Cardinal Gregory honors Father Clarence Rivers

By Joann Stevens Catholic Standard Reprinted with permission During a Mass of Thanksgiving June 29 in the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, archbishop of Washington, celebrated the life and legacy of Father Clarence Rivers (1931-2004), whose faith and creativity transformed Catholic liturgy and sacred music in the early 1960s and continues to inspire today. Father Rivers, an African American priest in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, was a renowned artist and musical composer and a pioneer in Black Catholic liturgical music. He died in 2004. At the Mass, Cardinal Gregory highlighted the 60th anniversary of two seminal events in the late priest’s mission to build a united, culturally inclusive Church: The impact of Father River’s American Mass Program and its debut at the first Catholic Mass offered in English in the United States after the Second Vatican Council. In 1964, Father Rivers presented his American Mass Program of Afro-centric liturgy and hymns that blended the soul and rhythms of Negro spirituals with Gregorian chants to create what Cardinal Gregory called “the sacred music that emanates from the hearts and spirits of African Americans…The words and melodies (that) belong to our...