A very well thought-out and executed post. A thought or two:

The traditionalist seeking to eliminate the guitar has a lot of ground to cover in establishing that the general population of Catholics in our country considers the guitar "suitable for secular music only" in light of its widespread usage in Catholic parishes...I suggest rather that this paragraph is referring to harmonicas, kazoos, and accordions (joke instruments in our culture, by and large) and the sort of techno/computer synthesized instrumentation that accompanies pop music and is in fact considered by everyone to be suitable for entertainment purposes only.

Except that out here in my part of the country, there is a strong tradition of using accordions and concertinas liturgically, at least once in a while for the Missa Polka. This was the conscious invasion of a purely secular style into the liturgy; however, over time, many Catholics and their pastors seem to have found peace with its liturgical presence. Thus, what began as a violation of the norm set down by Musicam Sacram, has, by its persistent and continued use in contravention of that norm, at least within a certain region, found a sizable following who believe it is not only suitable but, by far, the most suitable form of liturgical music to their tastes.

In many ways, the history of the guitar in Catholic worship in the 20th Century is the same. What began as a desacralizing trend, in which the categories of "sacred" music were systematically demythologized by serious scholarship, equivocated with secular music, and the category robbed of its essential identity or distinction, ended in the conscious introduction of popular, secular styles and motifs as, by virtue of their secularity and popularity, eminently suited for liturgical worship.

Missa Bossa Nova, one of the most unfortunately enduring of the type of compositions that were on the bishops' mind in 1967 when they approved the guitar, is not a conscious attempt to create sacred music in harmony with the tradition. It represents a vision of liturgical music that has no use for those choirs & choir schools that Vatican II indicated were to be diligently fostered, that is not meant to be sung alongside the treasury of sacred music that had come before and which the Council Fathers insisted be preserved; it makes a clean break, preserving only the text, but otherwise, in style, instrumentation, and performance practice, not just insufficiently wondering whether it might be perceived as worldly, but in fact proudly and boldly taking its cues from the popular, secular music of its day.

Of course, in the wake of these decisions and following these early examples, a body of work was composed and received widespread (flagrant) use in spite of the fact that it was conceived by a school of thought which viewed the categories set down by the Church in these matters as essentially meaningless, who believed that there were no barriers to what was suitable for sacred use, and that a strong argument could be made that so-called "sacred" styles (i.e. the tradition) were less suitable for liturgical use than so-called "secular" or "popular" styles. A great many of these arguments dwelling, of course, on a specious interpretation of the words "ceteris paribus" (a stock phrase in Latin meaning "under ideal conditions," but which was taken to mean "with all other things being [viewed as] equal [to Gregorian Chant],") in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council.

And, unfortunately, one of the key ways in which we can understand that this was indeed a clean break, rather than a sympathetic development, is the extent to which it has created a polarization. In 1925, it would have been reasonably possible to enter any Catholic Church in the world and, while fine-tuned scholarly ears in lockstep with the Motu Proprio of 1903 may have found cause to be scandalized, to experience the musical liturgy of a Church that maintained common expectations for liturgical music. Can the same be said of 2017?

Or do we in fact now have two currents running in opposition to one another (Dcn. Edward Schaefer has identified 6, actually)? In how many places does the old argument of the 1960s still get made, still serve as the working model for parish music, in which popular styles of any descent are actively preferred to the sacred music of the Roman Rite, in which "diligently fostering" a choir means deferring to a group of aging volunteers rather than actively recruiting and training the youth of a parish, and in which the "pride of place" enjoyed by the pipe organ is essentially equivalent to the "pride of place" enjoyed by Gregorian Chant in most parishes, namely, that it may have been there first, but it's certainly not there any more?

And how long do we have to do this before the category of sacred music, by your criteria, measured against the experience and catechized opinion of the preponderance of Catholic faithful, become stylistically, musically, an empty category, reduced merely to the category of music That We Happen To Use At Mass, and those instruments employed in worship The Instruments We Happen To Use At Mass? How long until what was sacred to us becomes useless to us, and what was profane to us is viewed as obviously sacred? How long before the deliberate and conscious contravention of a rule becomes an inviolable rule in itself?

And, in my experience, it is the tenuous coexistence of these paradigms, more than any difference in musical preferences or tastes, that is the source of discord and the stumbling-block of an efficient musical establishment in so many Catholic parishes. I've said it often: I have never had difficulties recruiting, training, or directing a choir for the Latin Mass. Sure, it can be political, but at the end of the day, all members, of all ages, agree on the sort of thing that needs to be done and how to do it, and it is up to the director to make the pragmatic, lowest-level choices necessary to communicate those principles into action. Strong opinions on minor differences are common, but non-fatal. In general, a certain amount of congregational participation is desired, the choir has a genuine and understood distinct liturgical role, Gregorian Chant has pride of place, along with the pipe organ, but other styles and instruments are judiciously admitted alongside it, but in harmony with it, and the liturgical text appointed by the rite is executed in a fulsome way. In short, bizarrely enough, the vision of Vatican II is brought to fruition.

On the contrary, for the modern rite, in which parishioners will have experience of cathedral liturgy, folk mass, rock mass, piano/flute mass, polka mass, with a selection of hymns & songs written in a wider variety of contradictory musical styles & textual conventions than could be found on the radio in a major metropolitan area, in which educated parishioners will variously understand liturgical music according to a variety of contradictory paradigms formed in reaction to one another, while it may be possible to satisfy one's own paradigm for liturgical music, it is very difficult to create a culture of musical peace in which the music is truly an expression of the piety and devotion of the entire community, because the community's experience of, expectations for, and understanding of liturgical music are so wildly disparate.

Kudos -
A cogent and very well composed critique, Nihil.

You close by echoing Isaiah's query, 'how long, O Lord, how long....?'

I would say until how long it takes 'Rome' willfully and with a vengeance to stanch this deliberate, calculated, and boorish cultural insurrection and require obedience to the recent council's stated paradigm.

Which means, never.

It seems beyond dispute that we are the heirs of a Church that has been quite willfully culturally shattered beyond repair. This is the work of most of the bishops and priests who came home from the council, thumbed their noses at its lofty verba, and went to work. Their heirs continue the work. And Rome? Rome did nothing and does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

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While I genuinely respect jclangfo's sensitive and thoughtful approach, it does occur to me that probably most guitarists would say that what they are doing is 'tastefully done'. They all say something on the order of 'if you do it right, it's really fitting' - 'right' naturally meaning whatever way they do it. Some may play their instruments with greater artistry than others, some may be less aesthetically offensive, but no less liturgically so. Regardless of the competence and 'taste' with which it is played, the guitar remains a secular, non-liturgical instrument imposed upon us by those who 'like it' and for whom it therefore follows that it is, after all, a liturgical instrument - as evidenced by the fact that they like it and they play it 'right'. The illogic here is patent.

Then, there is this -

It would be a poor idea legally to impose chant on people not culturally prepared to worship with it.

The council has 'legally' required that chant and other sacred music, choirs and choir schools, and instruments such as the organ be 'assiduously cultivated, fostered, and preserved'. This very legal expectation can hardly be called a 'poor idea'. This is the council's paradigm. This is what all have been given authority to accomplish and none have authority to obstruct. (And one notes that power to do or obstruct a thing and authority to do or obstruct it are two very different things that are not always convergent.)

In the same vein, it seems to me that 'impose' is an infelicitous choice of verb, loaded as it is with negative implications. The people need to be educated. They deserve to be educated. They are worthy of being educated. The council expected them to be. They haven't been. They have been deliberately dumbed down by an institution that seems to like them that way, and by a cadre of historically rootless would-be musicians who have carved out for themselves turf that they'll not surrender willingly.

While most of us would agree that sensitive diplomacy backed by determined conviction and an indeflectible will to evangelise the council's paradigm would be pastorally appropriate, one just can't help but ask the question -
- where was the corollary to this assertion after the council when sacro- and folk this that and the other were shovelled into our churches and imposed upon the worship of people not culturally prepared to worship with it? Thousands upon thousands, millions, left the Church in utter disbelief - and no one cared. This argument rings oh so hollow.

I do, however, think the culture needs to be changed to the point where the music played at mass, regardless of genre, has a clear sacred sound to it that is distinguishable from pop music. We face a long road ahead of us in this regard, and I think progress needs to come from slowly introducing good music and having Catholics experience it in a positive manner.

Amen! And if you go back and read the final paragraphs to my post that I just added by edit while you were posting your reply, I think that one of the reasons this "works" so much better in the Traditional Mass is that music of other styles (and I am unapologetic about this: I use as wide a range of music at the TLM as pastorally acceptable), in order to exist harmoniously with the chant of the Church, has to be heard alongside them at every single Mass, whereas the more modern idea of "drawing its inspiration from the Gregorian tradition" can mean any number of rarefied and akademisch things, including but not limited to: Sounding Like Chants that No One in the Pews Ever Hears, Being Contemporary Music Today Just Like Chant Was Contemporary 1200 Years Ago, Setting Appointed Texts Just Like Chant Does, Inventing New Ways to Point Psalmody, etc.

And so it is something that everyone can claim to do in completely different ways, while creating music with no common auditory reference point familiar to the faithful. And while I have had some success reintroducing regular chanting to an "average" parish, and then "harmonizing" the existing repertoire of choral and congregational music with that chant, what is still missing is the sense of the chant as an indispensible part of the liturgy, something that *must* be reckoned with and answered to, rather than just a part of the integrated aesthetic experience that the present music director chooses to construct, but which could easily be otherwise. And hence, while the sensitive in the pews would appreciate and compliment me for this, more often than not they would also sing the praises of the, shall we say, "sold-out" rock-concert masses they had also attended, which were likewise experiences of an integral aesthetic vision, but without the benefit of a common, objective point of reference.

It seems beyond dispute that we are the heirs of a Church that has been quite willfully culturally shattered beyond repair. This is the work of most of the bishops and priests who came home from the council, thumbed their noses at its lofty verba, and went to work. Their heirs continue the work. And Rome? Rome did nothing and does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

How can this paragraph be regarded as anything composed by the ever-accurate MJO, rather than a sort of hysterically myopic summation? That the Church is culturally shattered cannot be ascribed to pitiful musicians pitifully plucking (or strumming.) Furthermore, as having breathed on this orb for a full 2/3rds of a century, it rather seems to me that HMChurch is experiencing a renaissance of performance (not a dirty word, btw) practice not experienced in the last five hundred years. This forum is hale and hearty proof of that. The panorama of full-throttle return to sacrality is expanding, not receding despite papal and popular indifference. The Pius X factor has never been more realized than in the last half century, not in some nostalgic Eisenhower past.
If folks capitulate away from this progress, it won't be because of Missa Bossa Nova.

www.chantcafe.com/.../ancient-chant-and-hymns-for-guitar-by.html
www.chantcafe.com/2010_11_01_archive.html
www.chantcafe.com/2014_06_01_archive.html
www.chantcafe.com/2011_05_01_archive.html
www.chantcafe.com/.../why-im-wildly-optimistic-about-catholic.html?...

That's a few for you jcl. Go to CMAA/Chant Café and search "Charles Culbreth+guitar")

Copy and paste, Chase, thanks.

Chase,

In the upper left hand corner on the Chant Cafe site is a search box. Typing the word 'guitar' into the box brought up all of those articles and more.

Here are the links again, and I hope they'll be clickable this time:

http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/10/ancient-chant-and-hymns-for-guitar-by.html
http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/09/why-im-wildly-optimistic-about-catholic.html

Charles posted a link to a month-archive page, but I assume he's referring to this post:
http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/11/classical-guitar-as-voicesdirait-on-by.html

Here are two more archive pages containing several posts he wrote:
http://www.chantcafe.com/2014_06_01_archive.html
http://www.chantcafe.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

By the way, folks, there is a "catch" about the forum software's treatment of URLs.

If the URL includes the starting prefix "http://" or "https://", the software will automatically make it a clickable link; it automatically puts in the necessary HTML code. But if you copy and paste a URL without the prefix, then the forum software won't make it a clickable link.

Also, copying links from a search result can have some glitches, because Google sometimes abbreviates the link for display purposes. Those abbreviated display URLs may not work.

Another method: paste the URL of a page (such as your search results page) into the URL box of this, click Load, and then select+copy what you want from its output. It extracts all the links and shows them to you in plain text.

As I've often stated, singing...song sung (etc.)....leads the service of music for liturgy. Instruments provide textural "couches" for the "song." The myriad imitative voices of the wind-driven organ, exquisitely sympathetic to the human voice, nonetheless have correspondence with myriad textures and timbres of plucked string instruments, unamplified or not. A "surf guitar" texture, or BBKing "Lucille" blues texture distracts from our norms of liturgical accompaniment, just as does an "all stops" registration can overwhelm congregational singing. All things being somewhat equal, "dialing it in" discretion must always be applied.

Thank you!

Are there any recordings on the net to demonstrate the tasteful use of electric guitar in the Holy Mass? Normally, I would think the instrument excluded because of its association with worldly entertainments often of a coarse nature.

...would take much, much, much convincing...

However much, there isn't enough much to convince or justify the use of a guitar simulacrum at mass. As with other kinds of simulacra, the trend now is to refer to the real thing as an 'acoustical' such and such, as opposed to an 'electric' or 'digital' such and such, as if by doing so one had asserted that they are both equal but merely different versions of the same thing. They aren't, don't sound the same, and can't. The laws of physics, due to the difference of sound source and production, forbid it. They are different things. One is fake, an imitation, the other isn't. It is good that, in the case of electric guitar simulacra, no one is claiming that they sound the same. It's pretty obvious that one is the beautiful sound of a real guitar, and the other is an unholy something else altogether.

It is astonishing that this conversation is being taken seriously on this forum.

I'm not easily astonished, JMO!

Whatever their merits as religious music, none of these is liturgical, as understood by the Catholic Church. The attachment is from the first of the links which chonak constructed, above, and the comments there provide a link to samples played on an acoustic guitar (it won't attach). Those samples would not, I think, appeal to my parish priest for use at Mass.

liturgical OR simply religious

I am open to persuasion (I think), but have not yet heard anything remotely convincing as liturgy. On the other hand, see the post just started by ProfKwasniewski, about using a lute.

Yet, this is primarily how amplification of an electric guitar works. There is a small microphone on an electric guitar which picks up the faint sound and then send it to an amplifier or a sound board. In the case of electric guitarists who plug strait into the sound board, the original sound of the guitar is played through the speakers in the same manner that the original sound of the choir is played through the speakers.

By no means an electric guitar expert, but I always thought electric guitar pick-ups worked via magnetism—they are not microphones. A quick search turned up:
http://soundcalledmusic.com/electric-guitars/

I admire the pluck, but I have to agree (with MJO) that the discussion is now chasing its tail. One thing I've learned in my decade with CMAA is that citing portions of TLS/MS/IGRM et cetera can be useful towards defending darn near any thesis proposed. Once a discussion of worthiness disconnects from singing towards the properties of instruments, all is basically lost. It's not always about: a. taste b. legislation c. timbre d. physical dynamics e. all/none of the above.
Is it intellectually dishonest to simply adjure: If it works, it works?

a_f_hawkins: from sources I've posted, it seems to me that the rubrics allow some sort of contemporary music. I do agree with melofluent that there is a substantial amount of grey area in theses documents. I think the church wants us to exercise judgement, and individual judgement has the influence of taste which is difficult to argue. So, while we might not be able to agree on what sort of contemporary music might be allowed (simple guitar plucking to an old hymn vs. the songs I posted earlier), I think we should be able to agree that the rubrics allow some sort of contemporary music.

I disagree with the characterization that contemporary music is about manipulating emotions. All music is inherently emotional to some degree. I do think there are some excessively emotional songs out there but if we wanted to take emotion out of the liturgy we would just read the words rather than sing them.

Do you insist that all church organs be completely mechanical and have no electronics in them at all?

Yes, he does. I for one am not willing to bury myself in the casework where I can't hear what the congregation is hearing. Also, those electronic combination actions surely are nice and convenient.

I once allowed a guitar for a Spanish Baroque mass where it was written into the score. Worked well and was quite nice. For whatever reason, guitars have become associated with elderly hippies - gray bun de rigueur - wailing Haugen/Haas and other trash. Good guitarists are not so easy to find in many parishes but the bad ones abound.

Yes, he does.

Charles! 'He does not!' You do me a disservice. While I would not squawk like some at a totally mechanical instrument, I am far from opposed to electric blowers, direct electric action, combination actions and other 'conveniences', so long as the sound source and its means of activation remain inviolate, which is the 'bottom line' absent which there is no organ at all. Still, I do, indeed, prefer tracker instruments because of the intimate relationship they offer me with playing the pipes. While I do not mind 'modern conveniences', even gladly avail myself of them, I do not understand those who have unappreciative fits of displeasure at their absence.

Last year on Palm Sunday, here in Houston, Ken Cowan presented La chemin de la croix on the Fisk at Palmer Episcopal (across from Rice Univ.). The Fisk, except for the blower, is totally tracker-mechanic and has no form of combination action. Ken pulled this off with the aid of two or three registrants and gave a stunning performance. I, for one, would never contemplate such repertory on a mechanical instrument, but have nothing but admiration for the one, and his helpers, who accomplished it.
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I bought one of those Macy's simulacrum at Hilltop Mall in Richmond, Richard. At the time it seemed quite right.

May I propose a moratorium, not a ban, herewith, so's we can return to corners and figure out if pursuing the thread further has any merit whatsoever. Respectfully all, we've been down this path many, many times. It has no outcome.

Charles! 'He does not!' You do me a disservice. While I would not squawk like some at a totally mechanical instrument, I am far from opposed to electronic blowers, direct electric action, combination actions and other 'conveniences', so long as the sound source and its means of activation remain inviolate, which is the 'bottom line' absent which there is no organ at all.

I can go with that! Can't speak to direct electric action, since the only ones in the area are rather ancient Wicks instruments. Perhaps the technology has advanced since those were built. I suspect it has. Electro pneumatic instruments can work well, or be slow to speak. The slowness can be frustrating, although the newer instruments seem to have worked around that problem. Registrants simply get on my nerves. I don't like them moving around me and find them a major, major distraction. Peterson combination systems are a big improvement. My biggest objection to trackers, aside from being buried in the instrument, is that it is a primitive technology and seems like doing things the hard way for the purpose of doing things the hard way. You don't get extra stars in your eternal crown for doing that. LOL.