Perhaps this is for a different thread, but is there anything we can do about the many who are burying their heads in the sand?

Isn't it rather nice that the couple wants to make truly appropriate selections?

Well, this is the right forum for them, then!

But I mean them as "something laudable".

i've always been fascinated by the correlation between one's literary voice and one's actual voice. For instance, the popular GOP front runner, whose name I will not mention, writes far more intelligently and in a much more disciplined way than he speaks, as entertaining as that is. if you had only read his books and had never heard him in person, you'd think he was a low-key philosophical, thoughtful,quasi-academic. conversely, if you had only heard him speak and had never read his books, you,'d think he was a blustering, blundering, arrogant blabber mouth. It's quite intriguing..

I believe the problem is deeper in that modernism has changed the face of the church to the point that it thinks tradition, doctrine and dogma are "outdated" and are no longer relevant to society.

A priest recently told me (in relation to sacred music) "I know what the church wants and you know what the church wants but then there is reality, and we have to work with people where they are." This, dear friends in Christ, is poisonous thinking. This is the essence of relativism... "They are not QUITE ready for the fullness of truth, so we have to meet them where they are and take them where they need to go."

That is plain foolishness. If someone is hanging off a cliff and ready to plunge to their death, you throw them a rope and pull them AWAY from the threat of death. But we have this twisted mentality that we should shimmy down the rope and "hang out" with them in order to appease their mind or comfort them or some other delirious notion that we can do anything to "save" them. Often both fall off the cliff.

The term for this mentality is childish. But we have lost the sense and responsibility to parent, to guide and steer, to rear the young. Too often the parent is insecure and just wants to be friends with the child and in the process abdicates the most important aspect of parenthood which is raising the child into adulthood.

The "child within us" has been given this rediculous status where it then dictates the day to day activities that somehow think it must maintain, guard, protect and worse, nurture its "inner child."

This is why the practice of holding children's liturgies has come about or the children's liturgy of the word. This thinking is what I call the Disney Complex. The evil one wants to blur the line between innocent child and healthy adult because it breeds chaos (one of Adam's favorite words).

It is time for the church to put away childish ways and see Christ face to face.

A priest recently told me (in relation to sacred music) "I know what the church wants and you know what the church wants but then there is reality, and we have to work with people where they are."

How I have heard that many, many times!! Great observation. I was also once told the following by a priest: "The education level of the congregation isn't high enough to support Latin." What this is dangerously close to saying is: "The congregation is too stupid to understand Latin."

"Meet them where they are" is fine, but it's the next step that is seldom taken: the congregation doesn't receive any further instruction. We give them hymns in the vernacular because they can't pronounce Latin, but no effort is made to teach them how to pronounce Latin. We eliminate chant in favor of common melodies because the chants are "too elaborate" but no effort is made to teach them how to sing the more "elaborate" melodies. We eliminate chant also because "it's too old/traditional" but we make no effort to teach them why Tradition is important, and that there can be something beautiful and inspiring in that which came before us.

I believe that this expressed attitude would be defended by our Holy Pontiff. I know, with few exceptions, that most American bishops would also be in concord with such sentiment.

you are absolutely right, and they are dead wrong