Category: Article by Jeffrey Tucker

Lots of people have questions about sacred music that they are afraid to ask. A small fraction of these questions arrive in my in box, and I’m always happy about this. Usually they involve terminology. It’s always the case that people involved in a sector of life develop their own vocabulary. I can recall recently talking to a person in the candy-packaging industry and it was dazzling how many specialized terms he could throw out there in the course of a few minutes.

And so it is in sacred music. The trouble is that this sector has been small and specialized for half a century, whereas the vocabulary really ought to be a common feature of Catholic life. I can understand this from an individual point of view. It wasn’t too long ago that the specialized language of Catholic music and liturgy was completely new to me, and of course I still have vast amounts to learn.

I can recall, for example, being completely confused by the term Graduale. What is it and why am I having such a hard time figuring it out? Sure enough, I received an email today asking all the same questions I once had. So let me try to straighten this out. And, please, I welcome any correction to this entry.

The term Graduale is Latin. In English it is Gradual. A major source of confusion is that it is used in two senses. One use refers to the music book of the Roman Rite, the Roman Gradual or Graduale Romanum. Another use refers to a special kind of chant after which the book itself is named.

So this usage problem is already confusing, since we are used to one word meaning one thing. Hence, “sing the Graduale from the Graduale” is a sentence that is likely to introduce no end to confusion. But this is the way it is: the Graduale is one of the chants in the Graduale. And the reason for the naming of the book in this way is that the Graduale is the oldest and most elaborate and most beautiful of all the Gregorian chants. It is the most exalted chant in the book.

The Graduale is the chant between the readings. The text is the Psalms. It is the primary text for the Psalms. These chants have been with us since the earliest centuries. It was being formed and standardized in the period in which the canon of the Bible itself was being codified.

The original of the term comes from its English meaning of steps, particularly the steps leading to the altar. This is the place from which the Graduale was sung. Its liturgical function, scholars tell us, was not about processing from here to there. It was not to accompany an action as such. Its function was purely to provide a time of reflection between the readings. It is long. It has a verse that can require a great deal of singing skill. It is the most musically engaging and elaborate of all the chants assigned to the schola. Its main magnificence comes from its music, which itself forms the infrastructure of all chant (and, in turn, the whole corpus of musical development of Western civilization ever since).

Now we come to a trickier problem, namely, where is the Graduale today? In the ordinary form (the form experienced by probably 95% plus of Catholics today), there is nothing called the Graduale in the Missal or the Missalettes or any choir book. The Graduale chant survives only in the book the Graduale Romanum. The all-but universal practice is to replace the Graduale with what is called the Responsorial Psalm.

This replacement occurred at the promulgation of the new Mass in 1969/70. The Responsorial Psalm is not required. The General Instruction permits the singing of the Graduale too – and from the point of view of tradition and the “hermeneutic of continuity,” such a practice would be clearly superior. It is hardly ever done however.

When the Responsorial Psalm was introduced, it was as a text-only change. Whereas the Graduale had this long and amazing musical history, the Responsorial Psalm was just a sentence and it was left to composers and publishers to set it to music.

The result is that it might be the most musically unstable portion of Mass. (As with the case of many changes in this period, one led again led to ask: what were they thinking?) The prevailing belief is that the people have to be able to instantly sing it back (all in the name of participation) which led composers and publishers to shove the text into metrical musical settings that feature a popular feel to them.

Even if it was no one’s particular intention, the results are astounding to consider. What was once the most musically rooted and glorious portion of Mass, the very Psalms of David that were the basis of the song of all early Christians, became the least musically impressive, and often the most embarrassing, part of Mass.

To be sure, it is not the case that the Graduale was sung in its proper form at every Mass before 1969. At Low Masses, it was spoken. At High Masses, it was usually sung to a Psalm tone in a hurried way, which actually defeats the point of the form and function of the chant. But this less-ideal approach became codified with the syllabic and purely didactic approach of the Responsorial Psalm. The idea of providing a long moment of transcendent sound for prayerful reflection is gone. The Psalm has become just another noisy thing that happens somewhere between coming and going.

To be sure, it does not have to be way this. Chabanel Psalms opened up its doors three years ago and changed many aspects of the conventional practice. They are beautiful and attempt, insofar as it is possible, to come closer toward the idea of the older and more traditional model. In my own parish, we sing the Responsorial Psalm with settings by Arlene Oost-Zinner. The CMAA hopes to put these out as a single volume with all three years so that choirs can have these in the choir room or loft.

This approach is not an end in itself. We really need to push forward toward an environment that is more hospitable toward a real singing of the authentic Graduale chant. From the point of view of the people at Mass, this would be a much-welcome relief, a time when they are not being hectored to sing or listening to some instruction or having prayers interrupted by a mandate to sing a seven-second ditty. Instead, they could have a few minutes of peace, actual time for deep prayer. Imagine that!

Vatican liturgical events have take some steps toward re-introducing the Graduale, and this is a much-welcome change. As we look to the future, I don’t think there is any doubt where we are headed. The Graduale isn’t going anywhere. Neither, for that matter is the book the Graduale Romanum. The Psalms of David sung in their most masterful form will return in all their glory, maybe not in my lifetime but at some point. Music of this type transcends the preferences and experiments of a single generation.

Fr. Christopher Smith wrote an outstanding article about the strange way in which the Roman Rite has become Balkanized in a single town, with different understandings prevailing at each parish. It is even true within single parishes, where we find everything from a Gregorian chant Mass to a rock-bad Mass, each marketed to a separate demographic.

There is an even stranger problem that affects every single Mass, one that has little precedent in the history of the ritual. The problem is that the the printed materials for the celebrant are hardly ever seen by the choir. The choir’s materials are hardly ever seen by the celebrant. The people in the pews have a different set, and there is yet another set for readers who handle the prayers of the faithful. The patchwork comes together in the end, more or less, but there are important pieces missed along the way.

A good example comes in Holy Week this year. The Sacramentary contains many chants that the choir know nothing about. Missalettes and planning guides do not have them. They are there for the priest but the priest is not designated to sing them. As a result, they do not get sung at all. Nor is the director of music in a position to assist the celebrant with his chants. Choir leaders figure that all they need to know is in their planning guide and the Missalette. But when you actually compared the two resources, you get a picture of a different ritual.

In fact, I would venture a guess that most people involved in a conventional parish music program have never opened a Sacramentary, much less follow what is going on in there week to week. They don’t have to. Nor do most priests bother to look at the planning guides that the choir uses to provide music for the liturgy. They are pretty much in the dark as to why the choir sings what it sings. The problem is further complicated by the differences that are embedded in the Sacramentary versus the Gradual itself.

It is helpful to contrast this what the old Mass. The Roman Missal (there was no separate Letionary) contained all the words said at the Mass. The Roman Gradual had the same words insofar as they are to be sung. The Liber Usualis was a useful compendium that allowed the singers to see exactly what was being done. The customized versions for the celebrant added the detailed rubrics that pertained to the celebrant but otherwise. Laypeople could use the Liber or any handheld Missal that was the same except that it added notes that pertained to the laity.

In other words, everyone was on the same page, so to speak.

I’ve been very critical of the current Sacramentary but in the balance, it is a better musical resource for ritual music than the Missalettes. The trouble is that hardly anyone other than the priest really saw this music. A knowledgeable choir director once told me that my own parish is the only one has had ever hear of that actually used the music in the Sacramentary for ritual music for the congregation. It is not great, but it is good, and much better than you find elsewhere.

Will this strange situation change with the new translation? Certainly the Bishops and ICEL are hoping for a change. This is why they are requiring that the chants from the Missal itself be printed in all musical resources in the pew. And the chants are not to be re-rendered in a new rhythm but printed exactly as they appear in the Missal itself.

This is a huge step. The people, the priest, and the people will have all the same basic music for the Mass. This will tie together a major loose end at currently exists in the liturgical structure.

Even so, there are limits to the mandate. There Missal will contain many chants that are not likely to be printed in the pew editions or the choir editions. The danger here is that they will go unsung and unknown.

Now to the action item. Pastors should purchase an additional Missal just for the loft or the choir room. It should be there on a stand for easy access. It should be maintained so that the ribbons mark the day. Choir directors and organists should be encouraged to look at the liturgical text every day or every week so that they will know what is coming and what the options are.

Choir directors should be encourage to look critically at the material from the major publishers to make sure that their resources are not leaving out important information or critical music.

It will also help if the choir director can see what the priest sees, and thereby be in a position to encourage singing from the sanctuary. The director can point out to the pastor that such and such passage can be beautiful sung, and then demonstrate how easy it is. This will help break down the communication barriers that currently exist.

This one simple step will take us a long way to re-integrating the loft and the sanctuary, which is essential to putting the Roman ritual back together again.

Many companies are printing new Missals. The most elaborate versions can cost up to $500 but there are smaller versions with less elaborate bindings that are extremely affordable. This should be part of the parish budget. If it is not, someone in the parish should volunteer to pay the bill to make this happen.

Again, this seems like an unlikely change to advance the reform of the reform, but the small step of providing and using a new Roman Missal in the choir room can do a great deal of good.

At my parish, there is some debate about a song chosen for a first communion liturgy. Like many songs and hymns, there is a vague talk about the body as tabernacle of the Lord, and the question has arisen about the orthodoxy of the text. Much of it is left to interpretation and it becomes easy to spin either way. The text could be unobjectionable or it could be heresy. Just the debate alone has cause some slight contention in the parish, even if among a small set of people.

The entire debate is one I’ve had in my own mind about innumerable songs over the years, and this problem doesn’t just apply to praise music and other predictably flabby ditties by modern song writers. It also applies to 19th century traditional music, much of which is drawn from a non-Catholic tradition. There are times when I do a double take on a text on hymns like “The Church’s One Foundation,” puzzling about whether this song didn’t originate in a surreptitious criticism of Rome for its emphasis on Peter and the Papacy. Maybe so, or maybe not. To say something is free of error is not to say that it is the best or most precise statement of Catholic belief.

Are laypeople who are not really trained well in theology really in a position to decide these questions? I’m sure not. I find myself quickly out of my league when trying to make heads or tails out of some of these lyrics. I’m not sure that I would have an ear that is finely tuned enough to detect heresy much less distinguish it from a mere creative expression. It is for this reason that I’ve never enter the hymn debate to any degree.

People writes me constantly to ask for my opinion on this or that text. I really don’t know what to say. One of the reasons that I’m Catholic is precisely because I do not believe myself competent to make up my own religion based on source material alone. I would rather leave that to tradition and the collected wisdom of the ages. This is not to doubt my intelligence, but rather to affirm that the wisdom embedded in long-standing practices that trace to solid authority will tend to be more sound than that the intuitions of even the smartest living person.

Catholic liturgy is, in this sense, an open-source project that many have worked on for uncountable numbers of generations. The bugs tend to get worked out that way, and what we practice is a stable release, not an alpha or beta release. This is important when we are talking about issues like eternal life and miracles like transubstantiation.

Religion is serious business and it should not be subjected to made-up ramblings or the judgment of any one people at one time. Heaven knows that the translators of the Mass have had enough trouble in recent years agreeing on wording, and they were working with a stable source text!

For this reason, the use of hymns at Mass pose a special problem and probably an unsolvable problem. We are always in the danger zone. A well-known fact is that most Catholics know only three hymns well. Maybe one of the reasons has to do with “sense of the faithful” that these three hymns are theologically sound, and of this there is little doubt about that. Note that all three (I’ll leave you to guess) are all rooted in a Latin text.

If they are not so rooted, consider the possibility that the music instead of adding to the liturgy actually works as a distraction from it, raising an entirely different subject and also introducing theological ambiguity or even heresy.

Pastors who work so hard to say or sing what is the Missal, and prepare their homilies for hours, should consider the possibility that all their attentiveness is being undone by what the choir is singing from the loft, an area over which pastors are not usually exercising any control. Why so much attention on the text of the Mass and virtually no attention to the many random words stated in these hymns sung at four parts of the liturgy?

In any case, my point is not to council despair. It is to underscore that the entire problem is wholly avoidable through one simple step: sing the propers of the Mass! The answer here is perfectly obvious. The Mass propers apply at the entrance, the offertory, and the communion. These are the precise time in the Mass when hymns are mostly substituted for propers, and here is where we enter the danger zone. We don’t have to go there at all if we would just stick to the texts in the Missal and the Roman Gradual.

If we want to have no doubt about the orthodoxy of the text and the appropriateness of the music we only need to sing Gregorian chant, the music that is native to the Mass and the normative answer. It is the first choice by every standard: history, theology, rubrics. If singing the Gregorian is a problem, today there are other ways to sing Mass propers in English, either according to the text in the Missal or the translation in the Gradual.

At my own parish, we try to sing authentic Gregorian chants at the entrance and communion and at least sing the proper text at offertory according to a given tone. But this morning we were lacking important voices and we could not do this, so we tried out the Simple English Propers to be published this Spring. We did the full suite of them: entrance, offertory, and communion. We also sang the appropriate Psalms with them so that there was singing for the entire liturgical action. We did it all without instruments and even without a pitch pipe.

The results were just marvelous, I’m happy to report. They are very beautiful and easy to learn in a pinch. But the most important part of them is that when you use them, you are singing the Mass itself. For this reason, you can know that the text is liturgical appropriate for the season and the day. They reflect the lessons that we are to learn that day. By preserving the mode of the Gregorian original, the “mood” of the piece also comes through. And they are are a wonderful stepping stone to singing the Gregorian. As one friend of mine said, these propers are a kind of “gateway drug” to Gregorian chant.

Now, a few years ago, when the only real option for propers was the Latin original, there might have been an excuse for not singing propers. But these days, sets of propers are free for the download. And with the Simple English Propers, we have a fantastic package. They are arranged correctly according to the new calendar. They have notated Psalms. They offer beauty and variety. They train singers to read four-line staffs, learn how to sing plainsong, and also sing without instruments — all essential skills for chanting at Mass.

Why are we having these debates about hymns when the propers are right there for the singing?

Everything seems like a top priority for Catholic music these days. We need changes in what we sing, how we think about the role of music, the way music is financed, and where we get it.

But aside from all of these, there is the extremely serious matter of how we go about singing at all. This might be the most important challenge we face. Without getting this right, plainchant and therefore truly liturgical music, will forever be on the shelf and we will forever continue with our current habit of picking random songs to sing to replace Mass texts and judging their suitability by gauging their seeming popularity.

The short summary is that we need to start believing that liturgical music is produced by the human voice alone, and we need to embrace liturgical prose rather than someone else’s poetry as the core substance of what we sing. We are about as far apart from this ideal as we’ve ever been, and a major part of the reason is that we no longer believe in our ability to sing anything at all. Forget style and text for a moment and just think about singing in general.

Here is an example of what I mean. I was just on the flight and I was sitting at the back fo the plane where the flight attendant makes those long announcements about how to bail out of the plane, use your floatation device, not to smoke in the lavatory, and the like. It is a memorized piece of prose.

After she finished, I said to her, jokingly: “you know, that would be much more noble if you sang it and then people might listen more carefully.”

She laughed and said, “Oh no one wants to hear my singing voice. It’s awful.”

I suddenly realized that I’ve heard some version of the same from a hundred people. I kept trying this experiment all day, with the taxi driver, the baggage claim guy, the secretary at the Church office, a grounds keeper, and anyone else I bumped into. Each time I suggested that he or she should sing something. Each time, the reaction was the same: “oh you don’t want to hear me sing.”

Can we somehow arrange to ban those words from the human language? I wonder if this is darn-near universal that people claim that their voices are awful. People are telling themselves that they cannot do something that they can do. If every one of this people were at a party where “Happy Birthday” was being sung, they would all join in (without music, I might add!) and sing the pitches and the text with gusto. That’s singing, isn’t it?

To be sure, these people don’t sound like American Idol, and that’s probably good insofar as Church music is concerned. In any case, it is not about what we think of as popular performance. We aren’t making recordings here. The results of their singing are not going to be downloaded from iTunes. They aren’t up for some award program. Their only real audience is God.

Why are people so alarmed by the prospect of singing? It has something to do without our consumption-based culture. Music is something we get from CDs, MP3s, video games, movies. It is not something we make on our own. That leads us to believe that singing is only for the stars and the professionals, people who inspire the awe of large audiences.

The best people are able manage these days is a soft version of karaoke, and this is pretty much what our churches are giving people the opportunity to do. We add every conceivable contraption to keep people from taking charge of their own music. We have some (few) real organists but rather than let them solo so we can listen to the beauty the instrument produces, we make them pump out loud hymns in the hope that we can produce a vague text underneath.

We ask pianists to pound away so that if we fail to make a sound, at least something is happening and the church doesn’t fall quiet. We drag out every high-school band member to blow and blast to keep from hearing ourselves. We add guitars, drums, amplifiers, and more, just to bury the sound of our own voices as much as possible.

What if we just unplugged it all and created a scenario in which the failure to sing would in fact result in total silence? This would change matters dramatically. It would be like telling people who had been carrying on escalators all their lives to walk up stairs for once. They would stand at the bottom and look up, mystified why they aren’t moving. Eventually they would figure out that they have to put their feet into motion if they want to get up the stairs. Insofar as the escalators do the work, they have no need to. But when they stop, they walk. That is precisely what unplugging the machine would do.

Well, we need to get off the machine. We need to unplugged so that we can sing, really sing. Once the machines are gone, we are of the rigid system of metrics that has defined music at Mass. That is, most all the music we sing is crammed into a metered structure that is conventional in pop music but not possible when singing the actual texts of the liturgy. The tones and structure of chant are designed to accommodate prose of varying lengths, which means that the melody is free and follows the rhythm of the language itself , making the music a prism that reflects the light of the Word.

This is beautiful and abstract imagery but in order to make it happen, we need that very practical thing, which is the ability to make the music with our voices alone. It’s been so long since we have done that, and some people have never done that, that it is going to be an act of courage going forward.

As time has moved on, I’ve come to appreciate the absolute brilliance of the chants in the forthcoming 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal. The chants are in English. People say that the music isn’t brilliant and perhaps that’s true but all the chants are all brilliant in the sense that they make it possible for people to actually sing on their own for the first time. This is the step that is absolutely essential. There can be no progress without that.

You say that chants in in the Missal are boring? Fine. If your parish is singing them, it is time to move on but this time with a good foundation. There is a wealth of glorious music awaiting them in the Gregorian books. And it is also true that once you get the hang of plainchant and the sense of how it is so prayerful and beautiful, pop music just doesn’t work any more to accomplish the end.

Right now, we have the strange situation in which perhaps 5% of parishes sing music from the Gregorian books at one or two Masses, while the rest are stuck in this cage of metered hymns that nothing to do with liturgical texts and, to the extent that the texts are actually sung, it is to songs that are designed to fit within that same framework – all of it sustained by a elaborate apparatus of accompaniment that tries to sound as fancy and comforting as possible.

How are we to bridge this great divide? How can the large majority of parishes reduce their dependency on the apparatus so that that Mass can be sung in total with integrity and with the voice that God gave us becoming the primary voice again? The Missal chants actually do provide that vehicle to make this possible.

As I’ve talked to groups about this entire problem, I’ve noted that most Catholic musicians cannot even imagine what kind of thing will emerge from this emphasis. They don’t have a model in mind. They’ve never heard it, never experienced it. And yet this is the very thing that that has been pushed by so many documents on music – namely that we sing the Mass. This has been the dream of liturgical reformers for longer than a century. There have been so many fits and starts and the dream has remained largely elusive.

But the introduction of the new Missal this Advent offers a chance for a new start. We only need to sing what we are given, and sing it on our own, and a large part of the battle for sacred music will be accomplished. The rest will require training and focus but at least we will have the essential skill in place. We must walk before we can run.

Priests talk about it often in private, and kid about the subject around laypeople they trust. They grouse about it week after week, and this has been going on for years. But they dare not actually attempt to address the problem, much less take it up with those who are responsible. They know that there is something profoundly wrong (and people complain to them regularly) but they worry that they lack the competence they need to make a change. And so the status quo lasts and lasts.

I speak of course about the unspeakable topic of music in our parishes. Every priests knows that no good can come from seeking to fix the problem that everyone knows exists. It is a mine field. You take it up with the musicians and them balk, bluster, and bring up their low pay. You bring it up with the parish counsel and you unleash arguments over taste and style that begin politely and end in total war. You raise the topic with the Bishop and he assures you that going there just isn’t very pastoral.

The biggest fear of all traces to their own perceived incompetence in the area of music. They wouldn’t tell the plumber how to fix the drain, the electrician how to make the lights work, or the builder how to make the roof stay up. The priest’s job centers on the sacraments, along with the infinite number of pastoral things that pastors do to keep a parish alive and thriving. Isn’t that enough? Must they be expected to take on the area of music too?

And so the pastor just leaves it alone, in the hands of people who have been swirling around in parish music circles for decades with greater longevity than any pastor. Any current pastor has nothing to gain and everything to lose by insisting on change. The budget is tight and most of these people are volunteers anyway. Members of the paid staff are even more of a problem, with their pattern of seeming to sneer and roll their eyes at anything Father requests.

This is how the pattern came to be established that the pastor just doesn’t touch the music question. Once there is relative peace, even if it means the weekly parade of mediocrity and music that embarrasses people with an understanding of the Roman Rite and its true musical demands, the pastor just lets well enough alone. But the problem is still there and he knows it. He might like to push for change and even gain the knowledge necessary to talk shop with his music team, but the occasion never seems to present itself.

Well, the Church has given these pastors a wonderful gift with the new translation of the Roman Missal that will go into effect this Advent. The Bishops are urging a widespread education plan for two reasons: 1) to make sure there is no repeat of the meltdown following the introduction of the 1969/1970 Missal, and 2) as an opportunity for new catechises about what the Mass is and why it matters, the knowledge of which has plummeted to new lows in our times.

For a while, I couldn’t understand why such enormous efforts were being pushed just for a new translation. The people’s parts have very few changes at all. The most substantive changes occur for the celebrant, and here it is incontrovertible that the changes represent a huge upgrade. This doesn’t strike me as anything that needs a gigantic push to make happen.

However, it was then explained to me that the second point about educating people more generally is the real reason for all the materials being published and the seminars being conducted. Then it became to make sense. It is true: the new Missal really is a wonderful opportunity.

Well, it is also true of music. The new Missal integrates English chant into the structure of the Mass to a much greater degree than the past editions. The Bishops are pushing for the Missal chants to become precisely what we have always lacked in the post-1970 world: a national body of music that has been approved by the Church that is known by everyone. Important, this music comes not from a for-profit publisher but from Church authority itself.

The settings are not in themselves universally brilliant but I find myself rather impatient with criticisms of them. They are so much better than what we have, which are almost entirely unused as it is. They are written in the style of chant, which is to say that they are plainsong and can (and should) be sung without accompaniment. To think about these chants properly, you need to think with a bit of depth about what dominates the typical liturgy today (hymns plus mostly silly or puffy Mass settings) and also where these Missal chants will lead congregations as the next step.

There are really three parts to the right reform agenda. We must first phase out nearly the whole of the conventional repertoire that exists, one piece of music at a time. We must work toward a gaining a correct understanding of the musical structure of the Roman Rite, so that the people are granted primary responsibility over the ordinary chants including the creed and the kyrie (both of which are sadly neglected) and the schola has a new-found appreciation for the responsibilities regarding the proper chants of the Mass.

Finally, we need a new embrace of our chant heritage as it applies to the ordinary form, to the point that people feel comfort with Latin and the truly normative music of the ritual (which is Gregorian chant), a crucial step that re-integrates the new with the old and ends this “hermeneutic of rupture” that is so widely perceived to exist.

That is a gigantic mission and its success depends on many factors. We need to re-train existing musicians and raise up a new generation that has the desire to sing music that is intrinsic to the rite and also the competence to do so. The people need to feel that their role is important and that they aren’t just being brow beat to sing pop songs suitable for selling cosmetics or mollifying teen angst. Providing music for the Mass is a serious job and it requires seriousness of mind and heart.

Whether this process of change lasts a long time or takes place immediately depends on circumstances of time and place. What matters most is that we get the process going. It must begin. And the Missal chants are a great beginning. The change in the Missal provides the opportunity to insist on the change.

If I could add just one piece of practical advice for pastors: insist that your musicians sing the chants without accompaniment. No negotiations on this point: unaccompanied only. This will make a dramatic difference in the liturgy. It will also help to end what is usually the biggest problem in parish music, the persistence of some overbearing piants, organist, or guitar player who has convinced everyone that the human voice that God gave each of us is nothing without some external contraption. It’s nonsense: the human voice is the primary liturgical instrument. Unless we get that point right, there is little hope for progress.

There are many things pastors can do to make parish music better. But insisting on these two points (sing the Missal chants and sing them without accompaniment) will go a long way in most parishes toward breaking the cycle of mediocrity. The issuance of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now is the time to act, for the sake of the future of the faith.