Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming

I just got back from a Christmas concert at a Catholic seminary in a nearby county. It’s a traditional Catholic organization that uses the Latin mass, which means that it is basically dissident.

The concert was very uplifting, a mixture of ancient, traditional, and modern Christmas music. In addition to carols, they did Gregorian chant, “Ev’ry Valley” from The Messiah, a Bach chorale, something by Vivaldi, some jazzy stuff, and “Lo how a rose e’er blooming” in German.

The brothers at the seminary seem to be quite young — fresh-faced youngsters just out of high school, mostly.

The audience must have been largely Catholic, lots of parents with three or four children under six. I assume they drove in from fairly far away, since the seminary is in a remote rural location.

It was very heartening to witness such an event. The old ways aren’t dead. They’ve just gone underground in our corrupt, hedonistic, and satanic culture.

8 thoughts on “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming

  1. It’s a pity that an online feed isn’t available. I’m an ex-Catholic but I still enjoy good culture and proper worship of the Lord.

  2. Baron,
    You might also be uplifted to know that there is a big Spoken Latin movement afoot, with various unconnected practitioners (all young) making YouTube videos of their work. Loads of lessons and random videos are to be found. Luke Ranieri is just one of those. (I think he’s made hundreds of videos–some in Italy where he speaks Latin to Italians to see how well they can communicate.)
    They’re very inspiring on a whole lot of levels.

  3. A year or two back you posted a wonderfully uplifting video of King’s Scholars singing “Es ist ein Rose entsprungen” from the ante-Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. It is the season.

  4. As a non-believer, I avoided church services for many years, apart from Christmas ones in the company of a fellow-atheist at St Paul’s cathedral (Anglican) and a Lutheran church in the City of London (they had some of the best music). Yet when I visit some of the many fine churches and (especially) cathedrals we have in England- a particular passion of mine- I love to hear the choir singing.

    Sadly, being the age I am (74), the people I love keep dying; in the last four years, I’ve been to Jewish, Anglican, humanist and Catholic funerals. Not to be flippant, but at the Jewish one, only the cantor sang (and he could); at the Anglican and Catholic ones, the congregation sang (and some of them couldn’t); at the humanist one no-one did.

  5. Actually, the Latin Mass is being done in the Italian Church (also a Polish and Irish church in same town) by an Italian Priest every Sunday and has been for the last couple of years where I grew up.

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