Beetle Grubs vs Sacred Music
This nice article by Yurodivi on Spero News begins nicely and gets better and better. "One really easy way to stick your hand into the hornet’s nest is to say something like, 'We need to get back to real music in the Church and get rid of this folk stuff.'"
Some of us were speaking only recently about this issue again, namely of how to ween people from the sense that their favorite sacro-pop song should be the featured music at Mass. For example, I recently attended a first-communion liturgy in which a Dana pop solo was the recessional. It was this song. Warning: clicking on that link will deliver the music and environment of a Stones outdoor concert but with religious overtones. Yes, this was the famed World Youth Day. For my part, this is just the Twilight Zone but that just shows how sheltered I am, because this music is incredibly popular, especially among conservative Catholics, though I do not understand how or why.
The question is how to convince people that this material does not belong at liturgy. The answer is that you can't. You can impose outcomes and forbid genres but you can't change people's hearts this way. Arlene O0st-Zinner says, and I think she is right about this, that that the only way toward long term success is to offer people an viable alternative that slowly changes their sensibilities and expectations, so that they begin to understand. At least this project keeps of those us who find sacro-pop to be unbearable busy on a constructive project that does some good rather than merely raising hackles.
Some of us were speaking only recently about this issue again, namely of how to ween people from the sense that their favorite sacro-pop song should be the featured music at Mass. For example, I recently attended a first-communion liturgy in which a Dana pop solo was the recessional. It was this song. Warning: clicking on that link will deliver the music and environment of a Stones outdoor concert but with religious overtones. Yes, this was the famed World Youth Day. For my part, this is just the Twilight Zone but that just shows how sheltered I am, because this music is incredibly popular, especially among conservative Catholics, though I do not understand how or why.
The question is how to convince people that this material does not belong at liturgy. The answer is that you can't. You can impose outcomes and forbid genres but you can't change people's hearts this way. Arlene O0st-Zinner says, and I think she is right about this, that that the only way toward long term success is to offer people an viable alternative that slowly changes their sensibilities and expectations, so that they begin to understand. At least this project keeps of those us who find sacro-pop to be unbearable busy on a constructive project that does some good rather than merely raising hackles.
5 Comments:
I agree with Arlene! Thanks, Jeffrey, for all that you and Arlene are doing for the cause!
Jeff,
Great article, and so true. Funny you mentioned First Communion. Here's a link to my experiences of my own daughter's First Communion which was just last Sunday at, not the church I work at, but the one closer to home.
My Daughter's First Communion
BMP
BMP
I had no idea that was the sort of thing sung at World Youth Day.
Now I am more determined than ever to find some money to contribute to Juventutem through AAE's site.
Here are some activities planned for the NPM gathering in Milwaukee this summer, as seen in the most recent newsletter from the OCP:
* Fiesta Latina: Tues, June 28, 9:30 PM
* Rockin' by the Lake: Wed, June 29, 10 PM
I must go on record in saying that I have nothing, in principle, against Latin rythms outside of Mass, and Rockin' by the lake is certainly nothing new, though neither is to my personal taste. But it all goes to show how these publishing houses/marketing experts play off sensibilities formed outside of Mass, selling their wares to the largely uninformed and unsuspecting faithful.
Bring back full mass settings! The cost to the public? Nothing! but one small hour of a person's time in the presence of the body of Our Lord. Surely we can find a way to market this!
how to ween people from the sense that their favorite sacro-pop song should be the featured music at Mass. For example, I recently attended a first-communion liturgy in which a Dana pop solo was the recessional.
I did not have the courage to click on the link, but technically this was an after-Mass devotion. (Admittedly, when you have to say "technically" to justify your actions, something is wrong.)
The question is how to convince people that this material does not belong at liturgy. The answer is that you can't.
Well, no ... and yes and no. We need to use (or recover) the liturgical texts. In the case of the propers of the Mass, these are prose. Once we recognize the Church and her scriptures as the source por excelencia of our liturgical texts, so many questions of musical style answer themselves. Yurodivi's Buddhist student recognized "Gregorian chant" in Pange, lingua, gloriosi, which while a hymn and therefore a poetic text, has a melody that does not "rock." This melody is an outgrowth of centuries of singing prose texts, which ipso facto cannot "rock."
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