CMAA a nest of antidreyfusard, Franco-apologist monarchists and misfits

Guilty as charged, Richard. On all four counts. But you say it like it's a bad thing. It ain't necessarily so . . .

Charles, if Jack Kerouac can cheer on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, watching his hearings on TV, whilst smoking marijuana, then there's hope for me yet. (True story.)

Maybe they are just unhappy music critics.

Next time I spot someone marching behind a swastika and chanting I promise to hold back the antifa myself.

Straw men, must we, Mr. Mix? After all, we don't equate upstanding gentlemen like Mr. Giffen with Saul Alinsky.

About singing the Mass and not hymns at Mass (I think that was the original conversation), it would help me greatly if the Mass setting at my church was worth singing. Alas, it's been Mass of Pony for the six years we've been there. And because I respect singing the Mass, I've sung the damned thing for all these years because that's what we do and I have to set an example for my children. And now we are leaving and looking for a new church home. Not the only reason, but it's up there on the list.

What example, exactly...

What example, indeed!
It doesn't happen very often on this our Forum. But once in a great while one is blind-sided when someone cavalierly tosses in a shamelessly trashy word that doesn't belong here and that I wish I had not read or seen. I wonder if those responsible talk that way around their children, whom they say they are concerned about setting an example for.
I am not impressed.
This language does not belong here.

Must have been the "S" word. I can hear the angels in heaven screaming, "No, not that. Holy simulacrum."

We have swastikas in some of the floor tiles in our 1926 building. We are not removing them. It was an ancient Christian symbol despite what Hitler and company did with it. Worse than removing them would be pandering to the ignorance of those who don't know that.

I had been quite unhappy over our previous pastor spending the parish into excessive debt to the tune of $2 million plus. However, it really worked out well. When the new missal translations came out, all the mass settings in our hymnal became obsolete. The free ICEL chants are what we have used since 2011, since we certainly had other things to spend the money on like roof and organ repairs. It was a blessing, really, to not have to use Haugen/Haas/Pony mass settings. No complaints. Sometimes God hides a rose among the trash, and isn't it wonderful when you find it?

Fidem,

I'm sorry if what I wrote came over too harshly. Let me rephrase. In any situation our behavior is teaching young people and outsiders, whether we want it to or not. If we preach "Don't smoke", but we have a cigarette at our lips as if we were a north-eastern factory, we might teach them "Dad doesn't really mean what he says", but we might also teach, "That stuff caused Dad to lose his ability to act on his word". Clearly the lesson that Dad doesn't mean what he says is a bad one, but Dad's having lost his ability to act on his word is a tragic but valuable one.

If you don't merely stay in the parish but sing the music you clearly dislike (both, apparently for its lack of musical quality and for the sheer repetition for six solid years) are you teaching the children that personal dislike is distinct from moral revulsion --- a good thing to teach, so they don't confuse "I want" with "I have a right to...", or are you trying to teach them that sometimes even in the Church there are many chances to offer up our suffering --- or, perish the thought, that the schlock you're singing is the future of the Church? When, a generation or so ago, the liturgy was reformed to be more "relevant" to modern man, modern man in alarming numbers didn't take the message of the generous action of the Church -- but rather that if the Church could change her liturgy everything else was up for grabs, too.

Reading your response, I get the impression that you thought singing this stuff would teach your children about authentic participation, rather than "going through the motions". I don't know your children, so you will know much better than I whether that will work.


Many years ago an adult challenged me (still a teenager) saying, "If you want to be a professional musician, how dare you criticize the program here?" I was caught speechless, but afterwards I reflected that the answer to that question was, "Precisely because I want to be a professional musician, I can't stand by and let this happen, as if all is well." [I don't even remember what "this" was, but for the purposes of the post, it doesn't matter.]

Fidem's lament (not by Byrd) is one of my pet peeves, namely that the editors of our big gun publishers have ignominiously failed to advance worthy Mass settings for decades. Composers of all strypes have to walk a crooked razor's edge what with the options often in opposition to the realization of fine art AND FCAP.
OCP is, by far, the worst. And what aggravates that paucity is that they've consistently abrogated some of their better composer efforts, from Schiavone's "Holy Family," Proulx's "Responsorial*" and "Oecumenica," Hurd's "Ubi caritas," in order to promote, via monopoly, cubic zirconia such as the Schutte, the Stephen, the most unfortunate "Celtic", the latest DeBruyn debacle (where have you gone, Randy?) and other DODelivery efforts. The use of the now-remangled "Heritage" in Raleigh exacerbates my contention, IMO.
It is commendable what Fidem is trying to teach her children well (see what I did there?) by exemplifying actuoso participatio. But I feel that's somewhat counter-productive. Now that I'm actively visiting other parish Sunday Masses, I cannot bring myself to sing the unsingable and the unworthy. But that's just me.

*Tho admittedly, Proulx's choral/organ harmonies in this one needed serious revision, which I happily did back in '87.

That's passive aggression, francis. I generally don't practice that. I've kind of thrown a gauntlet at OCP et alia above, and I'll gladly debate any editor anytime about it. But to remain silent while being held hostage by garbage doesn't benefit anyone.

Sometimes I opt out of singing some pieces. Ir might be passive aggression, or it might be passive suffering, or it might be conscientious objection.