Category: Jeffrey Tucker

The Mass is the very core of the Catholic liturgy, the supremely important expression of the Church’s faith. It is clear that a skewed concept of the Mass that fails to do justice to its essence will in due time harm the believer’s piety and undermine the faith of communicants. Sacred music is a necessary and integral part of the solemn liturgy. Since form is an inner expression of the spiritual reality in the Mass, music too will be affected by any shift of emphasis regarding the form of the Divine Liturgy.

So begins this classic piece by Fr. Robert Skeris, which is newly posted at CRISIS.

Many parishes like the idea of taking a survey of what parishioners like and dislike about parish life. This makes sense because a parish is all about service to people, or should be. Its sacramental purpose is primary but there is an extended mission as well that involves creating an inviting and welcoming culture. We all need such places in this world, settings outside work and home that encourage the creation of social groups centering on the faith. The practical matter is that people need to feel as if there is something socially beneficial that is worth supporting financially.

A survey can be very revealing in this respect. But what kinds of questions are off limits? A survey would never ask, for example, whether there ought to be a Sunday Mass or whether the parish should be baptizing babies. Those activities are intrinsic to the life of Catholics and not subject to democratic veto.

The music of the faith is also intrinsic but it is rarely thought of that way. Today people tend to see the music of the liturgy as little more than a religious application of what we experience outside Mass. This is why most parishes today offer a variety of musical experiences depending on demographics and time slots. If the purpose of the music is to please people and their subjective tastes, this is what happens.

So of course parish music becomes part of the survey. Most musicians I know dread this for obvious reasons. Many choose their music based on serious considerations of the ritual, and of the singes and musicians they have at their disposal, and it seems rather ridiculous to solicit people’s input on such issues. It is not like selecting a channel on Pandora. But pastors like to put the music question on the survey anyway.

What are the results? It will usually happen that there are an equal number of people who hate chant and love chant, who hate praise music and love praise music, who hate 1970s classics and love 1970s classics, who want a rock band and who loathe the idea of a rock band. Passions run in all directions.

How is it possible to please all these different points of view? Every pastor knows that it is not possible. Even if he wanted to, no matter what the pastor chooses to do, some people will be passionately against it and some people will be passionately for it.

A small anecdote. I go to a gym that has satellite radio with some 500 channels. The gym users themselves determine what channel plays. If you get there early in the morning, you put on what you want and it tends to stick even long after you have left. Mid morning, someone might come in with a passionate opinion and ask everyone if it is ok to change the station. Because the person who chose the current selection is obviously gone, no one really objects to this idea. The station is changed, and that sticks for a few hours until someone else is bold enough to start the cycle again. No one really agrees but there is a system worked out for dealing with the problem so that there is some degree of peace.

Parishes have worked out similar systems in the name of keeping the peace. In many ways, this necessary for now but essentially tragic. Systems like this are fine for gyms because there is no music is that is intrinsic to the activity. The lifting of weights on the use of the treadmill are not intimately associated with a particular style and the music is not really a necessary part of the activity itself.

This is not the case with the Mass. The music of the Mass grew up alongside the Mass as a means of elevating the text. It is chant, in part, because the text is not metered and should have the lift we associate with prayer.

The chant developed more and more as the years went on and became the largest body of documented music in history, and the core of the repertoire itself constitutes the most brilliant musical contributions imaginable. Not much in this world holds up 100 years, to say nothing of 1500 years, but what we call Gregorian chant has really held up beautifully. It is new in every generation. To me, this suggests divine inspiration.

In the postconciliar period, the chant has been rendered in national languages. The Latin is also preserved in accordance with the dictates of the Second Vatican Council. Most crucially, the chant is not just any old music plugged into the Mass. It is Mass itself made more noble in song. It is not just the preferred form of liturgical music. It is the liturgical music, the very music of the Catholic Church in the Roman Rite.

For this reason, the usual parish solution to the “music problem” is not a stable one. If you have five different Masses, and only one of which is chanted in an appeal to a certain sector of parish opinion, the overall structure of the parish music is sending a message that simply is not true. It is like five different food items all labelled steak but only one of which actually comes from a cow.

In some way, the idea of surveying musical preferences can be a good idea in a parish because it makes the point that there is no way to please all people’s subjective tastes. We need to get beyond individual tastes and admit that there really is a body of music that constitutes true music for the ritual. It is not a matter of likes and dislikes but a matter of deferring to the music that is intrinsic to the ritual itself.

The persistence of random songs of various sorts, as replacements for Mass propers, and of secular and pop styles, really does open up a can of worms that benefits no one in the end. The only path to genuine, long-term peace in a parish life is to do what the Church is asking us to do. The liturgy must be true to itself.

The hook is that Newt Gingrich’s wife sings with the National Shrine choir. It’s good to see the profile under whatever auspices.

From Campus Notes:

The prophecies of the calamitous consequences of the introduction of the new missal were heard around the country. But was it much ado about little?

There were warnings from some Catholic publications that the new translation was “unreadable” and an “inhibitor to authentic prayer.”

One news story suggested that “New missal could drive away Catholics.” Another fretted, “Liturgists Worry About Upcoming Implementation.”

But according to a number of priests and campus ministry professionals at faithful Catholic colleges, it seems that all the worry about the new missal translation is a bit like Y2K – prophecies of doom and gloom followed quickly by rather smooth sailing.

“There was no fainting, no shrieking, no embolisms,” assured Director of Campus Ministry at Belmont Abbey College Patricia Stevenson. “We haven’t had anybody sort of whining or complaining or objecting.”

She told the Cardinal Newman Society that the introduction of the new translation is going smoothly.

Fr John Healey, Chaplain of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, told CNS, “It certainly hasn’t come to pass that people who were predicting difficulties were in any sense correct.”

In fact, he said students seem to like the new translation.

So too does the Rev. Joseph Fox, O.P. of Christendom College, calling it “a far superior translation.”

Fr. Fox said much of the screaming about how this would negatively affect the faithful turned out to be “much ado about nothing.”

He said that while the priests have much to remember, the changes are not very significant for the faithful. In fact, he laughed at all the fuss. “Some places have made such a big deal about educating the people about the changes,” he said. “I don’t mean to make light but all of this for ‘and with your spirit’?”

Fr. Fox said the concerns and protests over the new translation weren’t coming from young people. “This was made a cause célèbre because now finally we have a translation and not a complete reformulation of the liturgy,” he said.

Fr. Healey agreed, saying the fuss was primarily from “the chronic complainers.”

Richardson said she suspected it was one last battle of the Vatican II generation. “I think this was about some fighting the old Vatican II fight and climbing one more hill to plant a flag on,” she said. “But students don’t relate to those old discussions. For most students this is completely uncontroversial. They don’t have any dogs in the fight.”

She said she believes students today have shown greater receptivity to move with the Church as a whole and not see actions by the Church as “a tyrannical takeover” of their free will.

Richardson says Belmont Abbey College laid the groundwork by reviewing the changes with students before Mass and having a diocesan priest visit to explain the changes more fully.

Of course, in the pews are the cards to help students follow along with the changes to the language. Richardson called them “cheat sheets” and said she suspected they’d become less necessary over the next few months.

Fr. Healey said he believed that the new translation was actually helping students see the Mass in a new way. “One has to stop and read the words carefully and reflectively pay attention to what the church is really trying to offer in terms of instruction,” he said. “And it’s a far superior translation so it’ll certainly be easier to understand.”

Fr. Joseph Fox of Christendom College said that if people want to avoid it altogether they can do as many of the students there do – attend the Latin Mass.

I had been hoping for this for years, and we’ve made some efforts toward this goal, but Watershed has finally done it: the core hymnody of the Catholic Church now online for free in excellent four-part editions.