This account might help save time (if not preserve sanity): “No Approval Needed for Substitute Songs” says USCCB • Exclusive Documentation

Some hymnals are printed "with ecclesiastical approbation": e.g., Worship III has ecclesiastical approbation from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Some books (e.g., Journeysongs) carry a "concordat cum originali": this approval only confirms that the Lectionary texts and Mass texts presented in the hymnal are quoted correctly: not that the hymns and songs have been reviewed for doctrinal soundness and liturgical suitability.

There may be some more recent cases in which the whole contents of the book were reviewed. Forum member ronkrisman, formerly executive secretary of the USCCB Bishops Committee on the Liturgy, has discussed this topic in previous posts.

There are good reasons to pass by such "praise and worship" songs as sarodeo experienced at that Mass.

Fr. Christopher Smith, a liturgical theologian, wrote a fine article about those reasons a few years ago for our site "Chant Cafe". It's been picked up by a few other sites, including CERC.

Here is a performance video for one of the songs sarodeo mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtwIT8JjddM . It illustrates some of the characteristics of Christian pop songs.

First, it's not designed for the Mass. During the Mass, we should sing the ordinary parts of the Mass: the "Lord, have mercy", the "Glory to God", the Creed, the "Holy", the "Our Father", the "Lamb of God", and we should sing the dialogues with the priest ("The Lord be with you"/"And with your spirit", etc.) If the musical focus is not on singing the Mass itself, then it's in the wrong place.

Or, if I may take a famous quotation from the Vatican, just after the liturgical reform started: we should not just "sing AT the Mass", we should "sing the Mass". If the people are not singing their parts of the Mass, but are given other pieces of nice music which is really not from the liturgy itself, then the people are being robbed. The liturgy experts in Rome said it with an Italian expression: they're being given chaff instead of good grain.

So what can we observe about "10,000 Reasons"? The vocal line uses syncopation. Very few of the phrases begin on a downbeat; many of them have held, anticipated notes starting on a fractional beat: e.g., "ho-" in the phrase "his holy name". (You can see this in the score -- apparently an illegal copy!) Because of these rhythmic demands, you can tell that the song is *designed for a soloist*, not a congregation.

In a real parish congregation of hundreds of untrained voices, this kind of song cannot attract people to sing because it is somewhat challenging rhythmically, and even when people in a large group try, they cannot sing the rhythmic oddities together. If you have a highly specialized group of rather devout college students who already listen to this sort of thing on the radio, they may feel comfortable joining in. But then the event becomes focused on a narrow subset of the Catholic population. In real life, if we're going to have hymns added to the Mass, we should have hymns that the Dads can sing: if they sing, everybody sings.

Without a band that song would be nothing. But most classic hymns for a congregation can be sung without percussion, without six or seven instruments, without amplifiers, and even with no accompaniment at all. If you want proof, walk up to a congregation and sing the first words of "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name", and they will need no prompting to sing the rest in tune and together.

Also please note that syncopation is characteristic of dance music: the addition of off-beat accents or the absence of expected beat accents invites movement. This song is using the conventions of one genre of commercial pop music, the rock anthem. In fact, the song is literally a piece of commercial pop music, intended for concert performance: it's religious entertainment, but it is entertainment.

The words are religious, but the structures and style are non-religious. If the words were replaced by non-religious words about being in love or hitting the road or going your own way or buying a great pickup truck, the combination would still work just fine. But music for the Church's sacred liturgy needs to reflect sacredness in both its words and its musical style: that's part of the Church's teaching on sacred music, going back over 100 years.

Building on what Chonak said, you're probably better off starting from a practical POV. I think there are probably more than a few people here who can cite documents from here to eternity and get nowhere. Would I be guessing correctly that there wasn't a lot of singing with the praise band? (And really, "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High?" Can we put that old horse out to pasture?)

I know for the parish I pick hymns for, I ended up zapping a lot of '70s and '80s stuff because people weren't singing them well. I added stuff like "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy," which, if you can't sing that, I can't help you. My parish is small and in a poor area, and there aren't a lot of folks at English Mass. But they sing as if the church were full.

If they insist on the praise band, then it's OK to dig for and suggest "contemporary" hymns that are actually written with singability in mind -- one example that my parish loves and sings well is Trevor Thomson's "We Belong to You," which can easily be done on organ or with the band.

Black swans of trespass upon alien waters.

I have a funny project idea.

Maybe not so funny.
There are "folks" out there, some who host FB groups designed to promote unpublished "sacred music," who haven't a clue that their e're so earnest efforts prove epic fails, even in terms of Big Three sub-standards. They are legion compared to those who've submitted and failed, and those who succeeded. It's a terminally flawed system. CMAA/Forum readership would not profit from such a "dirty tricks" sort of campaign. Do we really want to add "Blue Meanie" to our curriculum vitae?
Why not institute some concerted efforts to dialogue with some "industrial" folks? People like Paul Ford, Rvs. Krisman/Chepponis/Joncas, B. Hurd or Ms. Sullivan Whitaker aren't unfamiliar with the association goals.
Why purposefully posture ourselves as elitist nattering nabobs of negativity?

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