Will do! June 27th?

I wish I could attend this year... all my ideas about recruiting youngsters went right out the window.

In this order:

1) Spend some time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

2) Purchase or borrow a copy of the Graduale Romanum

3) Attend a Colloquium.

4) Spend some more time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

5) Attend a traditional Mass somewhere in your area. The purpose of your visit is to get a sense of what beautiful music sounds like within a Catholic context. (Beautiful music within a Protestant context sounds different.)

6) Read the following texts, whether with music or not:

a) Adoro te Devote, of Thomas Aquinas, and a faithful translation.
b) O Lord I am not worthy
c) Holy God, we praise Thy Name

7) Pick your music based on 1 - 6.

8) Lead your first rehearsal.

This is important: at the outset, stay close to what your predecessor had been presenting. People have a right to go to Mass and not be shocked, even if the changes are really improvements.

Welcome aboard!

You probably know this already - the Catholic church isn't that different from others: But I think it's worth saying a zillion times so am going to repeat it.

Build relationships, in roughly this order (vary to suit the circumstances):
The parish secretary
The parish priest
The janitor/cleaner/custodian
The finance committee
The assistant / substitute priests.
The existing musicians and singers (appreciate them for the gifts that they do have, not the ones you wish they had but don't)
The pastoral council, liturgy group - what ever the parish has.
The wider parish - to flush out non-involved musicians / singers.
Any music schools (any level) in the area
Grade schools in the area, especially teachers who may be involved in sacramental programmes.

Find out what happens now, and then develop a plan to make it better over time. Don't take positions re mass-settings etc (exception: if the parish priests tells you to do so). Rather than condemning what is there now, celebrate it well - and also move on from it. Take people with you, rather than leaving them behind.

Remember that your primary job is to show Christ's love to people using music. Some days you will fail (we're all human). Some people are very difficult to love. But that's not excuse for not making the effort.

Find out what happens now, and then develop a plan to make it better over time. Don't take positions re mass-settings etc (exception: if the parish priests tells you to do so). Rather than condemning what is there now, celebrate it well, and also move on from it. Take people with you, rather than leaving them behind.

This needs to be taken apart, for it is a mixture of good advice and not-so-good advice.

Find out what happens now,

Good advice, but it is necessary to add two caveats. 1) Learn what the Church expects of music at liturgy, not merely what is currently done in your parish; "norm" doesn't mean "how things actually are" in Ecclesiastical parlance, but rather "the measure of things" 2) There is something very valuable in not knowing what has gone before you: you can't be accused of violating some taboo you didn't know was there in the first place. Most parishes (and, especially liturgy committees) have the unspoken rules they will tell you about and the unspoken rules that will remain unspoken. If you don't ask what's been done previously you can hardly be accused of knowingly departing from current practice.

and then develop a plan to make it better over time.

People around here will differ about how long "time" can be. Have a sense of what you should do first, then develop a plan on how to get there from where-ever you find yourself. Remember that radically dumping some stuff won't always be met with cheers or jeers. Part of replacing stuff depends on how you replace, but part also depends on what replaces.

Don't take positions re mass-settings etc

This is bad advice. Take the position that the Church takes, in her magisterial documents. If asked, offer thoughtful, educated, but not pedantic opinions. Be genuinely surprised -- because it means that you assumed the best initially -- if someone prefers junk to actual sacred music, and be willing to explain why. (For example, "this piece always strikes me as worshipping the community, but I'm supposed to help you worship God")

Rather than condemning what is there now, celebrate it well

Not so good advice. I did discover that I could get people to dislike the sacro pop by singing/playing it as written instead of as usually sung/played. (City of God starts out as if one is actually rising from sleep, and is marked tempo-wise to show that. No one liked it like that. On the other hand, if you play and sing well that which has no business at Mass, people will assume that it does belong at Mass, under the rubric that it can be made suitable for Mass. (See an execrable document called Music in Catholic Worship for the camel's nose on this one.) Let me modify the advice slightly: don't condemn people for liking what is bad, but don't refuse to condemn what must be condemned as heretical, unfit for the Mass and so on. Again, assume people are there to worship God.

Take people with you, rather than leaving them behind

It's a catchy line, and modern bosses like catchy lines. You're not there to be a people pleaser, nor are you a therapist. You're a musician serving at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Your primary audience is with the King of Heaven, even if the chief boil on your skin is the head of the liturgy committee or the local version of Uriah Heep.

No. You are a musician serving a parish priest.

Fixed.

If you feel this way about your pastoral colleagues (either staff or volunteer, then I would suggest job hunting.

This is really your only recourse should you have the aforementioned issues. Have the respect for yourself to be able to walk away from a bad situation.

...but we serve God,...

Amen, Amen, and Amen!

It needed to be said!
We work for God.
We exist for God.
Our gifts are those of the Giver of Every Good and Perfect Gift.
(Which is to stress that we certainly weren't endowed with them by the Church!)
Our consciences and integrity are the gifts of God.
We are they who are set over the service of singing in the house of the Lord. (Cf. Exodus)
We are the successors of the temple Levites.

The priest?
1.How blessed, oh how blessed! are we to have one of those who respects the above.
2.How unfortunate are we to have one who scorns the above.

The priest?
Whether he is no. 1 or no. 2, signs our check and otherwise makes our life joyful (and we his) or frustrates it (and we his). But we do not serve a priest. We serve God.

Still, we must strive to respect the priest and his vocation, to please him if he is wise, or patiently, respectfully, and lovingly convert him if he isn't. A scornful mind and a demeaning hauteur teacheth naught.

So, Chris, 'you can say that again',

You're never so misunderstood as having a scornful mind and a demeaning hauteur.

Every thing you have said is spot on, and spoken wisely.

Lest anyone misunderstand or misconstrue my tenor, I am not advocating a rebellious or contemptible character in our priestly relations. Rather, a respectful and appreciative one. We are fortunate indeed (at least I am) that we have authority over us. I, for one, would never wish to be without it! It is, though, particularly onerous when that authority does not act authoritatively (meaning in faithfulness to the entity which gave him authority only to do what it prescribed) and presumes to contradict, obstruct, 'forbid', what the Church in council has commanded be 'preserved' and 'fostered'. Such men are tyrants, a tyrant being one who usurps authority which is, objectively, not his, and imposes his raw power to achieve his own will in place of the Church's. There are those who care not a fig if they can make intellectual and musical prostitutes (I have eschewed a more explicit word) out of their 'difficult' musicians - the ones with integrity and conscience.

If I were pope, one of my first acts would be to make rigourously trained and singularly liturgically oriented musicians (choirmasters, organists, cantors) a minor order of clerics (as once they were in some places [don't ask me for a citation!]), and have them ordained with the commendation 'thou art set over the service of music in the house of the Lord, after the order of Levi'. Music in the Lord's House is a high calling and an awe filled responsibility requiring sober and profound musical integrity and unimpeachable Catholic character.

I feel compelled to add that I have been very fortunate in the priests and pastors who have been my religious superiors. I am grateful deeply for all that I have learnt from them. There have been bumps, of course, as there may be in many human relationships, but, on the whole, I have been honoured to have been in the service of men of integrity who were appreciative of the greater part of what I wished to accomplish in God's name and for his people, even as I was appreciative of their own unique gifts, character, and integrity, and, guidance. 'How good and pleasant a thing it is...' We hear here of so many horrible tales that it is, sometimes, easy to become discouraged, or even disillusioned altogether and think that all is rotten. All is not bad. But we do, don't we, still have much work to do in bringing around those who seem to make their peace with pop-religion and a general, seemingly pervasive, seemingly deliberate and cheap liturgical laxity, and an anti-sacral culture. Never cease to give thanks for and love those who don't fit the common mold. The wise will surround themselves with wise men and women, or those who can gently correct their shortcomings. The unwise and insecure will surround themselves with men and women sycophants.

Many liturgy committees in offering feedback will do so in terms of what they like and don't like

Not wishing to further any conflated rhetoric, I offer that a liturgy meeting's objective (as well as a DM/choirmaster's) is simply to execute the details of doing the red and saying the black. It is that simple.

It is that simple.

We had a DM with a degree in liturgy, who counted the different ways one could structure the Mass before arriving at the readings. I think she said she had reached 73 variations. When she left it became clear that the main function of the liturgy committee (at least as far as the clergy were concerned) had been to keep her in check.