by admin | Apr 23, 2025 | News
Learn more about this summer’s Organ Literature course from Prof. Christopher Berry in his recent appearance on CISM’s podcast, Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast.
Listen here.
He outlines strategies for making playing great repertoire every Sunday and feast day possible, even if you’re a really busy parish music director, takes us through some of the foundations for developing a game plan, the role the organist has in cultivating prayerfulness before and after Mass, and how to systematically work through Bach, among other topics.
Don’t miss out on applying for this summer’s classes! The application deadline is next Thursday, May 1st!
Learn more about the Organ Literature class and apply here: https://catholicinstituteofsacredmusic.org/summer-courses/
by admin | Apr 22, 2025 | News
The Adoremus Bulletin has published an article which features an interview with our director, Dr. Donelson-Nowicka, about the upcoming Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit.
Read the article here.
Some highlights:
We’re wanting to gather people for a mountaintop experience, the summit experience. When we share together experiences shaped by the utmost that we can muster in terms of liturgical celebration, great preaching, amazing music, the best talks—that that sort of experience produces a number of important spiritual results that we see as a need for people today.
One thing the conference offers is contact with the source and summit of the Christian faith, the sacred liturgy at the most beautiful level that we can muster. This experience then shapes our orientation for all that we do and the decisions we make in our own parishes and schools. It gives us a true north for our compass.
How do we get to where we’re going? First, you have to know where you’re going, and we intend for this to be orientational in that aspect. A lot of times priests and church musicians don’t see what is possible in their parishes and schools because they have a limited, real experience of amazing liturgies.
Maybe a more beautiful liturgy is just something they’re reading about on the Internet, and they know that they want it for their parish and for their people. After they experience it in person, it can give shape to a lot of decisions and the harnessing of resources. That sort of mountaintop experience captivates the imagination and shapes the spirit.
That’s the model that Christ gives us in the Transfiguration. He leads the disciples up the mountain for this amazing experience of the reality of who he is so that they can then descend down the mountain and abide with him on the Via Crucis.
And in the conference talks, we are bringing together people who have profound ideas and are able to communicate them in a compelling way, providing another kind of opportunity for the encounter with Christ, through the persuasive splendor of the truth of what people say. There also is the experience of comradery we offer in how we have meals together, how we interact with each other, and how we build each other up. It’s sharing ideas like how “I did this in my parish and it was really successful,” or “I did this and it didn’t work so well.” Building a network of people who are striving for the same thing as you are helps you feel supported along the way in real world friendships. Online interactions are a good that God gives us, but we have bodies and we need to be together in the same space to really build those friendships.
by admin | Apr 22, 2025 | News
Upon the death of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music joins all the faithful in prayers for the repose of his soul, and for the will of God to be done in the election of a new supreme pontiff.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
O God, faithful rewarder of souls, grant that your departed servant Pope Francis, whom you made successor of Peter and shepherd of your Church, may happily enjoy for ever in your presence in heaven the mysteries of your grace and compassion, which he faithfully ministered on earth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Deus, qui inter summos sacerdótes fámulum tuum Francíscum ineffábili tua dispositióne connumerári voluisti: praesta, quáesumus; ut, qui Unigéniti Filii tui vices in terris gerébat, sanctórum tuórum Pontíficum consortio perpétuo aggregétur. Per eundem Christum, Dóminum nostrum. Amen.
God, Who in Thy ineffable providence, did will that Thy servant Francis should be numbered among the high priests, grant, we beseech Thee, that he, who on earth held the place of Thine Only-begotten Son, may be joined forevermore to the fellowship of Thy holy pontiffs. Through the same Christ, Our Lord. Amen.
by admin | Apr 17, 2025 | News
A Holy Week Gift for Priests!
A generous donor has enabled us to offer 10 $100 discounts to priests. Once the 10 discounted registration fees are gone, we will close this coupon. You must be a priest to receive this discount, and you must register for the entire conference, not just one day.
Ready to go to the Summit? Register now, and enter the coupon code Priest100 at checkout for the $100 discount.
Register here: https://catholicinstituteofsacredmusic.regfox.com/sacred-liturgy-summit
by admin | Apr 9, 2025 | News
We’re gearing up for the July 1–4, 2025 Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit here at St. Patrick’s Seminary, with CISM providing the fantastic chant and polyphony which will play an integral role in the Solemn Masses and Vespers that are part of the program.
Archbishop Cordileone speaks about the Summit in an article at the National Catholic Register saying:
Observers point to many serious problems: the decline in marriage and the impending demographic crisis; the parallel decline in young people accepting the call to priesthood and the religious life; ever growing family fragmentation; lingering fallout from revelations of clergy sexual abuse of decades ago; the scandal caused by prominent Catholics who stridently oppose foundational moral truths; lack of clarity in presenting the Church’s teachings on the sensitive issues of our time and the ensuing divisions that result from it; the rise of social media as an alternative magisterium, replacing parents and parish alike as the primary educators of children. And the list goes on.
These are all important. But if you ask me, the problem underlying them all is the loss of the sense of the sacred — and most especially in how Catholics worship.
What does this loss mean? We are seeing it played out before our very eyes: the failure to evangelize the next generation of young Catholics in our pews leading to a cascading decline in Catholic faith and practice, as witnessed by the decline in Mass attendance, marriages, baptisms and religious vocations. At least 40% of adults who say they were raised Catholic have left the Church, Pew Research reported in 2015, and 10 years later, the numbers are not getting better.
Clearly, too many of our next generation of Catholics are not meeting Jesus in the Eucharist. If they were, they would not abandon him to join other religions, or simply to be absorbed by the secular culture. In the oft-quoted line from Sacrosanctum Concilium, the fathers of Vatican II put the importance of the liturgy in our lives as Christians in a wonderfully succinct way:
“[T]he liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”
I sometimes wonder if we truly appreciate the overriding importance of this principle: it means that there is simply no more important issue in the Church, or in the world, than renewing this source and summit of faith in Jesus Christ. Do we really believe this?
We hope you’ll be able to join CISM at the Summit this summer!
by admin | Feb 22, 2025 | News
What is the place of well-ordered music in life? What are the effects of disordered music? Dr. Donelson-Nowicka discussed the answers to these questions on the Drew Mariani Show earlier this week on Relevant Radio.
Give it a listen here.
Learn more about this summer’s Organ Literature course from Prof. Christopher Berry in his recent appearance on CISM’s podcast, Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast.
A Holy Week Gift for Priests!