It may be of interest to our members who are AGO members or who can avail themselves of copies of The American Organist, that in the October and November issues is a fine two-part essay on J.G. Rheinberger and his role in the reform of Catholic Church Music. These essays are based on an address to the CMAA colloquium of June 2012. Also, in the November issue, is a lengthy review of the new edition of Thos. Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing.

Concerning the latter, I have come to think that the 'Catholics can't sing' syndrome should more properly be labelled the 'Catholics don't sing', or the 'Catholics won't sing' syndrome. Catholics can, or certainly could, sing but for the sheepish culture in which they are steeped. In many subtle (and not so subtle) ways, Catholics (those who are not in holy orders, that is) are conditioned to be docile, non-assertive, non-praisefully-expressive, initiativeless, obediently fawning, and very emotionally cautious, particularly at liturgy. There are too many priests who really do not want a congregation that is alive, and would, even, be threatened by it. Too much 'active (alive!) participation' would, strangely, be thought, not the evidence of a soul which was 'glad when they said unto me we will go into the house of the Lord', but merely irreverent. Now, this is not true everywhere! I know of and experience several Catholic congregations other than Walsingham whose song could not be bettered by anyone. Such congregations are to be found in many places. But, where they aren't, there is an unfortunate reason rooted in clerical wet blankets and a liturgically malformed milieu. Catholics very well can sing. They very well do in more and more places. But where they don't it isn't because they can't. It is because they have learnt (from somewhere!) that they shouldn't bother.