaval that Vatican II wrought both internally and in its effect on other western liturgical traditions the much-vaunted "unity and catholicity" in the Church of Rome looks very different from the inside. The heterodoxy that exists among the different factions in that once-august body make the problems in the LCMS look like a piece of cake, as was evidenced at a recent mass in a California parish where the priest permitted a Presbyterian minister to "concelebrate" and distribute Communion to the parishioners. <br /><br />ChristineAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-23349284230665257582011-02-18T09:28:04.592-06:002011-02-18T09:28:04.592-06:00In short, ditching the old hymnal was the start of...<i>In short, ditching the old hymnal was the start of losing far more people than ever would have been lost if a new hymnal hadn't have been adopted. LSB looks to rectify this going forward.</i><br /><br />That may be so, and I confess I have never cracked open an LSB. I understand DS3 is the Common Service, and I understand DS5 is the Deutsche Messe. I am unfamiliar with DS1, DS2 and DS4. But I'll also state that while I think CW (the hymnal we used in our WELS parish) is perhaps the worst Lutheran hymnal in use among the three confessional synods, we didn't leave because CW was inferior, but rather because it was not used in any real sense. The liturgies were basically cobbled together from various settings in the hymnal rather than just using the settings as they were prescribed.<br /><br />From where I stand (and this is the realm of personal observation and experience, so take it for what it's worth), If I know a given parish will be using ONE of those 5 settings, I at least know there is some continuity. I will know what to expect. Hopefully, my home parish would find use for most of the settings, so as to limit unfamiliarity when traveling, etc. Better, IMHO, for the various settings to be used in continuity with the whole Church (i.e., having them designated for various seasons -- DS5 for Reformation Day, etc.), but that's a leap farther than what the LCMS has had for a long, long time, if it ever was present. And I really don't think I'd have ever found that necessary when I was a Lutheran -- that's more an observation as a current Orthodox Christian than one I'd have had as a Lutheran.<br /><br />Point being, I don't think catholicity among Lutherans need mean what we have as Orthodox, where the services, hymnody, tones, etc. are prescribed for each and every day of the Church year. But I do think it needs to be quite a bit more than what seems to be present among a lot of Lutherans today. When I can't walk into a Lutheran parish and know with some degree of comfort what it is I will receive that day, that is a huge problem. And that, not a reliance on catholicity, is what drove us to look elsewhere.David Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-21242077305217873552011-02-18T09:00:09.740-06:002011-02-18T09:00:09.740-06:00David, in the short term I think you are exactly r...David, in the short term I think you are exactly right. It could be argued that the impetus to looking elsewhere comes from change period rather than simply change to something either new or old. Change opens one up to offering a criticism, an opinion, and this quickly moves to offering the same for things beyond the liturgical. Continuity over time - tradition - keeps one from looking askance at other churches; this is almost an unconscious fact of ecclesial momentum ("an object at rest..."). In short, ditching the old hymnal was the start of losing far more people than ever would have been lost if a new hymnal hadn't have been adopted. LSB looks to rectify this going forward.<br /><br />I am arguing that using catholicity or conciliarity as something of an 'authoritative' rationale in deciding such things will in the longer term lead people to wonder why catholicity ends with the people I choose to associate myself with. That is, there's little difference between me trusting my own individual preferences and me trusting my own group preferences. If catholicity is a guard against my own fallen presumptions within a Lutheran denomination, that rationale quickly o'erleaps to all Lutheranism, all Protestantism, all Christianity - especially when more ancient forms (the catholicity of time) are better and more fully retained elsewhere or when more 'results' are seen in other denominations.123https://www.blogger.com/profile/14514075641944568806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-56367624892262711662011-02-18T08:58:53.582-06:002011-02-18T08:58:53.582-06:00A wise observation with the caveat that Confession...<i>A wise observation with the caveat that Confessional Lutherans not confuse [C]atholic with [c]atholic. Personal experience was a great teacher in showing me the difference.<br /><br />Christine</i><br /><br />True, nor should anyone else outside the Roman See. <br /><br />I think there's a lot of room in the Lutheran rites to allow differences in piety. Unfortunately, this is too often used as license to do whatever we please. The lack of catholicity I refer to is not whether one uses a censer or wears a chasuble or uses a processional crucifix. It is whether -- regardless of whether one uses those or not -- the rites and ceremonies in use among Lutherans in communion with one another are substantially similar. Fully understanding the Confessions state that rites and ceremonies may differ from place to place, nonetheless, Lutheran catholicity from a Confessional standpoint still revolves around a common tradition. The Augsburg Confession states the two principles as follows:<br /><br /><i>if there were some difference, there should be proper lenity on the part of bishops to bear with us by reason of the Confession which we have now reviewed; because even the Canons are not so severe as to demand the same rites everywhere, neither, at any time, have the rites of all churches been the same; although, among us, in large part, the ancient rites are diligently observed. For it is a false and malicious charge that all the ceremonies, all the things instituted of old, are abolished in our churches.</i><br /><br />The principle at work here can be summarized as "we do not demand uniformity in rites and ceremonies; nonetheless, we maintain the traditional rites diligently as our catholic heritage." Which is not to say those rites cannot change from time-to-time, but it is to say that when they do, the Church writ large ought to be the entity changing them, not the local parish doing whatever it wishes over and against the Church writ large.David Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-4776862135912578312011-02-18T07:58:00.270-06:002011-02-18T07:58:00.270-06:00I firmly believe that if Lutherans are to keep the...<i>I firmly believe that if Lutherans are to keep their own, you must do as Pastor Weedon does and as he is suggesting here. Maintaining catholicity is the surest way to prevent that which concerns you. The issue with ecumenism can be dealt rather simply with by maintaining right doctrine (i.e., by NOT conceding ground to sectarian worship forms).</i><br /><br />A wise observation with the caveat that Confessional Lutherans not confuse <b>[C]</b>atholic with <b>[c]</b>atholic. Personal experience was a great teacher in showing me the difference.<br /><br />ChristineAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-84814004025780095812011-02-18T01:35:27.682-06:002011-02-18T01:35:27.682-06:00Well Mr Garner, whether you have read melxiopp cor...Well Mr Garner, whether you have read melxiopp correctly or not, I agree with you re the future of Lutheranism.<br /><br />Now if only we would quit thinking a "catholicity" or tradition that dates back no further than 1960s Rome and its council and has since been adopted by other heterodox Western mainline bodies with liturgical leanings is in any way part of the catholicity the Lutheran Reformation sought to continue.<br /><br />Once the door was opened to that, it was opened however unintentionally to everything else too to be a new option.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-46401519255083753142011-02-17T22:47:37.608-06:002011-02-17T22:47:37.608-06:00melxiopp, as a convert to one of those "more ...melxiopp, as a convert to one of those "more patristic" traditions myself, I'm not sure you don't have your cart before your horse. <br /><br />We converted precisely because of a lack of catholicity among Lutherans. Which is to say, each doing as he darn well pleased. Had we been able to find even one Lutheran congregation in our area that remained with what the Lutheran Church had given them in the form of liturgical rites and doctrine, we'd have never looked elsewhere.<br /><br />From where I stand (which is to say, as a confessional Lutheran who grew weary after years of trying to find other confessional Lutherans around), your premise is exactly backwards. You seem to be saying "if we place too much emphasis on being catholic (that is, whole, complete, unified), our people will end up seeking other traditions which are 'more catholic'" on the one hand, or "our people will end up being an ecumenical 'kumbaya' group" on the other. But my story is the opposite -- if we'd found even one parish that remained Lutheran in its true, Western Catholic sense, we'd have never looked elsewhere and would have had no need to seek another tradition.<br /><br />I firmly believe that if Lutherans are to keep their own, you must do as Pastor Weedon does and as he is suggesting here. Maintaining catholicity is the surest way to prevent that which concerns you. The issue with ecumenism can be dealt rather simply with by maintaining right doctrine (i.e., by NOT conceding ground to sectarian worship forms).<br /><br />If I'm misreading you, I apologize. I acknowledge I may have just spent 5 paragraphs flogging a strawman, and in fact I hope that is the case.David Garnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10885067733992577305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-42715996554983171072011-02-17T22:41:07.162-06:002011-02-17T22:41:07.162-06:00Too much about music in all this about music.
Cha...Too much about music in all this about music.<br /><br />Chant has an entirely different nature than "music" as in hymns etc. In fact, hymns et al arose when chant lost that nature and music took over. If chant is beautiful music, then it is bad chant, or chant done badly.<br /><br />Chant is not music. It is a form of speech, a sprechstimme, in which the "music" is entirely subservient to the text, which it serves to express. The closest thing to it in modern usage is hooping in sermons. Even the Psalter is not the Psalter; it is just the lyrics from the Psalter, the rest is lost.<br /><br />Hymns, or what became hymns, began when that was no longer enough, and other lines were improvised over the voice that held (tenor) the original chant. That's the mot or word in motet, zum B. Music took over. Expressiveness in musical word setting is not the same thing as the way in which tone serves text in chant.<br /><br />So now, we have both chant, and music that is made over chant, or centuries later developments of that, such as hymns, and all of it gets heard and judged as music, whereas chant is a music-like form of speech.<br /><br />Which is also why we have organists who can play Bach all day, but can't accompany a sermon or even think of doing such a thing.Past Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10541968132598367551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-13194066101004533862011-02-17T20:55:28.911-06:002011-02-17T20:55:28.911-06:00I had no idea you were such a Rachmaninov buff, Fr...I had no idea you were such a Rachmaninov buff, Fr. Weedon. As i am in the Greek tradition, I prefer the Byzantine psaltic chant, but to each his own.<br /><br />If I could have had Lutheranism done "my way" it would have been Bach, Praetorius and Schutz, week in, week out.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06200319733737651773noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-91712039035536743632011-02-17T16:59:57.800-06:002011-02-17T16:59:57.800-06:00Fr. Peters, I noted that with amusement this a.m.!...Fr. Peters, I noted that with amusement this a.m.! We definitely track along the same lines in our thought so often that I just have to regard you as my long-lost brother...William Weedonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01383850332591975790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7291232.post-55125719391008034232011-02-17T16:54:16.912-06:002011-02-17T16:54:16.912-06:00I see we responded in a similar manner on our resp...I see we responded in a similar manner on our respective blogs to the conversation on the other forum we sometimes frequent...Pastor Petershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10653554256101480140noreply@blogger.com