Jan
6
Collegium Cantorum of the University of Dallas’ Pilgrimage to Rome, 12/26/08 – 1/5/09
Filed Under christianity, personal
Just an opinion. Quite obviously, many others in the same group will differ. Also, an additional note: our tour guide, Alessio Rosoldi, was excellent. He can be reached at alessiorosoldi@hotmail.com – if you’re planning on going to Rome, contacting him is a very smart idea, and I do have his phone number in case you want to contact him that way. Anyway:
But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly and for “the people,” the fight against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia – for Christianity is Platonism for “the people” – has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of which had never existed on earth: with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals. To be sure, European man experiences this tension as need and distress; twice already attempts have been made in the grand style to unbend the bow – once by means of Jesuitism, the second time by means of the democratic enlightenment which, with the aid of freedom of the press and newspaper-reading, might indeed bring it about that the spirit would no longer experience itself so easily as a “need.”
- Nietzsche, from the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann
1. When we were in Assisi, there were many Italians along with us crossing themselves in front of the incorruptible remains of St. Clare, or slowly and meditatively walking through St. Damiano, trying to find that which motivated Francis to “rebuild” the Church (it was a crucifix, quite literally, that bent down and spoke, and is in a cathedral higher up).
This was an older Collegium group for the most part, and it was interesting to see the people they’ve become outside of school. The main unifying element was, I felt, a very intense Catholicism that takes the proposition Rome is the holiest city very seriously. The implication of Rome being holiest was spelled out exactly in a homily given in Florence by a University of Dallas graduate who is Cistercian and living in Italy. Accompanying those ideas is a moralism most inflexible: the things that can be said we will all agree on. People who can recite copious amounts of Church history or teachings from encyclicals, Catholic mystics or reactionary publications loomed large in this crowd.
I don’t want to give the impression any of this is bad. Collegium is something I love dearly and I would like you to help me support. But if you’re more secular, and you encounter Collegium, it will strike you at first as strange. And I can’t say that it doesn’t strike me as strange, still – there was definitely a feeling of “I want to get married” pulsing through the various members of the group that was even stronger than when I was taking classes. There were many prayers said in front of relics, i.e. the severed head of St. Catherine of Siena, that made me wonder where the truth truly lies.
2. So that’s the group I felt I was with for the most part. If you ask around, you’ll get other answers about what happened, and more than likely told that my explanation is a strange one. People who carry their notebooks around everywhere, after all, don’t quite fit in.
Where did we sing?
- We didn’t get to sing for the Pope or in St. Peter’s or the Sistine Chapel. Yes, I’m bitter about this, even though I blame no one. This choir is marked by its liturgical function, and it does help maintain the sacredness of the Mass. To ignore what Collegium does is really a slap in the face to a heritage that worked hard to only give the absolute best to God.
- We did sing (”drive-by singing”) in San Giovanni (where the papal throne is), St. Mary Major, St. Paul Outside the Walls, the Sacred Steps, and probably a few others in Rome that I’m forgetting. We sang Mass at Santa Croce in Rome, I think – it was the church devoted to the relics of the True Cross, with the chapel of St. Helen. We sang Mass for a local parish in the city of Marino. We sang in the giant black and white striped gothic/romanesque cathedral in Siena, Santa Croce in Florence (in front of Machiavelli’s grave), San Francesco in Assisi, and had a really moving Mass in a church in Palestrina as well as a nearly 1000 year old Church in Rome near St. Mary Major.
We had a very large group – 70-80 people, I think, nearly all of them singers – and so we had volume and tended to blare a bit. The strength of the group is that since we’ve all been doing this forever, we didn’t have to practice much to get or maintain a good sound, and in quite a few places we had a brilliant sound emerge from a section or two. Recordings I’ve heard of us made impromptu on this trip sound pretty awesome.
3. I hung around my little group quite a bit – Bill, Ryan, Barbara and whoever else wanted to tag along. Learned a lot about what’s happening on campus, how to elaborate the notion “God is being,” and parenting, respectively. Bill was an excellent tour guide for Rome, although when we were just walking through it, my imagination started taking over. It’s hard to read Virgil, Ovid, Augustine and see the Renaissance art and not start wondering what the spirit of Rome is, and how it relates to both the ruined and finished buildings. The Forum and Pantheon were genuinely exciting: my greatest desire at both places was insight into what greater thinkers experienced.
I spent a good deal on good meals. Boar with polenta; this “forest” scented pasta sauce with two sorts of mushrooms blended into it, one of the mushrooms being truffles; the tenderest, juiciest veal with this subtle lemon sauce that went great with wine.
One of the worst meals I had I paid too much for, but it was a time I spent learning. At that meal I sat with a few Collegium members who were really hurting, who were in pain because of failed relationships, career choices with unexpected consequences, and trying to explain that they had grown, but weren’t sure how it happened. They knew they spent more time listening than before, and were curious what the next stage, from wonder to talking too much to listening far more, would be. It felt like Collegium for the most part was in that “talking” stage, but these members were beyond that.
I just sat and enjoyed the bean soup and all its delicate, overpriced flavors and listened. I know more than anyone else that growing up alone will not solve one of the major crises of our time, that our humanity is so decayed we can only reject religion or embrace it wholly uncritically. Somewhere along the line we started seeing each other as objects, as means to ends. It is unclear how any of us, sacred or secular, could deal with an afterlife where social graces might matter that much more. I always thought the one thing God wanted from us was that we love each other as He loves us.
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Welcome Back!! Sounds like an interesting trip. On your last paragraph: *nod*, *sigh*.
Yeah Welcome Back
I am excited to see more of your trip