...has to be in Latin?

http://www.contemplation.com/

Check out the beautiful Chant performed in English at the link above. I wish there was more of this going on. I love traditional chant, I love being able to understand traditional chant, and I don't speak Latin.

Peace of Christ,

Jason

Me.

Funny picture. You are entitled to love Latin of course. I was just happy to see the LoTH chanted beautifully in English. Typically when I hear chant in English it is plainchant or poorly done Gregorian.

Peace,

Since Gregorian Chant is Latin by definition, doing it in English is doing it poorly.

And you wonder why there isn't more chant used in Mass....look, there are never going to be a large number of people who are fluent in Latin, if you say that want chant to be done only in Latin then you are saying that you don't want chant at all...

I'm not coming in on either side, but technically one doesn't have to be fluent in Latin to do Latin chant. As long as you have the pronunciation right, you don't even have to understand what you're saying (though I would presume it is encouraged).

It would easier to teach a choir Latin than to teach them how to pronounce Latin without having a clue what any of the words mean....

Not understanding what you are saying does not seem to me to match "full and active participation"... Having said that, I have no problem at all with Latin or the EF Mass for those who desire it. Personally it is not for me at this point. I do however love chant, and if I can get beautiful chant in English such as I linked in the first post, I consider it to be a great day.

Irrelevant.


The Church teaches that the faithful should be able to say the responses in Latin and that they should be able to sing Gregorian Chant ... I want what the Church wants. That is active participation in the Mass.

Have you ever been a member of a choir? Singers are used to singing songs in languages they don't know -- German, Latin, French, Italian, etc.

Documentation? Gregorian chant was created for Latin Church and it was in the Latin language because at the that was the language of the Church, and of the faithful. However, I have found nothing suggesting that Gregorian chant is to be limited to Latin only. It certainly does not say so in the GIRM that I have seen, and I did look. The synthesis of chant styles following the pontificate of Pope Gregory the Great was not about language as that was not even an issue.

Very true. I haven't the slightest idea what most of La donna e mobile means, but it's still so awfully fun to sing.

That said, in a church function, one should of course at least know the general gist, if not a word-for-word translation.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find the chant on the Website. Is it because I'm on an iPad? The silly thing can be so confounded useless at some things...

It might be. It starts immediately for me when I link to the page. If you want to look, it is towards the bottom right corner.

Do you expect someone to be able to memorize the 8160 pages of the Liturgy of the Hours in Latin also? http://onlinecatholicstore.com/index.ph ... ts_id=2443

Or would you just prefer people pray with absolutely no idea of what they are saying?

Also, the Church does not just call for active participation in the Mass. Instead, she calls for Full, Conscious, and Active participation.

Oh, it must be the technology. Now that I look, it does say something about the player not working. Drat.

But what is this? They make fruitcake?

Indeed!

How did you get that from what I wrote? I simply noted, correctly, that the Church teaches that the faithful should know the Mass parts and responses in Latin (Sacrosanctum Concilium 54), that they should be able to sing them in Gregorian Chant (Tra le Sollecitudini), and that --


-- the faithful singing the Mass parts or the Divine Office fosters their active participation in the liturgical rites (Sacrosanctum Concilium 114).

Gregorian chant is tied to the Latin language, there is no escaping that fact. It was composed in and for Latin and its melodies are tied to Latin accents and pronunciation.

http://old.usccb.org/comm/archives/2008/08-093.shtml


Clearly assumes that Gregorian chant will be in Latin as it mentions the "unifying role" of it.


It is correct that language was not an issue. That is precisely why Gregorian chant is Latin as it was composed in and for the Latin language.

Can one sing in English using Gregorian melodies? Yes, in some circumstances. But one shouldn't pretend that one is singing Gregorian chant. Are there styles of plainsong that work well in English or other vernacular languages? Maybe -- but again, one shouldn't pretend that those styles are Gregorian chant.

Well for starters the thread was about chant, not the mass and the link that I provided was from compline, not the mass, yet you kept talking about the mass. Secondly, if people cannot do chant in English but wish chant the hours, then I guess that is where we are at. You also made the suggestion that understanding what we are saying is not akin to participation in the prayers and responses at Mass. If that is true, then why should we understand the hours either? Let's just recite them with no clue what we are saying. Or, if we are supposed to understand, then we either need to learn Latin, or memorize the prayers. Let's use a Latin Bible for Lectio Divina also since we don't really need to comprehend what we are saying or reading.

What I wrote about the Mass applies to the Divine Office as well, as the citation from Sacrosanctum Concilium shows.

Second, I was not the first person in this thread to bring up the Mass, I was responding to a post.


I did not say that people can't chant in English. I pointed out that (a) English chant is not Gregorian Chant, (b) that it would be better if it were in Latin, and (c) that the Church teaches that the faithful should be able to sing Gregorian Chant. That's not difficult.


I'm not sure I implied that.


That is now the second straw man that you've erected in this thread.