Exploitation of Churches by Music Publishers

[The Liturgist]

Recently I made a post on the Moravian liturgy, specifically, a link to a subset of the materials in their 1994 Book of Worship, and newer liturgical resources. That it is a subset, and not what our British friends here on ChristianForums might call “the whole hog” is of course due to the hymns it contains, and more specifically, the current, contemporary language settings od these hymns, being under strictly enforced copyright, which is often the case, and in my opinion it is an unfortunate coincidence that many denominations, including the largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Church, and the largest Mainline Protestant denomination and the largest of the “Seven Sisters”, the United Methodist Church, are headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, which also remains home to much of the music publishing business and especially Christian music publishing industry.

Now, to be clear, while I have no evidence that the UMC or SBC have been influenced by their proximity to it, I have encountered numerous complaints from Roman Catholics about how the superficially inexpensive Missalettes published each year by various Christian music publishers lock Catholic parishes into using and replacing, at great cost, the annual missalettes and corresponding hymnals published by these entities, which, combined with complaints about the poor quality of those hymnals and misalettes, and the lack of traditional Gregorian chant and traditional Western hymns which remain a fixture in Anglican and many Lutheran churches, such as Te Deum Laudamus, the Bishop of Marquette, Michigan in 2016 banned the Misalettes and set to implementing a diocesan hymnal, requiring all his parishes become competent in singing or chanting certain basic parts of the liturgy. This is also in keeping with the inspired directive of Pope Pius X mandating the restoration of Gregorian chant and establishing an official preference for it and the related polyphonic music composers like Byrd, Tallis, Palestrina, Vittoria, de Morales, Josquin, and the Flemish Masters. The non-traditional nature of the Misalettes, aside from the exploitative pricing, has been another criticism of the Music Industry I have heard from Catholics (and not just on New Liturgical Movement; I cite their articles as they are the most scholarly and well researched reflections of the views of a large number of proponents of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy across the internet, such as “Fr. Z” with his excellent blog “What does the Prayer really say?”, Fr. Hunwicke in the UK, and the very “trad” blog Rorate Caeli, among others.

This was from an era in which many of the least conventional settings of the mass were bombastic masses by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; St. Pius X, who I do recognize as a saint although I am not Catholic, would be horrified by the Praise and Worship and Christian Rock music which one now hears in Roman Catholic and Maronite Catholic parishes. Meanwhile, most of the other Sui Juris Eastern rites of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, the Italo Albanian Greek Catholics, the Syriac Catholics, the Chaldean Catholics, the Armenian Catholics, the Coptic Catholics, and the Ruthenian Greek Catholics, but not, sadly, the entirety of the Melkite Catholics, have retained liturgical standards akin to those desired by Pope St. Pius X, with only traditional music permitted in their services.

So, bearing in mind that music publishers continue to exploit financially, with what amounts to an enormous ripoff, in the form of the Misallette, the vast majority of Roman Catholic dioceses, despite having been caught at it, how much more might we suppose are they exploiting Protestants, both liturgical and aliturgical Protestants, especially mainline Protestants, where a prevailing sentiment is expressed in the 2009 PCUSA Hymnal “ Glory to God” that hymnals should be revised at least every 20 years (their previous hymnal and service books were revised in 1989/1990 and in 1974 - and I for one would be very happy with the Hymnbook and the Worshipbook of 1974, which were very well done), a sentiment which must be music to the ears of the music publishing industry, and also, even more to their advantage, non liturgical / contemporary worship / Non Denominational Protestants, particularly those non denominational Mega Churches which want the latest Christian Rock or Praise and Worship music.

Meanwhile, the Eastern churches get by with hymnals that are centuries old, and the average age of the hymns in the Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox Churches, and the hymns of the Assyrian Church of the East, can be reckoned to be around 1200 years, if we exclude the Troparia and Kontakia composed every time a new Saint is glorified and added to the liturgical calendar, and also if we exclude the proliferation of variations on the Akathist hymn and which is not part of the primary liturgical cycle, but is rather a supplemental, devotional service, as well as new forms of the Paraklesis and related Slavonic Moleben services, which are basically supplicatory liturgies prayed as needed for the welfare of some or all members of a parish, for instance, if a family in the parish is injured in a car accident, or if a member is embarking on a dangerous journey, the congregation might do a moleben or paraklesis service to pray for those members after the Divine Liturgy, in addition to providing Holy Unction to the injured laity.

 

[The Liturgist]

Oh snap, I meant to publish this in General Theology...

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I guess I'm tempted to not be too bothered by this stuff that this industry is kind of small compared to the various kinds of big business of Christian recorded music, or the modern end of things when it comes to Christian Contemporary music, or the modern end of "Praise music" from these big mega churches like Hill Song etc.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Licenses restricted by time or other variables are extremely common in the world of digital distribution. Everything you "buy" on your Kindle or Google Play account is subject to the whims of the distributor and their licensees, can be revoked, and ought to be considered a long-term lease rather than a true purchase. I can't recall ever hearing of a case involving such a time-restricted license in print media (though college textbooks achieve the same thing via other means and I wouldn't be surprised if something similar existed in the market for enterprise tech support), but I imagine that rarity has more to do with the impracticality of rounding up all the old copies than any guiding legal or moral principles.

That said, if you don't like being subject to the whims of a publisher, there's nothing stopping you or anybody else from compiling a similar work, made of sources entirely in the public domain, and releasing it without such restrictions.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Oh snap, I meant to publish this in General Theology...

Meh. They wouldn't see a thing wrong with a rock band playing the latest top 40 CCM.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Recently I made a post on the Moravian liturgy, specifically, a link to a subset of the materials in their 1994 Book of Worship, and newer liturgical resources. That it is a subset, and not what our British friends here on ChristianForums might call “the whole hog” is of course due to the hymns it contains, and more specifically, the current, contemporary language settings od these hymns, being under strictly enforced copyright, which is often the case, and in my opinion it is an unfortunate coincidence that many denominations, including the largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Church, and the largest Mainline Protestant denomination and the largest of the “Seven Sisters”, the United Methodist Church, are headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, which also remains home to much of the music publishing business and especially Christian music publishing industry.

I just discovered that the Maronite rite has been about as heavily influenced by liturgical and musical change as the Latin Rite. Sadly.

This is also in keeping with the inspired directive of Pope Pius X mandating the restoration of Gregorian chant and establishing an official preference for it and the related polyphonic music composers like Byrd, Tallis, Palestrina, Vittoria, de Morales, Josquin, and the Flemish Masters.

Which is why I like St. Agnes in St. Paul MN. Glorious, and no misallettes.

Are you familiar with the Adoremus hymnal?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I just discovered that the Maronite rite has been about as heavily influenced by liturgical and musical change as the Latin Rite. Sadly.

Oh yeah that has been common knowledge if you are into looking at the Eastern Catholic Churches and their rites. They really got hit with the Latinization.

I've been in interested in the Maronites too.

There is this really cool book on "The Eastern Catholic Churches and their rites" that shows all the ancient liturgies step by step rubrics in black and white pictures, it was put out by the Eastern Catholic Department in the Vatican back in the 1920s.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Oh yeah that has been common knowledge if you are into looking at the Eastern Catholic Churches and their rites. They really got hit with the Latinization.

I've been in interested in the Maronites too.

There is this really cool book on "The Eastern Catholic Churches and their rites" that shows all the ancient liturgies step by step rubrics in black and white pictures, it was put out by the Eastern Catholic Department in the Vatican back in the 1920s.

I don't mind latinization ... for the Latin Rite. In fact I'm all in favor of it. Sadly the Vatican is going about de-latinization for the Latin Rite in favor of the still historically novel Novus Ordo. What has happened to the Maronites I would call a parallel to the liturgical wreckovation that has resulted in the Novus Ordo. Still valid I suppose, but seemingly barely.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I don't mind latinization ... for the Latin Rite. In fact I'm all in favor of it. Sadly the Vatican is going about de-latinization for the Latin Rite in favor of the still historically novel Novus Ordo. What has happened to the Maronites I would call a parallel to the liturgical wreckovation that has resulted in the Novus Ordo. Still valid I suppose, but seemingly barely.

It is funny how once you could not escape Latin, and now a good traditional Latin mass is harder to come by in many places, than church services in: Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopian...

That get's even stranger when you consider how Latin was taught in our public and private schools especially in times past. Even I as a Gen-Xer took Classical Latin because I wanted to evade my father in 1985-1986 giving me a hard time at home if I took German as expected since that was one my dad's primary languages, Hungarian being another one.

 

[chevyontheriver]

It is funny how once you could not escape Latin, and now a good traditional Latin mass is harder to come by in many places, than church services in: Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopian...

That get's even stranger when you consider how Latin was taught in our public and private schools especially in times past. Even I as a Gen-Xer took it because I wanted to evade my father in 1985-1986 giving me a hard time at home if I took German as expected since that was one my dad's primary languages, Hungarian being another one.

Latin is a big part of our cultural heritage. Luther wrote whole books in Latin. Our loss of Latin in schools is a travesty. And I'm not saying this as a Catholic but just as an educated person who actually got to learn Latin in a private non-Catholic high school.

Pope Francis destroying Latin in the Church is such a backwards move. He thinks it is going to promote unity. It does promote uniformity. So why not force the Anglican Ordinariates to say the Novus Ordo? Force the Melkites to say the Novus Ordo? Force 'em all to say the Novus Ordo? Blow the whole place up while you're at it.

Can people learn Latin in the west any longer? I think it would be the mark of a worthy high school if they offered it. Not just to understand the Latin mass but to be educated. But thinking such thoughts probably is nowhere close to being woke enough to merit having a voice.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

Meh. They wouldn't see a thing wrong with a rock band playing the latest top 40 CCM.

Shudders, "Shine, Jesus Shine" with arm waving sent me over the Bosporus.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Shudders, "Shine, Jesus Shine" with arm waving sent me over the Bosporus.

Enough to make me want to swim too. But then I am an elitist liturgical music snob. But I work at being tolerant, at not complaining about the vapid music too often, and not barfing.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

Enough to make me want to swim too. But then I am an elitist liturgical music snob. But I work at being tolerant, at not complaining about the vapid music too often, and not barfing.

Could have been worse...

 

[The Liturgist]

Licenses restricted by time or other variables are extremely common in the world of digital distribution. Everything you "buy" on your Kindle or Google Play account is subject to the whims of the distributor and their licensees, can be revoked, and ought to be considered a long-term lease rather than a true purchase.

Indeed, who could forget the Orwellian moment when Amazon famously deleted Nineteen Eighty Four not only from the Kindle Store, but also, everyone’s devices? That was years before I used Kindle; presently I use it on an iPad, although the inexpensive Kindle Fire is tempting as a backup reading device; however, I also use other services including iBooks and Google Books, so if I buy a non-iPad tablet, it would likely be an Android.

This takes us to the silver lining of the cloud, which is ease of access to content, but we must not forget about the dark cloud itself, which is the ease with which one can be deprived of that content. For example, Apple Music that you purchase is now DRM free, but if you subscribe, like I do, occasionally, a really good recording or even an entire label will just disappear, so whereas previously with itunes it was DRMed and there was no way to “exchange” music you disliked, what I do with my Apple subscription is use it to find music that I enjoy, and that which I like the most, I purchase a permanent DRM free download of. That said, occasionally, I still get bitten even by Apple, who is proving themselves to be, unlike in the mid 2000s, the most beneficent of cloud providers, when sometimes I find an album I really liked and had not gotten around to purchasing “is no longer available in your country or region.”

I am a strong supporter of open source software, DRM free PDF ebooks, a repeal of the DMCA, the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and even the Free Software Foundation despite their militancy and their silly insistence we call all Linux installs GNU/Linux even in the case of Linux systems which do not include the GNU system software but an alternative “userland” like Busybox (the userland on a UNiX like OS contains the essential software that makes the system usable, for example, many people are aware that MacOS uses a UNIX-like userland derived from the open source FreeBSD userland, albeit with their own XNU/Mach kernel instead of the FreeBSD kernel; FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are open source but allow people to use their code in closed-source derivatives, so a great many specialized computer systems use them rather than Linux, for example, Juniper routers and switches and NetApp storage appliances use a FreeBSD-based operating system, and Dell routers and switches based on the Force10 products use a NetBSD-based Operating System; also a modified version of MINIX 3, a BSD licensed Unix like OS, which uses the NetBSD userland, runs autonomously and beyond the reach of most users in every Intel CPU shipped in the past few years, as it powers the Active Management Engine, but you can install FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or Minix on your desktop or most laptops and there are even user friendly versions of FreeBSD like Linux distros; they also all run on the Rasberry Pi).

So as I mentioned before, I do use Kindle, iBooks, and Google Books, I am wary of them (I also use ScribD, but any books I find on it that I really like I seek to acquire in a more permanent way); although I was not affected by the shutdown of the DRM authentication servers of the numerous failed iTunes competitors, including Zune and the ZuneStore, Yahoo Music, and Wal-Mart’s DRM music player software/store, which basically rendered the music playable only on the computers or devices it was licensed to at the time of the shutdown, I am lucky I picked the one service, iTunes, which did not shut down, and I still have a few DRMed iTunes purchases, which still work, although Apple pulling the plug is always possible, especially if they run into a rough spot and Tim Cook, who seems to be nicer and more generous than Steve Jobs ever was, is replaced by someone with the mentality of, say, Sony Media, or worse, a corporate raider in the grand tradition of Carl Icahn, who killed TWA and devastated other companies, or “Neutron Jack” Welch. And chances are someone like that will at some point take over Amazon, Google, or Apple.

Amazon and Google have already shown they are untrustworthy; Apple’s battle to avoid defeating its own encryption system at the behest of the FBI in 2016 after the tragic 2015 ISIS terror attack in San Bernardino suggests that under Tim Cook, they are pretty adamant about user integrity and ethics, as most other tech companies insert backdoors routinely and as a matter of course (one reason why I am a huge fan of OpenBSD is the code auditing and the zeal of the project for security to the maximum limits possible given the constraints of Turing Trust), but this situation exists only so long as the current management retains their current ideology.

I can't recall ever hearing of a case involving such a time-restricted license in print media (though college textbooks achieve the same thing via other means and I wouldn't be surprised if something similar existed in the market for enterprise tech support), but I imagine that rarity has more to do with the impracticality of rounding up all the old copies than any guiding legal or moral principles.

The Missalettes are worse than college textbooks, as they become completely worthless after each year. This is because the date of the movable Lent-Easter-Pentecost liturgical seasons, which start on Septuagesima, the Ninth Sunday Before Easter, and the Third Sunday before Lent, and ends on Corpus Christi, the second Sunday after Pentecost, and the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday, is dependent on the moving date of Easter itself, which can occur as early as March 22nd or as late as April 25th. Then, you have the fixed holidays such as the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Transfiguration, the Assumption, the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Cross, Michaelmas, All Saints, Epiphany, Candlemas, and the Annunciation, and numerous other holidays such as the feast days of the Apostles, Martyrs and other Saints. And finally you have Christmas, which sets the date of the four Sundays of Advent*; and there can be as many as two Sundays following Christmas, before Epiphany on January 6th, known as Christmastide. Then, add to this complexity the fact that the Novus Ordo Mass introduced the Three Year Lectionary, from which was derived the Revised Common Lectionary prevalent in contemporary Protestant liturgics.

So the Missalette, which includes the Scripture Lessons, changes for each liturgical year, starting on the First Sunday of Advent, based on the date of Easter, the day of the week Christmas occurs on, and the number of Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany, and between Epiphany and Septuagesima, and between Pentecost, Trinity Sunday or Corpus Christie, since the three happen in that order, so take your pick, but officially they are numbered as “the Xth Sunday in Ordinary Time”, and the Saturday before the First Sunday in Advent, which is the last day of the liturgical year, as well as the number of Sundays after Corpus Chrstie and the first Sunday of Advent in the year the Misalette is for, because these Sundays and the Sundays after Epiphany are Ordinary Time snd before Septuagesima are collectively Ordinary Time, and to get the number of each Sunday right, you need to do that, and the scripture lessons change whether it is Year A (Matthew), Year B (Mark) or Year C (Luke)**.

So each Missalette does become almost worthless after each year, which is why unlike a regular Missal, which is designed to be used regardless of the variable factors, by including multiple texts and simple instructions for what to do, as well as computer programs which automate all of this, the Misalette is specially configured for the specific year it is prepared for, including only the relevant text, plus a selection of copyright hymn and praise and worship music settings, as opposed to traditional Gregorian Chant and polyphonic music, which has been translated into English, which Roman Catholic churches are supposed to use according to the Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini which was issued by Pope St. Pius X in 1903, which was never invalidated or superseded, and indeed, Pope John Paul II, who is now recognized by Roman Catholics as a saint, and I think he might well be, celebrated the centenary of that Motu Proprio with a essay on the subject.

So, while the Missalette might seem to be the easy alternative to seemingly difficult work, the work of arranging the services is also performed by many Roman Catholic institutes, and there are Masses and Hymnals in print which make it easy for any layman with a modicum of intelligence to figure out what to do or sing, as well as apps, and this is also the case in the Byzantine Rite, used by the Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Polish, Cypriot, Czech-Slovak, Macedonian, Albanian, Latvian, Finnish, Estonian, and the Orthodox Cnurch in America), which has far more variables than the Roman Rite, which is actually one of the simplest of the ancient liturgical traditions in terms of propers and the organization of liturgical books, especially in the Novus Ordo form.

That said, if you don't like being subject to the whims of a publisher, there's nothing stopping you or anybody else from compiling a similar work, made of sources entirely in the public domain, and releasing it without such restrictions.

“Crackerjack point” as they used to say, and so, I am a member of a group which includes an Anglican priest, a retired Episcopalian priest, a Methodist elder, a Syriac Orthodox priest, a priest in the Assyrian Church of the East, a Russian Orthodox priest, and an emeritus professor of sacred music, dedicated to compiling public domain liturgical texts from existing material. That would not help Roman Catholic parishes except with the traditional Latin Mass which Pope Francis is seeking to curtail, since the material of the Novus Ordo Missae is I believe all under copyright, although if a Roman Catholic liturgical scholar with a good command of Latin joined us, I would love to do English language translations of the Ambrosian and Mozarabic liturgies, and also propose in a public text a “Reform of the Reform” which would replace the Mass of Paul VI with a new mass that would be designed to follow the instructions of Sacrosanctum Concilium more precisely, and satisfy the legitimate complaints of those who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass while providing for vernacular liturgy. That would be fun, but we haven’t the resources to do that at present; we are rushing to get our first three projects ready for release before the end of the year.

*The liturgies of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, and their Eastern Catholic counterparts, as well as the Roman Catholic Ambrosian Rite liturgy used in Milan, and the Mozarabic Rite liturgy once used throughout Spain, but now preserved in a single chapel in the cathedral in Toledo, but still valued to the point where Pope John Paul II celebrated a Mass using the Mozarabic Rite at St. Peter’s in Rome in the 1990s, all have an Advent Season lasting Six Sundays, the same as Lent (counting Palm Sunday), and also start Lent not on Ash Wednesday but, usually, on the Monday following Quinquagesima, the Seventh Sunday Before Easter, two days before Ash Wednesday, although this varies; most do not even observe Ash Wednesday; the Monday at the start of Lent is called Clean Monday in Eastern Orthodoxy and is a national holiday in Greece, and is traditionally celebrated, weather permitting, with Lenten picnics and kite flying. Most Protestants use a liturgy based on the Roman Rite, and thus have four Sundays in Advent and mark the first Sunday in Advent as the start of their liturgical year, except for the handful in predominantly Orthodox countries that have adopted a modified version of the local Orthodox liturgy (I know of only three, the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, the Georgian Evangelical Baptist Church, and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in Malankara, India).

** A pastor in a mainline church has proposed, and introduced in his parish, and published an excellent guide, Year D, which addresses the lack of a year dedicated to John, and also fixes one of the great defects of the Revised Common Lectionary and its Roman Catholic variant, that being, the old one year lectionary used in the Roman Rite and, with modifications, most of the liturgical Protestant churches, such as the Anglican churches, reads more Scripture; indeed the traditional Anglican lectionary including the Divine Office (Morning Prayer and Evensong) reads the entire Bible every year, including the Apocrypha, and the Psalter every 30 days. Year D goes a long way towards fixing the problems of the RCL, although it is not perfect; some lectionary selections are strange, and I myself would prefer reverting to the traditional lectionaries, many of which have Old Testament lessons and proper Psalms for each Sunday, for example, the lectionary from the 1959 Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal, the One Year Lectionary in the 2006 Lutheran Service Book (LCMS) and the lectionary in the 1965 Methodist Episcopal Book of Worship.

 

[The Liturgist]

I just discovered that the Maronite rite has been about as heavily influenced by liturgical and musical change as the Latin Rite. Sadly.

Indeed, it is a disaster. I think the only way to fix it is with a Maronite Orthodox Church or an SSPX like Maronite community. There were some improvements which New Liturgical Movement ignored, by the way, such as the restoration of a small minority of the traditional West Syriac anaphoras historically used by the Maronites until the Roman Canon was imposed on them, but the majority remain in obscurity; meanwhile, the reformers of the liturgy promised to revive the East Syriac-style Anaphora of Peter (Sharar), but 50 years later, and no Maronite parish has celebrated it in either a historic or revised form. This is a huge failure, because this anaphora is beloved by Maronites, and is one of the oldest liturgical texts, with third century attestation, making it about as old as the Ethiopian Anaphora of the Apostles, also known in the West as the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition or the Anaphora of Hippolytus, from which Eucharistic Prayer II was derived*, and almost as demonstrably ancient as the second century attested East Syriac Liturgy of Addai and Mari, and the second century-attested traditional Alexandrian Rite divine liturgy used by the Copts as the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril, and historically, by the Greek Orthodox and the Russian Old Rite Orthodox as the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, and existing in other variants, such as one included in the famed fourth century Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis, the oldest complete bishops’ sacramentary in the world.

Which is why I like St. Agnes in St. Paul MN. Glorious, and no misallettes.

Lucky you. The diocese of Las Vegas has a Tridentine mass, and also a Novus Ordo mass in Latin and English, and the Diocese of Los Angeles has an excellent FSSP presence, which I can sometimes visit, because my two Congregationalist missions meet earlier in the morning, and later in the day on Sunday, and on Saturday evenings; also the FSSP in Los Angeles does weekday festal liturgies, which I can always attend.

Are you familiar with the Adoremus hymnal?

I have heard good things about it, although I don’t have one.

* Eucharistic Prayer II, or Eucharistic Prayer B as Episcopalians know it, has been a disaster, because it takes what is actually a liturgical fragment, in that the text we have was intended for use by a bishop, and like the text of the Alexandrian Liturgy in the Euchologion of St. Serapion, or like the early Pontificals used by bishops in the Roman Rite, before the Missal was invented, and the services requiring a bishop, like Ordination, consecrations of churches, and Confirmation, were put in a separate book, the Rituale Romanum, it contains only what is said by the bishop. The version used by the Ethiopians is noticeably longer, and the problem with Eucharistic Prayer II is that under the guise of supposed antiquity, when it is in fact a flawed reconstruction (an adaptation of the Ethiopian anaphora would have been better), has become predominant in many parishes owing to its brevity, because many priests would rather say it vs. the notably longer alternatives, including Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Missal, which is kind of important to the Roman Rite.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Indeed, who could forget the Orwellian moment when Amazon famously deleted Nineteen Eighty Four not only from the Kindle Store, but also, everyone’s devices? That was years before I used Kindle; presently I use it on an iPad, although the inexpensive Kindle Fire is tempting as a backup reading device; however, I also use other services including iBooks and Google Books, so if I buy a non-iPad tablet, it would likely be an Android.

This takes us to the silver lining of the cloud, which is ease of access to content, but we must not forget about the dark cloud itself, which is the ease with which one can be deprived of that content. For example, Apple Music that you purchase is now DRM free, but if you subscribe, like I do, occasionally, a really good recording or even an entire label will just disappear, so whereas previously with itunes it was DRMed and there was no way to “exchange” music you disliked, what I do with my Apple subscription is use it to find music that I enjoy, and that which I like the most, I purchase a permanent DRM free download of. That said, occasionally, I still get bitten even by Apple, who is proving themselves to be, unlike in the mid 2000s, the most beneficent of cloud providers, when sometimes I find an album I really liked and had not gotten around to purchasing “is no longer available in your country or region.”

I am a strong supporter of open source software, DRM free PDF ebooks, a repeal of the DMCA, the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and even the Free Software Foundation despite their militancy and their silly insistence we call all Linux installs GNU/Linux even in the case of Linux systems which do not include the GNU system software but an alternative “userland” like Busybox (the userland on a UNiX like OS contains the essential software that makes the system usable, for example, many people are aware that MacOS uses a UNIX-like userland derived from the open source FreeBSD userland, albeit with their own XNU/Mach kernel instead of the FreeBSD kernel; FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are open source but allow people to use their code in closed-source derivatives, so a great many specialized computer systems use them rather than Linux, for example, Juniper routers and switches and NetApp storage appliances use a FreeBSD-based operating system, and Dell routers and switches based on the Force10 products use a NetBSD-based Operating System; also a modified version of MINIX 3, a BSD licensed Unix like OS, which uses the NetBSD userland, runs autonomously and beyond the reach of most users in every Intel CPU shipped in the past few years, as it powers the Active Management Engine, but you can install FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or Minix on your desktop or most laptops and there are even user friendly versions of FreeBSD like Linux distros; they also all run on the Rasberry Pi).

So as I mentioned before, I do use Kindle, iBooks, and Google Books, I am wary of them (I also use ScribD, but any books I find on it that I really like I seek to acquire in a more permanent way); although I was not affected by the shutdown of the DRM authentication servers of the numerous failed iTunes competitors, including Zune and the ZuneStore, Yahoo Music, and Wal-Mart’s DRM music player software/store, which basically rendered the music playable only on the computers or devices it was licensed to at the time of the shutdown, I am lucky I picked the one service, iTunes, which did not shut down, and I still have a few DRMed iTunes purchases, which still work, although Apple pulling the plug is always possible, especially if they run into a rough spot and Tim Cook, who seems to be nicer and more generous than Steve Jobs ever was, is replaced by someone with the mentality of, say, Sony Media, or worse, a corporate raider in the grand tradition of Carl Icahn, who killed TWA and devastated other companies, or “Neutron Jack” Welch. And chances are someone like that will at some point take over Amazon, Google, or Apple.

Amazon and Google have already shown they are untrustworthy; Apple’s battle to avoid defeating its own encryption system at the behest of the FBI in 2016 after the tragic 2015 ISIS terror attack in San Bernardino suggests that under Tim Cook, they are pretty adamant about user integrity and ethics, as most other tech companies insert backdoors routinely and as a matter of course (one reason why I am a huge fan of OpenBSD is the code auditing and the zeal of the project for security to the maximum limits possible given the constraints of Turing Trust), but this situation exists only so long as the current management retains their current ideology.



The Missalettes are worse than college textbooks, as they become completely worthless after each year. This is because the date of the movable Lent-Easter-Pentecost liturgical seasons, which start on Septuagesima, the Ninth Sunday Before Easter, and the Third Sunday before Lent, and ends on Corpus Christi, the second Sunday after Pentecost, and the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday, is dependent on the moving date of Easter itself, which can occur as early as March 22nd or as late as April 25th. Then, you have the fixed holidays such as the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Transfiguration, the Assumption, the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Cross, Michaelmas, All Saints, Epiphany, Candlemas, and the Annunciation, and numerous other holidays such as the feast days of the Apostles, Martyrs and other Saints. And finally you have Christmas, which sets the date of the four Sundays of Advent*; and there can be as many as two Sundays following Christmas, before Epiphany on January 6th, known as Christmastide. Then, add to this complexity the fact that the Novus Ordo Mass introduced the Three Year Lectionary, from which was derived the Revised Common Lectionary prevalent in contemporary Protestant liturgics.

So the Missalette, which includes the Scripture Lessons, changes for each liturgical year, starting on the First Sunday of Advent, based on the date of Easter, the day of the week Christmas occurs on, and the number of Sundays between Christmas and Epiphany, and between Epiphany and Septuagesima, and between Pentecost, Trinity Sunday or Corpus Christie, since the three happen in that order, so take your pick, but officially they are numbered as “the Xth Sunday in Ordinary Time”, and the Saturday before the First Sunday in Advent, which is the last day of the liturgical year, as well as the number of Sundays after Corpus Chrstie and the first Sunday of Advent in the year the Misalette is for, because these Sundays and the Sundays after Epiphany are Ordinary Time snd before Septuagesima are collectively Ordinary Time, and to get the number of each Sunday right, you need to do that, and the scripture lessons change whether it is Year A (Matthew), Year B (Mark) or Year C (Luke)**.

So each Missalette does become almost worthless after each year, which is why unlike a regular Missal, which is designed to be used regardless of the variable factors, by including multiple texts and simple instructions for what to do, as well as computer programs which automate all of this, the Misalette is specially configured for the specific year it is prepared for, including only the relevant text, plus a selection of copyright hymn and praise and worship music settings, as opposed to traditional Gregorian Chant and polyphonic music, which has been translated into English, which Roman Catholic churches are supposed to use according to the Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini which was issued by Pope St. Pius X in 1903, which was never invalidated or superseded, and indeed, Pope John Paul II, who is now recognized by Roman Catholics as a saint, and I think he might well be, celebrated the centenary of that Motu Proprio with a essay on the subject.

So, while the Missalette might seem to be the easy alternative to seemingly difficult work, the work of arranging the services is also performed by many Roman Catholic institutes, and there are Masses and Hymnals in print which make it easy for any layman with a modicum of intelligence to figure out what to do or sing, as well as apps, and this is also the case in the Byzantine Rite, used by the Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Polish, Cypriot, Czech-Slovak, Macedonian, Albanian, Latvian, Finnish, Estonian, and the Orthodox Cnurch in America), which has far more variables than the Roman Rite, which is actually one of the simplest of the ancient liturgical traditions in terms of propers and the organization of liturgical books, especially in the Novus Ordo form.



“Crackerjack point” as they used to say, and so, I am a member of a group which includes an Anglican priest, a retired Episcopalian priest, a Methodist elder, a Syriac Orthodox priest, a priest in the Assyrian Church of the East, a Russian Orthodox priest, and an emeritus professor of sacred music, dedicated to compiling public domain liturgical texts from existing material. That would not help Roman Catholic parishes except with the traditional Latin Mass which Pope Francis is seeking to curtail, since the material of the Novus Ordo Missae is I believe all under copyright, although if a Roman Catholic liturgical scholar with a good command of Latin joined us, I would love to do English language translations of the Ambrosian and Mozarabic liturgies, and also propose in a public text a “Reform of the Reform” which would replace the Mass of Paul VI with a new mass that would be designed to follow the instructions of Sacrosanctum Concilium more precisely, and satisfy the legitimate complaints of those who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass while providing for vernacular liturgy. That would be fun, but we haven’t the resources to do that at present; we are rushing to get our first three projects ready for release before the end of the year.

*The liturgies of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, and their Eastern Catholic counterparts, as well as the Roman Catholic Ambrosian Rite liturgy used in Milan, and the Mozarabic Rite liturgy once used throughout Spain, but now preserved in a single chapel in the cathedral in Toledo, but still valued to the point where Pope John Paul II celebrated a Mass using the Mozarabic Rite at St. Peter’s in Rome in the 1990s, all have an Advent Season lasting Six Sundays, the same as Lent (counting Palm Sunday), and also start Lent not on Ash Wednesday but, usually, on the Monday following Quinquagesima, the Seventh Sunday Before Easter, two days before Ash Wednesday, although this varies; most do not even observe Ash Wednesday; the Monday at the start of Lent is called Clean Monday in Eastern Orthodoxy and is a national holiday in Greece, and is traditionally celebrated, weather permitting, with Lenten picnics and kite flying. Most Protestants use a liturgy based on the Roman Rite, and thus have four Sundays in Advent and mark the first Sunday in Advent as the start of their liturgical year, except for the handful in predominantly Orthodox countries that have adopted a modified version of the local Orthodox liturgy (I know of only three, the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, the Georgian Evangelical Baptist Church, and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in Malankara, India).

** A pastor in a mainline church has proposed, and introduced in his parish, and published an excellent guide, Year D, which addresses the lack of a year dedicated to John, and also fixes one of the great defects of the Revised Common Lectionary and its Roman Catholic variant, that being, the old one year lectionary used in the Roman Rite and, with modifications, most of the liturgical Protestant churches, such as the Anglican churches, reads more Scripture; indeed the traditional Anglican lectionary including the Divine Office (Morning Prayer and Evensong) reads the entire Bible every year, including the Apocrypha, and the Psalter every 30 days. Year D goes a long way towards fixing the problems of the RCL, although it is not perfect; some lectionary selections are strange, and I myself would prefer reverting to the traditional lectionaries, many of which have Old Testament lessons and proper Psalms for each Sunday, for example, the lectionary from the 1959 Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal, the One Year Lectionary in the 2006 Lutheran Service Book (LCMS) and the lectionary in the 1965 Methodist Episcopal Book of Worship.

All I have to say to that is I suppose it's ?nice? knowing that evangelicals aren't the only ones pushing a bunch of unnecessary, but profitable, literature on their congregations.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I have heard good things about it, although I don’t have one.

I don't have one either, but I'm tempted.

* Eucharistic Prayer II, or Eucharistic Prayer B as Episcopalians know it, has been a disaster, because it takes what is actually a liturgical fragment, in that the text we have was intended for use by a bishop, and like the text of the Alexandrian Liturgy in the Euchologion of St. Serapion, or like the early Pontificals used by bishops in the Roman Rite, before the Missal was invented, and the services requiring a bishop, like Ordination, consecrations of churches, and Confirmation, were put in a separate book, the Rituale Romanum, it contains only what is said by the bishop. The version used by the Ethiopians is noticeably longer, and the problem with Eucharistic Prayer II is that under the guise of supposed antiquity, when it is in fact a flawed reconstruction (an adaptation of the Ethiopian anaphora would have been better), has become predominant in many parishes owing to its brevity, because many priests would rather say it vs. the notably longer alternatives, including Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Missal, which is kind of important to the Roman Rite.

My old parish, near St. Agnes but not St. Agnes, always used Eucharistic Prayer I. (I sent my kids to St. Agnes for high school and the musical and faith formation was excellent.) Also an older Paulist pastor from my grad school days also preferred Eucharistic Prayer I. I vastly prefer it as well. The other ones seemed subjectively inferior to me. Your explanation of Prayer II makes some sense of Eucharistic Prayer II. Thanks.

 

[The Liturgist]

I don't have one either, but I'm tempted.

My old parish, near St. Agnes but not St. Agnes, always used Eucharistic Prayer I. (I sent my kids to St. Agnes for high school and the musical and faith formation was excellent.) Also an older Paulist pastor from my grad school days also preferred Eucharistic Prayer I. I vastly prefer it as well. The other ones seemed subjectively inferior to me. Your explanation of Prayer II makes some sense of Eucharistic Prayer II. Thanks.

Eucharistic Prayer III is loosely based on the Byzantine form of the Anaphora of St. Basil, and Eucharistic Prayer IV is based on the Alexandrian / Coptic form of that Anaphora, albeit with drastic simplifications and redactions. I would argue that insofar as they represent recensions of established liturgies rather than the misinterpretation of a liturgical fragment, they are actually almost on a par with Eucharistic Prayer I, in that Eucharistic Prayer I drastically simplifies the Roman canon in almost as much as they drastically simplify and reconfigure the two liturgies associated with St. Basil. I have to confess, I am not scandalized by the idea of multiple anaphoras, since the Roman Rite is the only liturgy I am aware of that has not, at least since the fifth century, had them. (The Gallican Rites have propers that, in the Mozarabic Rite, cause sweeping changes to the anaphora on various occasions; this was also the case in the Ambrosian Rite in all probability, but it uses a variant of the Roman canon, which is fine, or at least it used to; the Novus Ordo Ambrosian Rite has six Eucharistic prayers. However, I would observe that if we look at the services at the Duomo and other churches in Milan, the revised Ambrosian liturgy is celebrated with much more solemnity than the Roman Rite is in most of the US; the traditional vestments, calendar, liturgical structure, and many other things were retained. I suspect this is because Pope Paul VI, who was reportedly shocked by the missal Anton Cardinal Bugnini and his subordinates composed, and even more shocked by the abuse of it in the US from the very high standard with which it has always been used at the Vatican, having previously been the Archbishop of Milan, took a personal interest in applying Sacrosanctum Concilium to Milan and made sure that the distinctive beauty of the Ambrosian liturgy remained intact. There is a parish in Milan that also is dedicated to preserving the historic form of the use. I have watched videos of services there and at the Duomo, and the differences are not that great.

There were also minimal changes made to the Carthusian Rite, but at least two Charterhouses do not use them.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I suspect this is because Pope Paul VI, who was reportedly shocked by the missal Anton Cardinal Bugnini and his subordinates composed, and even more shocked by the abuse of it in the US from the very high standard with which it has always been used at the Vatican, having previously been the Archbishop of Milan, took a personal interest in applying Sacrosanctum Concilium to Milan and made sure that the distinctive beauty of the Ambrosian liturgy remained intact.

The story was that pope Paul was dismayed when he discovered that a part of a holy week liturgy he was saying was missing. Asking who authorized that change the reply was "You did." It must have been horrible realizing that he signed off on it .

I was a youth when the changes happened. I thought they were great at the time. Now, with much more historical perspective maybe I don't want to go back to a 1962 liturgy but I'm not liking the 1970 liturgy even with it's improvements under John Paul. The 1965 liturgy was brought back to my attention but I'm not sure pope Francis hasn't made that totally verboten in killing off the 1962 liturgy's future. So far he hasn't revoked Anglicanorum Coetibus, and the Ordinariate liturgy seems to be working for me when I can get to it. It's not rad-trad. Well most of the TLM people aren't that rad-trad either.

I appreciate the vast historical perspective you bring to all of this. Years ago I read Josef Jungmann's 'Mass of the Roman Rite'. That didn't include any of the Reformation liturgies for sure. And it's been a while, allowing me to forget quite a bit.

 

[The Liturgist]

The story was that pope Paul was dismayed when he discovered that a part of a holy week liturgy he was saying was missing. Asking who authorized that change the reply was "You did." It must have been horrible realizing that he signed off on it .

I was a youth when the changes happened. I thought they were great at the time. Now, with much more historical perspective maybe I don't want to go back to a 1962 liturgy but I'm not liking the 1970 liturgy even with it's improvements under John Paul. The 1965 liturgy was brought back to my attention but I'm not sure pope Francis hasn't made that totally verboten in killing off the 1962 liturgy's future. So far he hasn't revoked Anglicanorum Coetibus, and the Ordinariate liturgy seems to be working for me when I can get to it. It's not rad-trad. Well most of the TLM people aren't that rad-trad either.

I appreciate the vast historical perspective you bring to all of this. Years ago I read Josef Jungmann's 'Mass of the Roman Rite'. That didn't include any of the Reformation liturgies for sure. And it's been a while, allowing me to forget quite a bit.

The 1965 liturgy, which was introduced in the US at the New York World’s Fair, is probably what Vatican II had in mind. The only part of Summorum Pontificum that I am aware of that I disagree with is the suppression of Prime. There is a workaround for that, by adding what would be in Prime to Lauds as an optional supplement. I think the Council envisaged something like the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox practice, already well established in the 1960s, of combining a vernacular language with the original language, whether liturgical in the case of Coptic and Syriac, or to a lesser extent Church Slavonic (a liturgical language to be sure, but as easy for Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Serbians and most other Slavs to understand as Latin is for speakers of most of the Romance languages), or Byzantine and Koine Greek and Vernacular Greek, or a matter of the convenience of the diaspora - by the 1940s, the Orthodox liturgy was mostly available, thanks to contributions from the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska, and also, the exiled Albanian Orthodox Archbishop Fan Noli, who saw his people having to permanently live in the US, because no one knew how long Enver Hoxha’s completely atheistic Communist tyranny would persist, and he wanted to ensure the Albanian American youth had an English language liturgy, and especially, Fr. Seraphim Nasser of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, whose anthology, the “Nasser Five Pounder”, could be used along with a Liturgikon and a Euchologion (Sacramentary), which was also published by the Antiochians, to run a parish, as it has the most important parts of the numerous Orthodox hymnals, including the Octoechos, the Menaion, the Triodion and the Pentecostarion.

Now, all Orthodox liturgical texts are available in English, most are in one or more public domain or freely available forms, and one project my liturgical club is working on is a set of public domain Eastern Orthodox service books, but these are still a work in progress.

By the way, if you would enjoy working with us, we need people who are pious and having a Roman Catholic on board would be of immediate benefit, even as a proof reader; however, one of our initial releases will be a setting of the liturgy of the Assyrian Church of the East, which is textually identical to that of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro Malabar Catholic Church. There are public domain translations of the Assyrian Eucharist and Divine Office and other sacraments, and the propers for the Eucharist, so the idea is to just combine these and lay them out in the format of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Our Assyrian priest friend is working on translating additional parts of the Divine Office. Currently, almost all parishes of the Assyrian Church of the East, and all parishes of the Ancient Church of the East that I am aware of, use Syriac exclusively, with TVs or projection screens displaying an English translation of the Eucharist in many Assyrian parishes, but not the prayers and hymns of the divine office.

The Chaldean Church I believe also uses Syriac, or Syriac and Arabic, exclusively, but I think mainly Syriac, despite the Chaldean tribe (one of seven Assyrian tribes), which lives mostly in the vicinity of Baghdad and the Diaspora, unlike the other Assyrian tribes, which still speak Assyrian Eastern Neo Aramaic and the languages of countries they have emigrated to, primarily English, as their vernacular languages, Aramaic has largely died out among the Chaldeans and Arabic is predominant in vernacular speech, and this contributed to the Chaldean church breaking away from the Church of the East over the course of the 16th-18th centuries and becoming part of the Roman Catholic Church (protection against Islamic persecution by France, which became the protecting power for Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, was also doubtless an incentive). The “Assyrian BCP” as we are calling it while we debate a title, could easily be modified to suit their needs and the needs of the Syro Malabar Catholics, and in fact that is on the agenda, since the resources we need to do it are already available, so that will likely be the first book we issue for Catholics, probably by March of next year, although the book ideally should have an imprimatur, which could take longer. Our approach to imprimaturs and denominational approvals is to release the draft text first and then seek an imprimatur or denominational approval, making any requested changes or corrections.