To adapt or not to adapt?

There is a debate currently raging in the arts world.   At issue:  the adaptation of the cultural landmark opera “Porgy and Bess.”  The opera about life as an African-American on fictitious “Catfish Row” in Charleston, South Carolina was first performed in 1935 with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.   “Porgy and Bess” is considered by many to be America’s greatest opera.    But the current director of the revival thinks she can improve the work by adding new scenes, inventing biographical details, and most radically, changing the ending to reflect a more hopeful outcome.  The title has also been changed to “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.”   These changes have drawn fire from critics who say the monumental work has withstood the test of time and that the changes have distorted the original intent of the authors.

The debates over adaptation are not for theater only.   For centuries, the Church has debated how to adapt its liturgy so that it can best speak to the current culture while maintaining its original meaning and purpose.     As you can tell by the above example, this is no easy task.   In the past several years, the Church has been debating the adaptation of the language of the prayers we pray at Mass.   Church officials looked at the original Latin prayers composed in the 8^th century and determined that our current prayers did not accurately reflect the intent of the original prayers.  Thus, the Church has once again adapted the prayers, this time to more closely reflect those original Latin prayers.   We will begin praying with these new prayers on the first Sunday of Advent, around the time that the new adaptation of “Porgy and Bess” opens on Broadway.

O Lord, give wisdom to those charged with adapting the prayers of the liturgy.  AMEN

Sources

“Google it!”  That seems to be one of our most common contemporary catchphrases.  We use Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and  Bing along with the online encyclopedia  Wikipedia as our go-to sources for just about everything.  Knowledge is literally at the tip of our fingers. 

Have you ever wondered what we use as our go-to source for Mass?  How does the priest and deacon know what to say and when?  How do we know when to stand and kneel and sit and process and sing?  All of these answers are contained in the Roman Missal.   The Roman Missal is the big red book used mainly by the priest at Mass.   In that book is found not only the prayers for Mass, but also instructions on how to carry out the Mass.   The Roman Missal is the English translation for the Latin Missale Romanum.    This book is also called the Sacramentary.

The Sacramentary is our latest prayer book.   But from the beginning the Church has sought to revise and reform its prayers and books.  The first centuries of Christian prayer were improvised.  As worship became more formalized, various books evolved with prayers, readings, chants and instructions on how to pray.   Different countries prayed different prayers in different styles.    But, Church authorities were continually trying to encourage everyone to pray the same prayers in the same way by using similar prayer books.  The Council of Trent in the late 16^th century called not only for reforms of the current prayer books used in various dioceses, but imposed a single Roman missal to be used throughout the Latin Church.   This uniformity was made easy by the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15^th century.  Now the entire Catholic world could literally be on the same page.   The Roman Missal has been reformed once again.  The structure of the Mass will be the same.  The changes made are changes in the prayers themselves.  The prayers adhere more closely to the original Latin prayers.  We will begin praying with these new words on the First Sunday of Advent.   May these prayers encourage us to keep God as our “go-to” source for living.

Lord, help us as we prepare to pray in new ways.  Amen.

Finishing the work

The San Francisco Opera is getting ready to open this year’s season with Turandot, the opera by Giacomo Puccini about a cold-hearted Asian princess who lures potential suitors by challenging them to answer three riddles.   Puccini was diagnosed with throat cancer at the time he was writing the work and died before he was able to finish it.    Having a sense of the seriousness of his condition, he is said to have told his friend and conductor Arturo Toscanini, “Don’t let my Turandot die.”  In fact, it was Toscanini who conducted the premiere of Turandot  at La Scala in Milan in 1926, more than a year after Puccini’s death.   Though the work had been finished by another composer, Toscanini reportedly put down his baton in the middle of Act 3, saying, “Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died.”   And the curtain was lowered.   Today, Turandot is one of Puccini’s most-performed operas, keeping the memory of Puccini and his works alive.

The liturgy is one way we keep the memory and the works of Jesus alive.   Much like Puccini’s plea to Toscanini to keep Turandot alive, Jesus commanded us to keep his memory and his works alive with the words, “Do this in memory of me.”   The “this” Jesus speaks of refers not only to what we do inside the liturgy, but also by how we live outside the liturgy.   This is summarized in the new Roman Missal (which we will begin using on the first Sunday of Advent) by two of the newly-translated dismissals spoken by the deacon:  “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord,” and “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord with your life.”   May these words challenge us with the grace to continue God’s opera of humankind.

O Lord, help us to live what we pray.  AMEN

The Art of Interpretation

Thousands of little girls are currently polishing their vocal pipes and their visionary dreams as they audition to be the next “Annie.” The musical will once again grace the Great White Way with a return to Broadway in the fall of 2012.   Annie is an adaptation of a comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, which was written by Harold Gray and ran from 1924 until just last year.   Gray often used the comic strip to voice his political views, namely that he was not a fan of organized labor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Roosevelt’s New Deal.   Gray’s “Daddy” Warbucks, for example, was portrayed as the ideal capitalist, a tuxedoed millionaire who made a fortune creating munitions for World War I. 

But, Warbucks, FDR, and the story of little orphan Annie were reinterpreted when a man named Thomas Meehan adapted the comic strip for Broadway in 1977.  In Meehan’s version, “Daddy” Warbucks was a friend to FDR, and in fact, it was FDR who eventually saved Annie from the orphanage enabling Warbucks to adopt her.  The musical ends with everyone singing “A New Deal for Christmas,” exalting the plan that the original comic strip writer so criticized.

As the above example illustrates, art often depends on the interpretations of the author, the author’s particular opinions and beliefs, as well as the circumstances and the context of the time in which they live.  The art of liturgy is no different.  Our liturgical texts have been reinterpreted and changed  throughout history, and they are about to change again.  Our current prayer-book is based on a loose interpretation of the original Latin translation.  The prayer-book which we will begin using on November 27^th is based on a closer interpretation of the original Latin translation.  Let us pray that this new translation will inspire a “new deal” of peace and justice for the Church and the world.

O Lord, may the words of our prayer lead to action.  AMEN

When in the Roman Church... do as the Romans did...

Have you ever looked in the mirror and saw the image of your mother or father?

Or, have you ever thought to yourself, “I’ll never say that to my kids,” referring to something your parents used to say to you, only to hear yourself saying that same thing to your children?  You’re not alone.  As we journey through life, it’s likely we see more and more of our parents reflected in our bodies, our mannerisms, in the way we think and act.  We may have been influenced by many people, by our environment and by our circumstances, yet a part of us will always bear the mark of our parents. 

                                

In the same way, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, though influenced by many cultures, will forever mirror the influence of the city considered the Church’s Matriarch, Rome.   The rise of the Roman Empire and the legalization of Christianity in the Church’s early centuries provided the means for the Church to borrow a lot of its liturgical practices from the cultural practices of Rome.    Incense, candles, actions like bowing, processing and genuflecting, and gestures like beating the breast all came from Roman Imperial Court Ceremonies.   The vestment worn by the priest, the chasuble, was used in Rome as a garment for traveling.  The ranking of the clergy reflected the ranking system of the Roman government.  Even early church buildings were modeled after basilicas, large civic structures built as  monuments to glorify the Roman empire.   Liturgical language too was influenced as Greek yielded to Latin in the third to fourth centuries.    All of this will be important to keep in mind as we prepare for a new translation of the Church’s liturgical prayerbook , the New Roman Missal, which we will begin using on the first Sunday of Advent in November.   The prayers will conform more closely to the original Latin in which they were written, adhering to a more classical Roman Rite.

O Lord, help us as we prepare to pray with new words, AMEN.