Abstract
In 1997, Blessed Pope John Paul II gave an address to a group of French bishops in which he argued that liturgical music, as an integral part of the Church’s solemn liturgy, itself partakes of the four ‘notes’ of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Pope John Paul’s reflections on these ecclesiological characteristics of church music find an echo in some of the writings of the then Cardinal Ratzinger on the subject of music in the liturgy. A Thomistic approach to the theology of worship and its music emphasizes the connection between truth, beauty, and inspiration. This connection is drawn out in Pope John Paul’s 1997 address, and also in Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (2007). Furthermore, it is Christ, the word and image of the Father, who acts in the liturgy; thus, the Eucharist functions as an image of the heavenly liturgy, and our liturgical music must be ‘harmonized’ with the music of heaven. Some comments of Pope Benedict on ‘fundamental’ and ‘superficial’ images can be applied to sacred music, which must be the image of the music of the heavenly Jerusalem, and not merely mundane sounds that veil the real countenance of the Ecclesia orans. A brief bibliography of Ratzinger/Benedict’s writings on the theology of worship and of its music is given as an Appendix.
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Robert A Skeris
Fr Robert A. Skeris (born Sheboygan, WI, 1935) is a priest of the Diocese of Milwaukee, WI (USA), a theologian, a church musician, and a conductor. Of Lithuanian extraction, he has studied in the USA, Germany, and Rome. He served the Holy See as prefetto della casa at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music (Rome) from 1986 to 1990. A former President of the Church Music Association of America, he is now the Director of the Centre for Ward Method Studies at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.
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