Papal Mass

Both photos by Bill O'Leary-The Washington Post.
Copyright © 2008 The Washington Post Company.

Over 46,000 people made their way early this morning to the new Nationals Stadium baseball park in Washington to hear Pope Benedict XVI say Mass, with several thousand other people outside, either as worshippers or protestors, and tens of thousands of people worldwide watching via television. All four of the local major network stations preempted their programming this morning to carry the Mass live.

Since I'm not anybody important, and since I didn't "win" a ticket in the parish lottery, I got to watch the Mass on television. That may not have been such a bad thing, since people were told to be at the stadium in time to be in their seats and seated by 8:30 a.m. for the 10:30 a.m. Mass. They had to show up even earlier, too, because everyone had to go through security screening. Also, it was a lovely, bright, warm, sunny day....and, it got hot sitting there in the sun, with many people having heat-related illness issues.

It was a beautiful service, though, and I have to say that I was very, very impressed with the work done by the planners. Several years ago, I was on the committee that planned and executed the consecration of a new diocesan bishop (I was in charge of all ushers, procession marshals [we had a dozen simultaneous processions], and acolytes), and I think we probably only had 6,000 or so people, not the 46,000 they had today, so I'm fully aware of how much work this is. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch today, and they managed to start two minutes early and end three minutes early. On top of that, they gave everyone communion in less that twenty minutes! (Of course, they only gave out hosts [bread] to the people, as the Catholic Church routinely gips the common people out of their swig of wine, and today was no exception.)

I thought the music ended up being much better than I had anticipated. It was hard to hear things in their proper context on the television, but I think it was probably pretty good in the stadium. They had a choir of 250, plus several "specialty" choirs, bringing the vocal musician count up to nearly 500. They had a good sized electronic organ, plus a 25-30 member orchestra with lots of brass, and some of the specialty choirs had special instrumentalists with them, especially for the "ethnic" choirs. I recognized the voice of the music director at the cathedral as the cantoress. There were a couple of male cantors I didn't know, and the main one did not seem to have as trained a voice as I would have liked to have heard at a papal Mass, but it was still acceptable. Some of the featured soloists in the choirs had very nice voices for their brief moments of song. Because of the television miking, the organ sounded thin and electronic and it was difficult to get a sense of harmonies (if any) being sung by the choir. That's the one main reason I wish I'd been able to have been there in the stadium, since I can't adequately judge things remotely.

Some of the major music was surprisingly acceptable this morning. They didn't get too weird or too contemporary. I haven't been able to get a service booklet yet, so I'm having to guess from memory the music. The opening hymn was Lasst uns er freuen (a/k/a Vigiles et Sancti) with one of the Catholic alternative word sets (instead of "Ye watchers and ye holy ones"). The closing hymn was Hyfrydol ("Love divine, all loves excelling"), with the "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus" words (I think). The Gloria sounded like it came from the Peloquin Mass of the Bells. The Sanctus, Benedictus, Memorial Acclamation, and Great Amen all came from Haugen's Mass of Creation—and this inclusion created a little outside controversy; more on that later. Didn't know the Kyrie or Agnus Dei....they sounded newish. The psalm setting, though, was an awful "modern" thing with weird tonalities (but that's usually required in "modern" music). Someone told me they thought the psalm was a Peloquin setting. So, for the most part, the music was selected for it's comfort and familiarity level for most of the worshippers.

I think the music planners missed an opportunity to do a fabulous anthem during the offertory. It sounded like they had the choir singing a hymn arrangement then. Because of the television miking, I could never tell when, if at all, the congregation was singing. The local stations all had minor news anchors covering the Mass, each with their own local priest "expert," so naturally they had to talk during all the music, especially the offertory and communion, so I'm sure I missed a lot.

Now, about the Haugen thing. When a list of papal Mass music got leaked to the blogosphere, a lot of the traditionalists (the boring people who think only Gregorian chant and Palestrina should be sung at Masses) were chagrinned by the planned use of Marty Haugen's Mass setting. Well, Haugen's Mass of Creation and Richard Proulx's A Community Mass are by far the two most commonly used and sung Mass settings in modern American Catholic worship. Whether or not they like it, most Catholics know the music to these settings. Now, I'm not at all fond of Haugen's hymns, but this particular Mass setting isn't offensive. In fact, dressed up with choral harmonies and a bunch of brass this morning, it sounded appropriate and pretty good. So, I thought it a bit unfair for the major Catholic bloggers to be making statements like "Marty Haugen is responsible for ruining Catholic music and worship in America." Well, you know, Haugen isn't even Catholic—he's a Lutheran—and he's not the one responsible for ruining Catholic music and worship. I can't even assess that blame on the St. Louis Jesuits (although they come close!) or even the originally-Presbyterian-now-nondenominational Taizé community (source of those inane, repetitious, mantra-chants). The problem is with the bishops and priests who were so quick to throw out millennia of beautiful liturgical music in favor of hippie folk tunes that belonged on a Catholic contemporary music radio station, not as a part of the divine liturgy. There's a whole generation of Catholics who grew up with crap music, but, fortunately, I see a great interest—coming from young people—in restoring more traditional music and hymns in services. In fact, I often hear the younger people refer to contemporary Catholic music as "old stuff" and "lame" music that geriatric priests try to throw at the youth to be "relevant" and "modern" in worship, and they hate it as much as I always have.

During the two hour long prelude and during communion, they did a wide, wide variety of music, singing in all kinds of languages and performing in all kinds of styles. Not all of that music was to my taste. But, I think the musical planners were trying to make the effort to include all the different fringes of Catholic worship and music that regularly occur in this archdiocese, and I think they pulled it off fairly well.

The last song during communion was "Panis Angelicus" sung by Washington National Opera general director Plácido Domingo. I thought he did a serviceable job (perhaps I'm just over exposed to the maestro, but I wasn't wowwed by his performance). He got lots of applause afterwards (I hate it when people applaud during church), and then he went to the pope and kissed his ring. None of the other soloists got to kiss the pope's ring.

Speaking of applause, the pope got a lot after his homily. I've found it interesting how many "unpleasant" issues this pope has been addressing and confronting head-on during this week's appearances. The news has been covering how he's mentioned the priestly pedophilia scandal multiple times, and he spoke of it during his homily. He also spent a portion of his talk expressing his regret for the treatment and exploitation of Native Americans and African slaves in the early history of the country. That surprised me.

Incidentally, the homily and Mass were all said by the pope in English. He seems to speak English quite well, though you can detect his German accent.

The pope got lots of applause and cheers all morning. He was cheered after the local pointy-hat's welcome and introduction of the Holy Father at the beginning of Mass, and the crowd went crazy when, an hour before Mass started, he made a circuit of the stadium in his Popemobile. As he left the Mass at the end, everyone seemed to want to touch him. And, it wasn't just the laity that was wild, it looked like a lot of the priests in procession had cameras and were just as star-struck!

So, it was a very interesting morning. The big screens at the new ballpark got an interesting workout. And, I still snicker at the irony that, just a couple of years ago, the spot where the pope was standing during the Mass was occupied by a gay bathhouse. Meanwhile, I'm anxious to see this weekend if the New Yorkers at Yankee Stadium do as interesting a Mass as was done in Washington.