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Latin hymns and chants, the greater liturgical functions make but small appeal to their devotion. In this respect our people compare very unfavourably with the continental Catholics, and especially with those of the Latin races. The contrast was vividly presented to the minds of those who participated in the great National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1913. It was quite a revelation to many of our pilgrims on that occasion to witness the zest with which the French and Belgians entered into ceremonies and processions; the verve and enthusiasm which they brought to the singing of their popular vernacular hymns; and above all, the taste and intelligence with which they sang the Latin Vespers, and many of the commoner chants of the liturgy. Nor, it is to be feared, is it the continental churches alone that excel us in these details of public worship. We must also admit in these matters, though in a less degree, the superiority of the British and American Churches as well.

What, then, is the cause of this strong tendency to silence and mere passivity in public worship on the part of our Irish congregations? Many will at once find the cause in the Penal Laws, which, driving the Irish Church into the catacombs for three centuries, broke her tradition of liturgical splendour, but grounded her people in the love and practice of that plain Low Mass, which, silent and chantless, was the sheet-anchor of Ireland's faith in the days of persecution. There is a danger, however, of our attributing too much to the Penal Days. The writer once knew an old priest-and a very worthy one-who had two formulae, by one or other of which he explained away or excused any detail in which either the practice of the Irish Church in general, or his own in particular, fell short of the exact requirements of the rubrics or the canon law. One was, 'The effects of the Penal Laws are with us still '; the other was that very useful theological tag'sacramenta propter homines.' A zealous but somewhat cynical assistant of his once replied by parodying Madame Roland's famous dictum, 'Ye Penal Laws, what negligence is condoned in your name!' And most people will agree that, in ecclesiastical matters at least, if we still suffer from the effects of the days of persecution, it is mostly our own fault. It is nigh a century now since the Irish Church rose to a new life of civic liberty. She should ere this have finally cast aside the cerements and graveclothes that bound her in the tomb of slavery.

How, then, shall we get our people to break with this bad

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tradition of super-sensitive shyness in church, and teach them to become vocal in prayer and chant in the service of God? The answer is: by organized and persevering effort. Let us begin with the smaller things first, say, the papal prayers after Mass. Explain to the people that these prayers are supposed to be recited aloud alternately by priest and people. Appeal to them to raise their voices to honour the Mother of God in the Holy Mary' and the 'Hail, Holy Queen.' Point out to them the tender beauty of this latter prayer, with its plaintive appeal of the poor banished children of Eve to her whom they greet as our life, our sweetness and our hope.' But, and this is a most important point, let the prayer be recited by the priest so slowly, as to render it possible for the people to recite it with him. To try to recite it all in one breath is to attempt the impossible. It must be broken up into sections by an adequate number of breathing spaces, with which the people, following the priest, will very soon become familiar. In some places the custom prevails of priest and people reciting the Salve in alternate sections or verses, and it seems a very beautiful and devotional method, which might with advantage be more generally adopted.

Once the priest has succeeded in getting his congregation to respond to these prayers ('Hail Mary,' Salve Regina, and the Invocation to the Sacred Heart) he has made a beginning, but only a beginning. He will have a full-voiced response for one or two Sundays; but, unless he returns to the subject again and again, the old tendency to mere passive assistance will infallibly reassert itself in a short time. It is largely a matter of habit, and new habits are acquired by repeated acts.

The next step might be to secure a proper response from the people to the recitation of the Holy Rosary. Again it will be a matter of sustained effort on the part of the priest. But it is worth while. The Rosary is pre-eminently the popular congregational prayer of the Irish people. Where two or three of them are gathered together, and the circumstances invite to joint prayer (the death-bed of a friend, for example, or some impending calamity), it is to the Rosary that they instinctively turn. Moreover, most Irish families are accustomed to recite it aloud in common every night at their own firesides; it is only in church that they are content to answer it in an undertone, leaving the public recitation of it to the priest and his acolytes. This tendency must be

fought by frequent exhortation, and by various plans and devices. It is sometimes useful, for example, to leave, in alternate decades, the Hail Marys to the people, the priest himself answering the Holy Marys; or even to divide the people as they sit in the church into two choirs,' one answering the other, as in the choral recitation of the Divine Office. Another useful variation would be to have the Glory be to the Father' and the response chanted to one of the psalm tones, either in the vernacular, or, as in France, in Latin. This device has the further advantage of counteracting a very regrettable tendency to hurried and indistinct mumbling of this solemn doxology at the close of each decade. As a result of such well-sustained effort, the priest will have the consolation of hearing his people raising their voices with pious enthusiasm to the honour of God and His Blessed Mother in this their favourite prayer. Both he and they will note with satisfaction the contrast between this full-voiced organ swell of praise and supplication, and the dull and cheerless recitation of the same prayer, when the priest has no assistance save the thin and piping treble of a few acolytes.

Once the people have been accustomed to recite the Rosary aloud in this way, they will have found their speaking voice in church, and there will be but little trouble in getting them to respond in a similar way to all other such joint prayers, the Angelus, for example, the Litanies, the Divine Praises. But the priest must bear in mind that this will be impossible for his people unless these prayers are recited by him in a comparatively slow and deliberate fashion. Otherwise, after a vain effort to keep up with his cross-country pace, the majority must perforce abandon the attempt, leaving it to a few of their more daring and nimble-tongued brethren to pursue the officiant, in a breathless wordy race, that is admirable' only in the original Latin sense of the word.

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When the people have been thus led to find their speaking voice in the church, the much more difficult task remains of teaching them to find their singing voice. Though there has been a marked improvement in recent years, it still remains true that congregational singing is comparatively rare in our churches and that our people, as a body, evince considerable disinclination to join in it. The cause is partly, no doubt, the neglect in most of our primary schools, until recent years, of even the most elementary musical education. This, how

ever, is not the whole explanation; for there are many who will join with great vigour in a popular chorus on a festive occasion but find themselves struck dumb when it comes to hymn-singing in church. The true cause is an extraordinary mauvaise honte, or silly shyness, that makes them shrink from the sound of their voices in the sacred surroundings of the church. Again there is needed, on the part of the priest, vigorous and persistent exhortation, and the adoption of some plan to give encouragement and to allay nervousness and timidity.

A beginning could be made with some easy popular hymn in the vernacular, suitable for singing before and after Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament. If there be a confraternity in the parish, it will greatly facilitate the work of introducing general congregational singing; for the director can very profitably devote a considerable part of the time of the weekly or monthly meetings to the teaching of hymns, which can then more easily be introduced amongst the congregation as a whole. If not, it will be found useful to select a number of the younger folk, boys and girls, who have got voices and are not afraid to use them, to teach the hymn to them, and then to have them scattered judiciously amongst the general body of the faithful in the church, to provide a lead for the others, and to sustain and encourage them in the beginning. When one or two hymns have been learned in this way the main difficulty will have been overcome: the people will have found their voices, and will soon come to discover in the singing a pleasing expression for the pious sentiments of their hearts. Suitable hymn-books can then be provided or placed in the Catholic Truth box; the people will gladly avail of the opportunity, and new hymns will be learned without difficulty.

The next step should be to secure congregational singing of the entire Benediction Service. This will involve the teaching of the O Salutaris, the Tantum Ergo, and the Laudate, which can be done, as already explained, through the instrumentality of a confraternity, or by the help of a few specially trained young people strategically dispersed through the congregation. It should not be considered enough, however, for them to know merely the words and music of these Latin hymns; an effort should also be made to teach them the meaning of the words, so that the singing of them may be for them a real prayer of devotion. This may seem a rather large order; but if a serious efiort be made it will be found

quite feasible. Take the Laudate for example. The order of the words is so direct, and the words themselves are so familiar from their English derivatives, that any person of average intelligence can easily be taught the meaning of the psalm in a few minutes. The same is true, though in a less degree, of the O Salutaris and the Tantum Ergo. Then, when the people, or a large percentage of them, have thus mastered the words and their meaning, the singing of the Benediction Service should on all ordinary occasions be left to them, reserving the musical pyrotechnics of the organ gallery for times of unusual solemnity.

So far we have been discussing the people's participation in popular devotions and non-liturgical functions: we now come to consider the more difficult question of their active assistance at the strictly liturgical functions, and especially at the great act of the liturgy, the Missa Solemnis or High Mass. And here we are faced at the outset by the fact that High Mass is extremely rare in our Irish churches, even in the stately cathedrals with which the piety of our people has studded the land, and which one would naturally expect to be great centres of liturgical splendour. Once again the Penal Laws are invoked as the explanation, with the addition that High Mass does not appeal to the devotion of our people. To which it may be replied that the Penal Laws are extinct for the past century; and that, if the High Mass does not appeal to our people, it is for the same reason that Low Mass does not appeal to a Presbyterian, because they are unfamiliar with it and do not understand it. Surely there must be something wrong, when the supreme act of Catholic worship, in its original and true form, makes no appeal to the most Catholic people in the world. We cannot admit that the fault is in the High Mass itself, for it is the original and still the normal rite of the Holy Sacrifice, for which the Low Mass is but a comparatively late and much curtailed substitute. The fault must therefore be found in the people themselves, or rather in their religious education.

What, then, is the remedy? Clearly the remedy is to be found in the schools, in which the programme of religious instruction might, with advantage, be made to require a much more detailed knowledge of the liturgy of the Mass than has been hitherto demanded. The objection will at once be raised, that the programme is already too extensive, and that any such enlargement would impose an undue strain on the energies of both teacher and pupils. There is much truth in

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