Under Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music (CISM), founded in 2022 in Menlo Park, CA, in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, is leading a renewal of Catholic sacred music and reverent liturgies. CISM’s home, St. Patrick’s Seminary, is becoming an important center of Catholic culture whose influence reaches far beyond the archdiocese.
Fostering beautiful, dignified, and reverent liturgies has been a major goal of Salvatore Cordileone’s during his 22 years as a bishop, first as Auxiliary Bishop of San Diego (2002-2009), as Bishop of Oakland (2009-2012), and, since 2012, as Archbishop of San Francisco. As he fulfills the many responsibilities of a bishop to teach, govern, and sanctify, he has stayed focused on the need to communicate what official Church documents teach about the liturgy and to show by example, beautiful liturgies that inspire emulation.
Twelve years ago, in 2013, the archbishop founded the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship. Under his direction and with his active involvement, the institute sponsors liturgies that demonstrate the highest level of beauty possible, with traditional sacred music, but also newly commissioned Mass settings, hymns, vestments, poetry, and works of art, all of the highest quality. The institute also puts together conferences and gatherings that bring Catholic clerics, musicians, and laity together for instruction, fellowship, and inspiration.
Doctor’s Orders
To help achieve his goals for the training of priests in the need for beauty and in how to think with the mind of the Church about what liturgical beauty entails, Archbishop Cordileone has worked with other stakeholders to revitalize and strengthen the curriculum and faculty at St. Patrick’s Seminary. In 2022, he brought in Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, long after he had come to appreciate her skills as a dynamic teacher and promoter of the Church’s sacred music. Among her many activities reaching out to current and future priests, church musicians, and lay Catholics, Donelson-Nowicka runs Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast.
When she joined the faculty at St. Patrick’s Seminary, Donelson-Nowicka became the first holder of the William P. Mahrt Chair of Sacred Music, which was named after a local Stanford Professor who has since died. As president of the Church Music Association (CMAA) and frequent speaker at world-wide conferences on liturgy, the late Dr. Mahrt persuasively and persistently articulated the continued importance of traditional sacred music in the Church, both for its own intrinsic goodness, but also for the way it sets the standard for any other music composed for the liturgy. He also directed the St. Ann Choir of Palo Alto, which—by performing Gregorian chant and polyphony at ordinary Masses, Lauds, and Vespers services at diocesan churches during its 60-plus year history—kept that music alive as part of the liturgy where it belongs during decades when many thought that Vatican II had banned it from the Church and relegated it to the concert hall.
In addition to teaching at the seminary as an Associate Professor, in her role as Director of Music there, Donelson-Nowicka provides an exemplary program of musical excellence at the liturgies attended by the seminary’s priests in training.
She leads three choirs, one at the seminary, the Archbishop’s Schola, and another choir at Mater Dolorosa, a diocesan parish.
In 2022, Donelson-Nowicka also became the founding director of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music, which is open to non-seminarians. The institute hit the ground running with well-attended sacred music summer graduate-level courses, which it continues to offer each year, along with an online workshop series, and many popular public lectures, and concerts.
Summit of Speakers
This summer, from July 1-4, the Fons et Culmens Sacred Liturgy Summit is coming to St. Patrick’s Seminary, and registration is open here. The conference is sponsored by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, organized by Donelson-Nowicka, and co-sponsored by the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music and the Benedict XVI Institute of Sacred Music and Divine Worship.
Besides Archbishop Cordileone and Donelson-Nowicka, speakers and celebrants include Cardinal Robert Sarah; Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith; Cardinal Seán O’Malley; Bishop and Jesuit Father Michael C. Barber; Bishop Earl K. Fernades; Benedictine Abbot Dom Benedict Nivakoff; Benedictine Abbot Marc Crilly; Dominican Father Anselm Ramelow; Dominican Father Lawrence Lew; Professor Anthony Lilles; Dr. John Pepino; Architect Dino Marcantonio; Professor Michael Foley, Professor Joshua Neu; and Professor Vincent Woo. You can see more information about the speakers and their topics here.
Speaking of the Liturgy…
The following is an interview about the conference I had via Zoom with Donelson-Nowicka.
Roseanne T. Sullivan: The Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Conference that’s coming up in July sounds pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to being there. For speakers and celebrants of the liturgies, you’re going to have three cardinals, three bishops, two abbots, six theologians, and one architect, if I’ve got that right, and they are coming from all over the world. And there will be three Solemn Pontifical Masses and three Solemn Pontifical Vespers. Tell us about how this conference came about.
Jenifer Donelson-Nowicka: This is an initiative of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music plus Archbishop Cordileone. 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”
RTS: I think I see what you mean. When I sang in Professor William Mahrt’s St. Ann Choir in Palo Alto for a few years, I went to two CMAA colloquia [Donelson-Nowicka is a longtime faculty member at CMAA colloquia, the current vice president of the CMAA, and managing editor of its Sacred Music journal.]. Even though I’m not a musician, it was a joy to find other zealous Catholics in love with the beauty of the sacred liturgy and the greatness of the traditional music. Because we care about the same things, many of these people who I met in 2007 and 2008 are still active Facebook friends, and we follow and support each other’s careers, and we are happy whenever we get a chance to see each other.
Keep It Ideal
JD-N: We are following the model too that Dr. Mahrt talked about all the time. In the CMAA, there was a long discussion about whether we should simply focus on giving people resources and music that they can actually do in their parishes. And Dr. Mahrt’s contention was that those things are valuable to a certain extent, but that we actually make the most impact on formation by doing the ideal.
And I think that that has been prophetic in my 20 years of going to the colloquium, having that ideal constantly presented to me every summer.
For example, it’s through the CMAA that I learned how glorious Vespers could be. Can I do that as well in every parish in which I’ve worked? No, but I actually can do the same thing as the colloquium in some situations, and I do things that are more manageable musically and personnel-wise in other situations.
So again, it’s finding a true north for the compass so that we have a clear path and a presentation of the ideal. It doesn’t exhaust the ideal. You’re not going to get every single ideal liturgy that is to be had in four days, but it’s important to have some of those experiences. And I think it’s especially important for our constituencies that we’re trying to gather together. Priests who come can really experience this and then have that fellowship and comradery and time to think through it with hearing the speakers and taking meals together. Lay people who come may be more inspired to support the efforts of priests and musicians, to serve as donors, organizers, hospitality, advertisers—building infrastructure to make these sorts of structures work. For musicians too, it’s inspiring to hear this amazing music. The music that we have planned is really great.
We are doing these amazing polyphonic Mass ordinaries that you might eventually be able to bring to your parish. But it’s also an important experience just to hear, for example, the Frank Martin Mass for Double Choir, even if you’re never going to do it with a parish choir. When you experience a mountaintop experience when it comes to liturgy, it reminds you of who God is and who you are.
And while not vocational, in an ultimate sense, for laypeople, I can speak how for me as a musician, it’s vocational in a sense of: I see that and I know that it’s what I’m to give my efforts and energy towards. And for priests, it is vocational in their ultimate sense, too, that they experience it, and it shapes their identity in a way that is so affirming of the greatness of God, the goodness of the Church, the goodness of our time, and one’s own capacity and role in building this up wherever God has placed you.
RTS: Tell me more about the Mass ordinary and the composer of that Mass that you mentioned.
JD-N: The composer Frank Martin was Swiss. I first experienced his Mass for Double Choir singing in my secular college choir as an undergraduate. We only sang the Agnus Dei, but I remembered it since then. It was such an astounding piece. And then I facilitated the performance of this Mass back in 2015 for Corpus Christi, but it’s the only other time I’ve heard it, in that case as part of a liturgy. It’s very challenging, so you need a professional choir to pull it off.
The other two Mass ordinaries are Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle, and William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices.
RTS: Talk about the musicians.
JD-N: The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music is providing music for this. Christopher Berry, who is an Adjunct Faculty Member of the Catholic Institute for Sacred Music, which I direct, and I will be directing the choir at the conference. We have gathered together an all-professional choir from amongst our graduate students, and around the local area, but also from around the country. There will be 16 singers. Professor Berry and I sat together and we thought, let’s dream our dream choir and make it happen. So that’s what we were able to pull together.
RTS: I will never forget that at the Sacra Liturgia conference of 2022, which was also held in the beautiful setting of St. Patrick’s Seminary, besides being able to share the experience with hundreds of like-minded other attendees, I was delighted at the chance to be able to meet and talk to the eminent speakers. The warm and brilliant Cardinal Robert Sarah, who spoke on liturgical formation, was Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 2014 to 2021, and he will also be at Fons et Culmens summit. I found myself sitting next to him in the audience during your talk. And of course, it was unforgettable to encounter Cardinal George Pell, who spoke about how he was unable to say daily Mass for 406 days during his unjust imprisonment, and then who, to everyone’s shock and sorrow, died the next January.
Tell me more about the other cardinals who will be coming to this summit.
Treasure for the Poor
JD-N: Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith used to be the Secretary for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, from 2005 to 2009 under Pope Benedict.
He used to be very present in discussions about the sacred liturgy and the sacraments. And then, after he was appointed Archbishop of Columbo, Sri Lanka, he’s been dealing with the aftermath of a long civil war, and Sri Lanka has been marked by quite a bit of civil unrest during his time there. So he’s not been traveling so much; he’s had a tough assignment.
The title of Cardinal O’Malley’s talk is “The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor: Prayer, Liturgy and Poverty.” He will speak about the value of the sacred liturgy, the sacred arts, beautiful, well-ordered liturgy in the lives of the poor. He’s going to talk about how these things aren’t just something for the elite or people with money. Investing in the Church’s liturgy, especially when we invest in the sacred liturgical arts, that’s a truly Catholic way of doing art.
RTS: I wrote about that same subject in one of my published memoir essays, how when I was a little girl in Boston, living with my widowed mother and two sisters in low rent neighborhoods and housing projects for the poor, and how going to beautiful churches with beautiful liturgies, I was benefitting from these riches. The money spent on beauty did not take anything away from me. It lifted me up.
JD-N: That’s a valuable thing. I learned that lesson in a particular way when I was a professor in Fort Lauderdale, and my pastor was the pastor of a large parish that had four or five different missions. The main parish was in the worst neighborhood of Miami. On the campus of that parish, he had a medical clinic, he had a thrift store, and a number of other services just to aid the poor. At the end of one parking lot, he built this beautiful colonial Baroque style mission chapel for the parish. And he filled it with amazing Central American and South American paintings that people donated money for him to purchase, to save them from the trash heap. And he made this amazing place in the worst neighborhood in Miami. And to me, that’s a truly Catholic way of sharing beautiful things. Or I even think about an initiative that I think was in 2017, Pope Francis directed that there be a special day when the homeless of Rome be invited for a meal, then the tourists were cleared out of the Sistine Chapel and the homeless were given a private tour.
This is what we’re talking about helping to make happen, to make this beauty accessible to all regardless of the ability to pay.
In a sense, we are all poor before the eyes of the Lord. For those with material possessions, it’s harder sometimes for them to recognize their real poverty. And this is why it’s good for the Church to focus on a beauty which is distinctly accessible to all, regardless of the ability to pay.
What’s in a Name?
RTS: How did you choose the name for the conference? The words fons and culmen are from Sacrosanctum Concilium 10, the document on the liturgy from the Second Vatican Council, according to the quote you have on the webpage for the conference:
… Liturgia est culmen ad quod actio Ecclesiae tendit et simul fons unde omnis eius virtus emanat. Nam labores apostolici ad id ordinantur ut omnes, per fidem et Baptismum filii Dei facti, in unum conveniant, in medio Ecclesiae Deum laudent, Sacrificium participent et cenam dominicam manducent. (“…[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. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.”) Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10.
JD-N: Yes, exactly right. So you go up to the summit, the culmens, and you experience there, the source, the fons, and that source flows back down into your life. The idea is that participation in the sacred liturgy is an entering into what God does. I attend with my body and soul, and I make an offering of myself to God the Father, in unity with the sacrifice of Christ through the Holy Spirit. And when I do that, firstly with my soul, my attention, my intention, that is what I will spend forever doing in eternity. So, it’s a foretaste of heaven. And then the use of my body and the capacities of my body integrating with my soul as a human person strengthened the integral connection between the worship of God, spiritual worship of God and the physical world. And that goes out into a life of prayer, the discipline and habit of prayer, a life of holiness, and then a life lived in charity in whatever way that God calls us to do that, that’s what Vatican II is talking about.
What we want people to come experience is that summit experience, so that it is transformative for the whole of the Christian life as well as the summit experience that people, that priests and parishes, are called to offer to the Christian faithful in the sacred liturgy every single day in their parishes.
RTS: Is there anything else you’d like to tell people to encourage them to take that time and to attend this wonderful event?
JD-N: I think it’s important to remember that when experiences come about like this, that organizing this sort of thing involves a certain concentration of efforts and resources, and it’s important for people to take the opportunity to engage in it when it comes about and not simply wish for a future time that’s more convenient to them or whatever. There’s just a sense of setting aside the time, and we hope that people, if they decide to come, will experience it kind of like a retreat, a time for refreshment and renewal.
I might add a few more thoughts about the meaning and importance of liturgical formation. It’s something that Pope Francis talks a lot about.
But what does liturgical formation really mean? I think there’s nothing more formational than actually engaging in the sacred liturgy, especially in the fullness of what the Church envisions for the sacred liturgy. And it’s clear in the documents of Vatican II and all the way throughout the 20th century, but especially in Vatican II, that the fullness of the Roman rite is the Church’s liturgies celebrated solemnly and sung with the participation of all the ministers and the attendance of the lay faithful.
That’s what the Church holds us to as the kind of measuring stick for all of the liturgy. When we talk about what the liturgy does in our life, there are certainly graces that flow from faithful attendance at a simple daily Mass—no music, just a priest celebrating, that sort of thing, or a priest celebrating privately. But while those are certainly grace-filled experiences, there’s a sense in which we haven’t really scaled the heights of what God has to give us unless we experience the fullness of the Solemn Pontifical Mass. And that’s being presented here.
There are many practical reasons and prudential reasons and pastoral reasons for why the Church allows celebration of other modes of the Roman rite, but all of them have to be linked to the fullness of the Roman rite. And that’s what we’re doing here. It’s the most noble form of the Roman rite is what Vatican II says.
Referring back to the topic of liturgical formation, yes, we have to talk about catechesis and helping people understand what’s there. But the primary mode of liturgical formation is actually participating according to one’s vocation and state in life in the sacred liturgy itself.
Another important thing is another one of the emphases that we have in this conference, especially for example, with the presence of Dr. Anthony Lilles, who is a professor in Spiritual Theology here at St. Patrick’s Seminary. All sorts of treasures of the Church’s spiritual practices and disciplines and charisms open up to us more fully when we have contact with liturgical sources that are common between us and other generations. When we appropriate to our own spiritual lives the fullness of the Church’s liturgy and tradition, it is formative in a way that can be interpretational for reading the spiritual masters of the church, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Teresa of Lisieux, Padre Pio…. We can live more fully what all the greatest saints call us to in their writings when we source our Christian life in the sacred liturgy.
RTS: Thank you, Professor Donelson-Nowicka!
Editor’s Note: Archbishop Cordileone speaks about the Fons et Culmens Sacred Liturgy Summit in this episode of Professor Donelson-Nowicka’s Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast: SE07 EP07—“Is Formality Inauthentic or Insincere? Understanding Excellence in Ars Celebrandi in American Catholic Parishes.”
