"but that's stuff is too new...I want the songs I grew up with!"
--Actual quote from a parishioner

It never stops. It is the disease that causes people to think that what they grew up with was always the way it was... or ought to be the way it remains. There is no known cure for this temporal myopia, except perhaps an open and inquiring mind that is delighted to learn something new. (In other words, a mature and adult mind.) Such a mind is atypical. When I was young, I always liked the hymns in the 1940 that were really old... the chant tunes and other really old ones. I was always perplexed to hear that some people's idea of 'old' hymns was the purple prose and purpler harmonies of the gospel songs of their grandmother's era. How could one call these 'old'? Why, they weren't old enough (or, good enough!) to be Old. Yes, in the sixties one thought that if one could wean these people from this drivel and instill in them a love and appreciation for the really timeless (and, sometimes the new is timeless) that one would have succeeded in setting right an odious wrong. But! Look what happened then. The faux folk-song craze happened and one has to start all over again weaning people from that rubish. It never stops. What will it be next? Of course, we are not offended by late mediaeval and renaissance motets and masses that were based on secular tunes (granted, they're pretty good music!); but, would we have squirmed in our seats back then at this pandering to base secular instincts, singing cleverly disguised secular ditties at mass? Would our sensitivities for the sacred have been offended at these trendy musical advances being applied to the sacred chant? I really don't want to answer that, because the music in question is so good, and its artistry does, one would like to believe, glorify the creator of musical art. One cannot say this of Victorian gospel songs, maudlin Marian hymns, and late 20th century happy-clappy stuff. There is one certainty: soon as we think we have weaned people from the worst of our time, another pied piper will come along with another odious attraction for the undiscerning multitudes. Who would ever have dreamed that the grandchildren of the millions who were taught Gregorian chant in their Catholic youth would succumb to musical disease, would be infected with faux folk music, pop-music, double-bass combos and rock bands and pianos in church. It is stated in holy writ that 'he watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps'. Neither does his impious adversary.

It never stops. It is the disease that causes people to think that what they grew up with was always the way it was...

Similar to how most women refuse to cover their head in public places any longer, for fear they will be socially ostracized, even though it was the de facto Christian tradition for 1900 years.....

That is truly disgusting. Let us hope that we have evolved beyond such medieval barbarism.

I didn't mean to derail the thread.
I am going to begin the process of a detailed review of Peter Kwasniewski's Choral Works coming soon to a blog near you.