I was poking around my alma mater‘s online events calendar this last weekend, looking for something else, when I noticed that there was a lecture scheduled for this evening (Wednesday) titled, “Liturgical History and Musical Performance Practice: Issues to consider for a performance of a Missa Tridentina,” to be given by one Fr. Dominic Holtz, O. P., of the Aquinas Institute of Theology at Saint Louis University. Well, of course I needed to be there, so I made sure it was on my schedule for the day.
The next day, my godson Matthew mentioned to me that he would be singing in a Tridentine Mass Thursday evening that was being celebrated as part of the final project for the graduate Choral Literature course. I mentioned the lecture to him, and he said, yes, Fr. Holtz was the celebrant.
So this got all kinds of interesting really quickly. First of all, the Mass is going to be at St. Paul’s Catholic Center, the Newman Center at Indiana University. St. Paul’s, and Fr. Bob Keller in particular, has been really nice to us Orthodox, having let the OCF folks use the chapel for ostensibly “on-campus” services and so on, plus they hosted the All Saints choir’s concert a couple of years ago, so as far as I’m concerned they’re friends, but they are in no way, shape, or form architecturally or aesthetically intended for a Tridentine Mass. The church was built in 1968 and decidedly reflects what was in the air at the time. Secondly, they’re using a School of Music choir for a course project but taking great pains to celebrate it as a real Mass, and bringing a priest from St. Louis to do so? Fascinating — there have been a couple of EF Masses in Bloomington in the last two or three years, but they’ve been celebrated at St. John’s, and Fr. Michael Magiera of Holy Rosary Church in Indianapolis has been the celebrant.
Anyway — I’ll have more to say when I have more time in which to say it, but what I will say for the moment is that I found Fr. Holtz’s lecture very engaging on, and sensitive to, a number of issues, and he also came across as quite knowledgeable. I am looking forward to the Mass, and I think it would be a good thing for anybody in the area for whom this kind of thing is of interest to go and show their support, particularly given that it is being held at St. Paul’s. It will be at 8pm (with a brief talk at 7:30pm), at St. Paul’s Catholic Center, 1413 E. 17th St., Bloomington, IN. Hope to see you there; I’ll be the guy crossing himself in the wrong direction.
Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist 