Broadway selections for prelude music! twice in a row.
  • Ralph BednarzRalph Bednarz
    Posts: 489
    We all have war stories like these. But one has a happy ending.
    I attended a wedding. the prelude music before Mass included "bali hi," something from " Cats," "Phantom" and "'Til there was You."
    all played in an excellent lounge style. O, there was a 19th century salacious bolero type of serenade too. For me it was painful.because if felt like i was preparing for gin an cigarettes not Holy Mass.
    But the very next day , at my own parish, before the schola's Mass : a CD was played: "Getting to Know You."
    from "The King and I." Had I known this was going to happen I would have raised an objection
    so the staff may have decided to save themselves ( and me) some grief, so I only got a heads up seconds before it happened.
    Here's the good news. The Schola did such a fine job re-establishing solemnity at that Mass with their fine chanting
    that their music over powered any effect from of that silly prelude song.
    After that Mass, most didn't even remember the Broadway song being played.
    The joy from that solemn worship lifted itself beyond the need for any arguments about bad liturgy.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    Crap! On a CD yet!
    But you just went on doing your job...which is all any of us can do. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going"
    What's your chain of command, how did this happen, how can it be prevented in the future?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    I'm also very curious what in the world the point was...
  • Ralph BednarzRalph Bednarz
    Posts: 489
    What was the point? Hospitality and stewardship.
    These very rational themes never resound well with the important revelation and experience of salvation through
    the passion death and resurrection of Jesus at Mass.
    Sometime it is like being an a remote mission field where no one has yet heard the good news.


    I think the people who take charge of these kinds of things only have enough
    rhetorical skills to take them only this far: to these humanistic themes.

    Or it could be a kind of dualism where they "believe"
    reason can only be applied to physical events while revelation only apples only to faith so we can't bother trying to explain it. The error seems to be really misapplying faith or "belief" to reason. And inability to apply reason to revelation and faith.



    Any way I don't take up these kinds of things a liturgy meetings, in fact I rarely attend them. I would be raising so many objections that nothing would get done and I would not be very edifying. I choose my battles judiciously and HAVE WON THESE!. 1. the tabernacle is returned to the center 2. New organ. 3. a clean newlly remodeled spacious clean loft, 4. chant I just wish I had half the skill that most of you have.

    We are Joyful chanters!
  • Jeffrey CogginsJeffrey Coggins
    Posts: 360
    1. the tabernacle is returned to the center


    It's tremendously bothersome when Catholic churches don't have their tabernacle in the center.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Jeffrey...

    When Jesus isn't the center our lives, neither is the Tabernacle on the altar.

    Ralph.

    Can I write a note to your staff? I am willing to be a "bad guy" so that they get the point. I would be kind and objective. And it was not your idea... it's mine.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    Much of the difficulty with recorded music in church is that the old system of a microphone at the pulpit going to a locked box with the amp and volume control in it has moved on into multi-microphones and mixers and....somebody at each Mass to RUN the sound board, without any liturgical training in the nature of what they are doing.

    People today refuse to listen and instead expect everything to be at living room volume to be understood.

    So, why not play some neat music before Mass like they do at the Baptist church and before the movies to get people in the right mood!

    Ask the music director if it's ok?

    He's not running the board, I am.

    I'm the Sound Ministry.
  • Jeffrey CogginsJeffrey Coggins
    Posts: 360
    I'm the Sound Ministry


    I bet there's a Light Ministry, too. Can't forget Props and Costume Ministries, either.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    We have gone a long way from the days of being irked by would-be seminarians vesting and parading around the sacristy.

    Now people get upset, me one of them, when the Extraordinary Ministers of the Doughnuts After Mass fail to show up when the regular Ministers of the Doughnuts After Mass take a day off. What were they thinking? Do they not understand the importance of what they do?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    I think it would be appropriate to play Shine Jesus Shine when the light ministry does their stuff.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    I'm the Sound Ministry. I'm der Ministry of Sound.
    Fixed it for you.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    They developed a "Sound Board Operator Ministry" at my former church shortly after I left. After all, when they build auditorium-style churches, and people expect to hear everything with the same level of volume and intensity as they do from their home theater/entertainment center sound system, it's not enough to just turn the thing on so that the sound can be carried into parts of the church that the poor acoustics won't allow. Somebody has to be fiddling with knobs and moving sliders up and down to obtain the kind of balance that a good acoustic would naturally provide.

    I'm sure they've also developed a "Light Board Operator Ministry" that will be seasonal, because they carefully worked up lighting changes to heighten the "dramatic effect" (their words, not mine) of the proclamation of the Passion Gospel on Good Friday and the cycle of readings for the Vigil of Easter, which also included blocking and movement. Each reading was proclaimed from a different part of the church (with wireless mics and a procession from one place to the next) with spotlights. The idea, according to the inventive, creative and thoughtful liturgist-types on staff is that it helped show the people in a physical way how "God moves through history." Needless to say, the lighting system is highly sophisticated and run from a complex, programmable control panel.

    I seem to recall reading somewhere that part of the experience of the transcendent mysteries of the Faith is heightened in the traditional architecture of churches, since neither sound nor light filled every nook and cranny of the interior. Nowadays, even in cathedrals and churches built in the traditional styles and then renovated, the light fixtures and sound systems quite often seek to illumine the entirety of the space and fill it with sound, thus obliterating the effect of sounds coming from certain places for certain purposes and the experience that even in the inky shadows God with His Angels and Saints are ever-present.

    If they build churches that look like auditoriums and fit them up with sound systems designed for entertainment purposes, why should we be surprised that there's an expectation that the Mass would feature music drawn from that same paradigm?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Ugh.
    Easter Vigil reading theatrics...
    The parish I grew up in tried, year after year, to do weird things with the Genesis reading- each from a different reader, reading from another room with microphone (disembodied voice of God), lights, no lights.

    The crazy parish I was a part of in Boston took it a step further with reading stations all around the "Worship Space." (They also moved the altar out of the Sanctuary until the Offertory/Intermission, to make way for the dancers.)

    C'mon, people- these readings are dramatic enough already. They don't need help.
    Clear, sincere reading will do it for you.
  • PaixGioiaAmorPaixGioiaAmor
    Posts: 1,473
    Rome needs to stop thinking that is enought that these things were never permitted and don't make sense. Documents need to become CLEARER and say, without any ambiguity, "Dancing or moving about in any manner outisde of walking and processing during Holy Mass is strictly forbidden and not licit."
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    Isn't the Exultet enough drama?
    We've got a guy at St. James whose voice is really too big for the choir; he's constantly having to put a lid on it. But give him the Exultet to sing (in English) and it's perfect.
    I don't have an issue about a Lights Guy, as long as people don't get distracted from the service by thinking, "Wow, Lights Guy is really hot today." There's a long church tradition of lighting effects, executed with medieval technology.
  • Ralph BednarzRalph Bednarz
    Posts: 489
    O, THE FARMERS AND THE COWBOYS MUST BE FREINDS. OKLAHOMA = (UBI CARITAS)
  • Ralph BednarzRalph Bednarz
    Posts: 489
    We have returned the tabernacle in the middle of the church.
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