I’ve long suspected that the Catholic world of music at the parish level, by which I mean parish music directors and singers along with priests in charge, can be rough divided as follows: 10% dedicated to a sacred music program, 10% dedicated to a pop music program, and 80% wallowing in unrelenting confusion about nearly everything related to Catholic music. I derive these estimates based entirely on years of anecdotal evidence from visiting parishes, receiving thousands of emails, hanging around on forums, and generally talking with people here and there.
There is no way to scientifically validate or invalidate my claim because no one really knows for sure. But this much I do know. There is no single document in existence that explains with clarity what it is that a Catholic musician is supposed to do on a week-to-week basis, nothing that clearly presents the goal of one’s endeavors, and no monograph or book that can state with absolute certainly what are the core responsibilities and tasks of the Catholic musician in the current climate. This is because there is a major conflict of vision at work today and we are far from having resolved it enough so that such a document can be produced.
Catholic musicians today are like city managers without training who hired to build infrastructure, manage the community environment, and undertake activities that are suitable to the task – with no specific instructions or mandates of any sort. They can read libraries full of books but come no closer to understanding what they are really supposed to be doing. It would not be a surprise to discover that such a person would eventually learn that showing up and doing something, anything, is just about the best one can do. It’s not very inspiring but such is the nature of the job.
The email below is a typical case. I shared the original (which I’ve changed for clarity, grammar, and to hide the affiliation) with several people, and they all responded the same way: nothing new here. To give you an idea of what we are dealing with, have a look:
Music for Mass seems like a subject that drives everyone up the wall. Traditionalists and many young people would like to hear chant, while many pastors believe that to attract youth we must play folk music and some of the newer material, and there is everything in between. I’m trying to sort all of this out. This has recently become much more important to me because I am now the leader of one of the choirs at the student parish. As I strive to learn about the ideals the church has in place, I’m finding the answer to one question and two more will pop up.
Let me start from the top. I’ve seen in a few places that the Church’s ideal for music is
chant. But if that was the case, wouldn’t that severely bar participation from the congregation? Isn’t another ideal to have everyone involved in singing? Even forgetting that, we have another problem. The choir I lead jokes about doing chant, but the reality is that we simply do not have the talent here. We have two singers. Only one of whom can project his voice. No one has any real training.
The natural place to go (for us at least) is to look in the hymnal. We currently use [a mainstream hymnal]. It contains most of the songs I remember from childhood, and most of the songs the lay faithful would probably consider favorites. However, I’ve been much more on the lookout for what the songs actually say, as I haven’t always been so careful about the message as much as the music. The more I scrutinize the hymns we know and love, the more amazement I have.
There’s a few songs which really scare me. Such as “The Supper of the Lord”. “Precious body, precious blood, here in bread and wine…” Isn’t this a bit confusing? There have been a few others which could be argued either way (“Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to me and never be hungry; eat this break, drink this cup, trust in me and you will not thirst”) if you look at them in context. But ultimately I am finding songs I cannot stomach, and I wouldn’t consider myself closed-minded to the newer material (“Let us break bread together on our knees, when I fall on my knees with my face to the riding sun, O Lord, have mercy on me…let us drink wine together on our knees…”).
Am I being oversensitive, or is this really as odd as it seems? If it is not what the Church teaches, why are the publishers pushing it at us? This begs yet another question…in the front of the book, it is printed “Published with the approval of the Committee on Divine Worship, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.” What does this mean, exactly? It’s some kind of stamp of approval, but on what? I also see that many, many of the hymns are post-1970. What happened before that? Where did those songs go?
I’ve also been told that I cannot use the Mass of Light Gloria–because it adds a word to the Gloria. Is this true? Do you know offhand where this directive can be read? I’m not looking to be disobedient on this or any other issue; I simply want to be able to point it out to people in the future if I get questions about it.
I’ve had it up to my eyeballs in the bashing wars towards American Catholics; I do want to restore the beauty that everyone talks about, but I haven’t got a clue where to start, and I have yet to have a productive conversation with anyone about this. Any help or insight, or even a single answer to any of my questions would be greatly appreciated. I know there’s a lot there, but it’s really a huge topic (at least in my mind) and I’m really trying to figure this out.
There is so much interesting about this, starting with its wholly common sense of being completely lost in a thicket of confusion. The writer wants to know who is charge around here. If it is the publishers, why is so much of their material vaguely suspect? I’m also struck by the writer’s innocent query: what kind of music did Catholics sing before 1970, because that historical record seems not to exist. It’s true: there does seem to be some sort of black out here.
Then there is the very legitimate inquiry about the people’s role in chant. Let me just answer this one right here. The Church provides dialogues for the priest and people, propers for the schola to sing, and the ordinary chants of the Mass for the people. Even if the schola sings all the propers, there is still a vast responsibility remaining for the people. Even if the schola sings Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus as well, there is are vast responses and the Pater Noster for the people in addition to any extra hymns one might add after communion or for recessional.
But this much I can guarantee: that paragraph above would be completely lost on this correspondent. And why? Because no one has ever explained the musical structure of the Roman Rite to this person, much less the responsibility of the music director with regard to it. The other problem is that answer I just gave makes virtually no sense in light of hundreds and hundreds of pages of the hymnals produced by mainstream publishers, which are filled not with chanted ordinary settings or schola propers but rather: piles and piles and piles of post-1970 songs that we are supposed to plug in anywhere we want.
I do wish that there were a single book one could use that would provide all things that the educated Catholic musician could use to navigate the prevailing mess but there is no such thing, I’m sorry to say. We are in the midst of a transition that consists mostly in rediscovering Catholic music that pre-dates 1970, and I don’t mean music of the 1950s. I mean music that shares in the sensibility that has always and everywhere defined the idea of liturgical music, music that is holy, universal, and beautiful.
One of the advantages that the publishers have right now is that they can hand a book over to a music, along with a sample CD, and say: sing this stuff. However, this might not work in the future as well, because the new translation of the Mass starting next year is structured to lend itself to chant-like settings and because of the new emphasis on the propers of the Mass (especially the introit, offertory, and communion). The existing model of the “hymn cafeteria”’ cannot and will not hold its firm grip on liturgical music in the future.
A final issue in the note above concerns talent. Where is it? Where are the singers? Where is the musical competence? Frankly, it is a desert out there. Only clarity about mission will make it bloom again.
This article is not a statement of despair. It is a statement that draws attention to the desperate work that needs to be done to educate, create new resources, learn, and put into practice the lost wisdom that this generation is recovering. There is crowd of Catholic musicians out there crying out for answers.