Society of Saint Gregory

Yes, the renewed restrictions are a blow. But surely we need to be thoughtful and creative, given that they might well be in force not only at Christmas but certainly in Lent 2021 and perhaps next Easter as well. A personal experience. I was at a crematorium funeral service a couple of days ago. The...

My view was that we should aim for a staged recovery, and that is what my PP and I agreed. Stage 1 was a said Mass with the bare minimum. After 3 weeks we moved to Stage 2, which was the addition of the organ for a quiet voluntary before Mass, quiet music during the Offertory and Communion and a sh...

A lot of the live-streamed Masses are being transmitted via churchservices.tv. I visited two yesterday. One stalled in a permanent loop, but both showed integration of pre-recorded music into the live-streamed Mass. One exhibited its One License licence number, and indeed some of the insertions were...

As far as I can see, live-streamed Masses are mostly from churches, with the recording camera mounted variously distant from the altar. My parish (Barnet) has taken a different line. It does not use the church but a fairly small meeting room, rigged up with temporary altar and ambo close by. The eff...

There's plenty of meat in the hyperlinks provided by Southern Comfort. Why "preface"? It sounds like just a preamble to the main Prayer after the Sanctus. It isn't. It's an integral part of the Eucharistic Prayer. The main verb of the first sentence is 'give you thanks', i.e. make Eucharist. The nam...

It is a shame that the period from the 4th Sunday of Lent through to Pentecost and all the liturgies that come with it couldn't be moved to later in the year, in place of the Sundays of Ordinary Time. You can't pretend that you are somewhere different in the calendar. It's the same case as if you w...

Now that places of worship are to be closed for at least three weeks, there will be no music, alas, unless clergy wish to do unaccompanied singing... :( Churches are business premises, not homes. Though closed to the general public, are priests instructed not to go into them? I think not. Invited c...

I've just watched - and done my best to take part in from afar - a live-streamed Sunday Mass (actually from churchservices.tv/newsouthgate). All done very nicely with just one reader and two concelebrating priests. But all SAID. What could be the role of music in live-streamed liturgy? This is an ur...

For decades my parish has celebrated First Communions fully integrated into the Sunday morning Masses. Over two of the morning Masses over four weeks in Eastertide, from 6 to maximum 10 children make their first Communion (we have about 60 first communicants a year). They will have been expected to ...

I received the attached open invitation as an NNPM contact. Any SSG members or others interested in taking part?

Nearly typed on an Order of Service booklet:

HOMILY - please be sedated.

Some years ago, my then ex-Anglican parish priest brought to my attention a hymn in honour of deceased parishioners. We sang it each November for a number of years. It is from the New English Hymnal (208): I have changed the beginning to read 'In our day of remembrance' instead of 'In our day of tha...

The Tablet this weekend announces that Pope Francis has ordered a review of the guideleines on liturgical translations from Latin. Archbishop Arthur Roche will head a body of bishops 'from across the world'. It will look at the current rules (i.e. Liturgiam Authenticam) and also examine how much of...

Spotted on amazon.co.uk: a learned book by Enrico Mazza - "The Theology of Liturgy in the Parasitic Age".

And when would that be? A special indulgence for the best answer.

During a service with Pope Francis at the Ground Zero Memorial in New York City, Cantor Azi Schwartz delivered a haunting rendition of the Jewish prayer to the fallen.

Here it is: https://youtu.be/EQ6QItyQnGY