I’m borrowing this announcement from the New Liturgical Movement blog, where Fr Thomnas Kocik posted it today:
This coming Sunday, October 20th, at St John Cantius Church in Chicago, His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, will bless the church’s recently installed, fully restored Casavant pipe organ (Opus 1130) at 4:00 pm.
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Immediately following the blessing, a Pontifical High Mass will be celebrated by the Most Reverend Joseph Perry, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago. There will be a dinner in the church hall at 6:00 pm, and at 7:00 pm the Organ Dedication Recital by Thomas Schuster of Miami’s Church of the Epiphany.
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The event, as you see, will be both musical and liturgical: if I come across a suitable video of the liturgy taken during the event, I will drop it in here.
The big organs are wonderful. We had a pretty big one for a school chapel at the private school I went to and I loved that thing. They can make notes nothing else can. That big ol’ Casavant must be just stunning.
Indeed.
I too went to a private school (“public” in the UK sense) with a fine organ and excellent organist. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let anyone play it who had not first achieved the Royal College’s “grade 5” level on the piano, an instrument I detested precisely because it wasn’t an organ. So I turned to the music of words…
I was at St. John Cantius recently for a Latin mass. The Mass is celebrated with great reverence and beauty there, with music suitable to the real presence of Jesus Christ in our midst.
Charles, if you are out here in Chicago, let me know, and we will go to St. John Cantius together.
Indeed, if I find myself in Chicago I shall be delighted to take you up on that invitation, Lex. Many thanks.
My morning mail today brought me this reading by Alcuin Reid, which relates to the “new liturgical movement” and the conversation we had recently regarding BXVI’s “hermeneutic of continuity” — it’s a bit on the long side, but may be of interest…