Young Catholics and Sacred Music
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First of all, Jclangfo,
I appreciate how seriously you are defending your position as it is clear you have given it much thought. I'm genuinely appreciating this dialogue and I am learning things from both sides. You've given us a lot to chew on in the last few preceding posts so I'm going to try and tackle a few of your observations in turn.As I've said before, good liturgical music should have its emotional structure and the truth of its lyrics aligned. Can anyone on here seriously claim that liturgical music ought to lack emotion altogether?
No, and I don't believe anyone is trying to either. There certainly IS emotion, even in chant. I think of the Improperia, for example, on Good Friday. This is a very emotionally charged chant. Heavens... the Gloria, for that matter. No sense singing the text of the Gloria to a funeral dirge. It is also true that just about every composer ever tries to do at least a little text painting here and there. It comes with the musical territory. With all of that in mind, I think we are perhaps taking issue with the approach to eliciting emotion. P&W, as it seems to me as a casual observer, seems to have emotion as one of its core purposes. Correct me if I'm wrong... but (and please pardon my somewhat silly term here) just about every single "Jesus music video" or contemporary worship service I've ever witnessed either in person or online has people swaying with arms in the air; it's very clear the music is the experience... not an adornment to the liturgy, as such.I have no idea how the emotion in praise and worship could be "at odds with chant."
It's not just the emotion. It's the whole ethos.
Listen to this:https://youtu.be/OLMeHBkLQJo
and then listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TIXhrgjEM4
or anything streaming here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9P5mZRihZU
This example is a bit off the mark, but it's the quickest thing I could find and I don't want to be here typing all night. You can't tell me that those latter examples have an ethos/emotion/energy that remotely approaches that of chant. If chant is the "supreme model" for the church, we have to earnestly question whether or not it is good to foster the latter in church, even if the music isn't bad in se.Does the repetition of "Alleluia" in "Jesus Chris Is Risen Today" make it a parody of a litany? I don't think so, and think that we should be careful about setting impossible standards that will end up discarding much of the music preferred by those of a more traditional persuasion. In fact, complaining about repetition will render many of the Psalms not good enough for us to sing.
There's a difference between calculated repetition and lack of substance. At the risk of this seeming a jab, I don't think it's a coincidence that this is popular: https://youtu.be/fWicNLXxtj4
I believe this is what the other member of the forum was getting at.Others have also made similar claims. So, my take on this is that that states of being "purely sacred" or "purely secular" are the extreme points of a spectrum.
Sacrosanctum Concilium states:
116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.
But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.
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Gregorian plainchant would be the extreme of "purely sacred." The worst of OCP/GIA would be pushing total indistinguishability from purely secular music.
This is a fair observation.
Now as for your quote from SC, I'd place the emphasis on "so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action..."
Again, listen to the monastic salve regina and listen to any piece of (even exemplary) p&w. Do they possess the same "spirit"? No.There are some reasons that one might be wanting to push towards the middle of that spectrum: when you use an idiom that people already know how to understand and use it to communicate the sacred, they may be more likely to understand this than if you use an idiom that is completely foreign to them.
I believe for many people this is a seductive argument, however I find it very un-compelling. While there is something to be said for speaking in a way that others can understand (Bp. Fulton Sheen has a famous remark about how people completely in darkness can be utterly blinded by the light of the gospel like our eyes are blinded by headlights on a dark street.) there is also something for speaking authentically.
I am bilingual and lived in France for a while. My French wasn't perfect when I arrived. Sometimes people would slow down their speech a bit or use slightly simpler words, but they never stopped speaking French to me. To my mind, this is akin to singing propers in English or propers from the Graduale Simplex when first introducing chant at a parish. The answer isn't to not chant, or "not speak French" so to speak. Those who are in or come to the church will never learn their mother tongue if it's never spoken at all. I get that chant isn't to everyone's taste. It has taken me a good long while to warm to it too, but that is in large part from engaging in the effort to learn it well and due to my desire to intellectually (and thus emotionally) assent to the teaching of the Church, and abandon my former musical proclivities (or at least put them in the backseat, so to speak).If we stick with Gregorian planchaint, yeah, no one will ever confuse that with secular music. Yet, the Church allows polyphony, and other forms of sacred music.
This is a good thing. The very definition of "sacred" means set apart for God.
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We're talking about concerns about being confused with secular music, despite the fact that polyphony is often performed as secular music in classical music performances on the regular. In fact, many of the composers who wrote polyphony, such as Bach and Mozart, are more famous for the secular music they wrote in nearly exactly the same style! Despite that, this board is full of people suggesting that we need to play more Bach and Mozart at Mass.
This is indeed a fair criticism, at least on the face of it. That said, the masterworks intended for liturgical use, while sharing many similarities with other forms such as opera, were also composed specifically for the liturgy. I do not get that this is the case for most p&w. Even if it were, this is not enough to justify its use; plenty of well-meaning composers have written things for mass, much to our misfortune. This is a topic that could deserve its own thread and I concede I don't have all the answers here. I will add, however, that even if a large mass setting by Beethoven shared some similarities to his opera music, he (and other composers like him) was writing in a vein that was a natural outcrop of musical development and it was still unmistakably sacred. There is also a tremendous difference in scale here; we are talking about large masterworks that were, at least in a certain sense, the embodiment of "giving the BEST to God" that man could muster at the time. Again, I do not get this same impression about p&w.We could also list many songs that today are loved as traditional hymns that would have to be thrown out by such a standard. Be Thou My Vision is set to an Irish folk tune (SLANE), What Child Is This is set to the folk song Greensleeves, and there are many more examples that could be listed. The entire style of hymnody bears more than a passing resemblance to the tavern songs that were sung at the time of Luther. I don't think any of this information is actually a good reason to ditch these treasures.
True. And perhaps a future generation will perceive p&w differently than we do now, when this type of music has been long dead for two centuries and then gets revived, without any of the current cultural baggage. But until that happens...With all that said, I don't think that raw stylistic similarity is a great criterion for what is acceptable as sacred music. With these styles of sacred music that are some shade of grey in between totally sacred and totally secular, I think what matters is that people find a way to communicate a sense of sacredness and otherness with them, and to show how what they are doing is different from the secular genres that have some similarity.
I don't think anyone claimed that stylistic similarity was the sole criterion working against p&w, specifically, although it might certainly be the greatest. As I said, your observation that there is a spectrum is a valid one. The problem is p&w tends very far toward the wrong end of the spectrum.
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I think we need to go back to what the word sacred means. It comes from the Latin word "sacrare" which means "to set apart" or "to make holy." Things that are sacred are set apart for the divine (whether we are talking about the Judeo-Christian God or gods as the Romans did when they invented the word). Sacred music should, therefore, be set apart for worship of the Divine. This means both text and style should be set apart for worship. I'm not going to go into more detail on text since we all seem to agree on the importance of a sacred text. Gregorian chant was developed in the context of worship and is unique to church. This exclusivity makes it set apart and therefore sacred.
jclangfo, you questioned the use of polyphony. If you look at the history of polyphonic music, it began as an embelishment of the chant lines and eventually became what we think of today. You also question the use of Bach at mass (I'm not going to discuss Mozart since I have not spent a lot of time studying his music). Bach's style was a natural evolution from renaissance polyphony, and retains a lot of the character of that music. Also, most of Bach's work was composed for church; think of his cantatas or his organ works. It is also true that he wrote his secular pieces in a similar style. However, the prevailing, but not exclusive, use of music (I'm talking about "high culture" music not the average folk song) in his time was a sacred use. When he had to write music for another high culture context, he wrote it in a similar style since the sacred was so incorporated into the high culture that there would of course be crossover in the music. In this case, the secular is coming from the sacred. Praise and worship tries to make sacred from the secular.
Now, when polyphony is sung at a secular concert, the choir director has picked it for it's artistic value. I would think that this would further support the argument that there is something special about polyphony. The fact that this music still has value 400+ years (especially to a largely secular throwaway culture like we have today) shows that people still search for the sacred. Whether they realize it is a sacred quality in, for example, Palestrina or they just call it good art, they still understand there is something there.
On the issue of sacred music in Africa: the African Church is incorporating elements of the sacred from African culture. They are not taking war songs and altering them for mass. They are taking songs traditional to African worship and transforming them into Catholic music. They are using music that is already sacred and bringing it with them into the Church. They are not making the sacred from the secular. So, I would not tell a music director at an African mission church that they have to use Gregorian chant because they are already using a style set apart for worship. However, in our European tradition, chant is the sacred and pop/rock is the secular. So I would tell a music director at an American church to use chant because it is the sacred music of our culture. -
And Musicam Sacram states:
61. Adapting sacred music for those regions which possess a musical tradition of their own, especially mission areas, will require a very specialized preparation by the experts. It will be a question in fact of how to harmonize the sense of the sacred with the spirit, traditions and characteristic expressions proper to each of these peoples. Those who work in this field should have a sufficient knowledge both of the liturgy and musical tradition of the Church, and of the language, popular songs and other characteristic expressions of the people for whose benefit they are working.
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Here Vatican II explicitly encourages "those regions that possess a musical tradition of their own" to develop their own sacred music and goes so far as to state that this development should consider the "popular songs" of the people.
You can "consider" the popular songs in two ways: 1.) imitate them, or 2.) carefully avoid imitating them. I'd suggest your reading is perhaps incorrect due to the unfortunately vague way in which MS was worded.Here Vatican II explicitly encourages "those regions that possess a musical tradition of their own" to develop their own sacred music and goes so far as to state that this development should consider the "popular songs" of the people.
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How many people here would tell the the music directors in Africa, where the Catholic Church is growing the fastest, that they should replace the music they are using that respects African traditions with Gregorian Chant? And how many of you would go tell your local Spanish language Masses, which in my experience almost always have very folk-esque music with the guitar as the primary instrument, that they should switch immediately to 100% Gregorian chant? And can you maintain your intellectual consistency while saying to an English-language parish that they but not the others need to switch to 100% Gregorian chant?
To the first part, if a culture has special "ceremonial" music, ie- music used for coronations, triumphal entries, weddings, funerals, etc. this is the music that is to be emulated and appropriated to the liturgy; not the mundane (take that in the proper sense of the word) music played on the radio for your afternoon commute.
And you rightly bring up Africa. They are a great example. They have a very deep tradition of a cappella singing and drumming. It is appropriate that certain elements of their music could be incorporated into the roman rite for that continent/country. But ceremonial drumming in Africa has a very different effect and meaning than a drum kit in pop/rock/jazz music. Also, musical inculturation does not have to happen at the expense of the "native" expression of the Church either.
More to the point, it is actually demeaning to suggest that a culture couldn't learn to love chant just like medieval europeans did (or for that matter, Jews in the temple at Jerusalem). More to the point, a passing glance at Anglican missions proves that Africans have energetically adopted musical styles that didn't develop on their continent. There are many videos of African communities singing lovely Anglican chant, for instance.
As for Spanish language masses, it is indeed lamentable that they play mariachi music at mass. It is the Spanish-language equivalent of pop/rock/secular music and suffers all the same deficiencies we are leery about on this forum in regards to p&w.Thanked by 1irishtenor -
I am very much in agreement with the importance of having para-liturgies and other devotions. I direct two choirs, one of which plays for Mass on Sunday, and the other of which plays for an adoration event on Friday nights called Exalt. For Exalt, we have an hour of adoration. We play an entrance song, O Salutaris, then three meditation songs, then have about 20 minutes of silence, then play 3 more meditation songs, then Tantum Ergo, then benediction, then a closing song.
My first observation is that only 20 minutes out of the hour of supposed adoration includes silence. Secondarily, can you qualify "meditation songs"? It sounds, in all honesty, like a thinly veneered concert with exposition. And while your heart may be doing it for the right reason (and I do presume so) it still seems that the whole thing is about the "experience" which is crafted by the music, and not the adoration. Let's be honest, this is the whole gimmick behind getting people to come to adoration and make it seem cool and relevant. That makes me very, very uncomfortable. -
Shall we remind ourselves that just because these days conductus is a bit further off the radar than its sibling doesn't necessarily mean the style of Gregorian chant is unmistakably 'set apart' from the worldly?
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That is fair, perhaps at the genesis, but is it also not also fair to say that Gregorian chant was written especially for the liturgy and woven into its very fabric for millennia? So it was certainly sacralized in a formal and essentially unique way.
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If you look at the history of polyphonic music, it began as an embelishment of the chant lines and eventually became what we think of today.
Absolutely. And it's very enjoyable to find exact phrases of chant that translate almost exactly to the polyphony. It's actually extremely edifying to delve into the polyphony, in this manner, and see how wonderfully true to the chant these great composers strived to stay! -
Now, when polyphony is sung at a secular concert, the choir director has picked it for it's artistic value. I would think that this would further support the argument that there is something special about polyphony. The fact that this music still has value 400+ years (especially to a largely secular throwaway culture like we have today) shows that people still search for the sacred. Whether they realize it is a sacred quality in, for example, Palestrina or they just call it good art, they still understand there is something there.
Bingo.
And it is rather ironic that taking a sacred work and performing it in a secular concert due to its artistic merit does not mean that it is no longer sacred… Simply that it is a sacred work being performed outside the liturgy, whereas taking a secular work and performing it inside the mass does not make it a sacred work… It just makes it a secular work (or para-secular, in the case of p&w) take place during a liturgy where it doesn’t belong. -
Amen to that, Serviam!
When i was younger than I now am I listened to many masses, anthems, and motets from a number of historical periods on LPs. Even as a high school student I would go downtown to the beautiful library and check them out (along with Wanda Landowska's Bach). Although I at that time knew nothing at all about the Catholic Church except that it existed, I had no doubt that this music wasn't 'just excellent music' but that there was/is a sanctity inherent in its very nature. And, long before it became fashionable to put these works on CDs in a full liturgical setting, I dreamed of performing them at mass, where they belonged. It cannot be denied that church Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Coptic, Old Church English, and others, are unchanging 'hieratic' languages, meaning that they exist only as ritual tongues used only in the worship of God. The same may be said of the music that has been written for the mass throughout history. Ritual chant, Palestrina, Tallis, even the atheist Vaughan Williams in our time, all wrote music that can rightly be called hieratic music, a musical language that is unmistakably sacred and set apart for the sacred. It exists only for the glorification of God in a liturgical setting and is like no other. One knows when one stands in the courts of the Lord that he is in the presence of The Totally Other, the All Holy. The music therein should reflect this and be like no other - a unique genre that is God's alone.
At those occasional times at which Prayer Book English or Latin are employed in some non-church venue, seriously or amusingly, all know that what they are hearing or speaking is a religious, a Godly, language. Indeed, when people wish to feign a religious stance they instinctively adopt the speech of Prayer Book English or a few snippets of Latin. The same is true of sacred music presented in sacred concerts or recitals. Like language itself, some music is, indeed, hieratic - in its inspiration, its composition, and its purpose. It is recognised immediately by all who hear it (whether they like it or not) as sacred, holy, God's music, peculiar to the rituals through which we worship him. 'Holiness becometh thine house * and all within it shall speak of thy glory' - Ps. XCIII?
The same cannot be and never will be said about the genres of spiritual songs being patiently but insistently evangelised on this thread - genres that are as distinct from sacred liturgical music as a plastic flower is from an iris or a lily or a fragrant rose. All Father asked for in initiating this thread was advice and information about cultivating a music program that conformed to what the Church really claims as its own. How astray this thread has gone! It has been hijacked for the evangelisation of the opposite of that for which Father asked. -
Let me just address this.
The despicable, smug tendency of many secular performers to minimize the religious element of whatever sacred music they perform has nothing to do, in the eyes of the public, with making the music less "churchy".If we stick with Gregorian planchaint, yeah, no one will ever confuse that with secular music. Yet, the Church allows polyphony, and other forms of sacred music. We're talking about concerns about being confused with secular music, despite the fact that polyphony is often performed as secular music in classical music performances on the regular.In fact, many of the composers who wrote polyphony, such as Bach and Mozart, are more famous for the secular music they wrote in nearly exactly the same style! Despite that, this board is full of people suggesting that we need to play more Bach and Mozart at Mass.
Bach never wrote an opera; but his "secular" instrumental music is worlds away from his liturgical compositions. The Suites and Partitas are based on popular dance forms of the era, and the Italian Concerto draws extensively from Vivaldi's concerto form and style. Nobody would confuse such works with the organ works, scored and developed far more intricately in the free-form works (and with some fugues like BWV 538 and 540 literally being "stile antico"), and directly based on pre-existing church music in the chorale preludes and chorale partitas. This, of course, says nothing about the role of the organ itself in Bach's music and era, which was specifically reserved for church cantatas and church use, with the harpsichord the continuo instrument of choice in "secular" works.
Mozart is more controversial here, but he made a definite split between his church music and his operas in the way he wrote for voices and organized each movement. Yes, he wrote in the language of his time (which some will take issue with), but this is true of every composer. The polyphony is far more developed and draws far more from Baroque practice than from Classical opera or popular music of the era.
In both of these cases, there is a distinct effort to blend the musical language of the time with what is considered "liturgical" or "sacred", either by adopting timeless practices or by making modifications to suit the authorities of the time - something which absolutely cannot be said about P&W, which is merely grafting a "sacred" or "biblical" text onto a wholly popular and secular musical form. Beyond the lyrics, beyond the "feeling" (which I do not share with you), what modifications from the prevailing popular style in vogue today have these songwriters made to clearly distinguish their work? -
Latest Brian Holdsworth video posted to NLM yesterday http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/01/why-youth-want-tradition-another.html#.X_tLaxanzcs
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On another hand we have his vocal music and the parodies in BWV 248, for instance.Bach's "secular" instrumental music
But even with the instrumental pieces I'm not convinced: the Clavier-Übung III "duetti" BWV 802–805 sound a little more unworldly than the other inventions only because of their audacity, which isn't the same as less secular to my mind. And Peter Cornelius can only have been 'confused' when he set Psalms to JSB's harpsichord sarabandes in his Op. 13. -
BWV 802-805 are the exception rather than the rule, and stand in contrast to the remainder of C-Ü III. Even today, scholars aren't entirely convinced why they were included in the collection.
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Bringing it back a bit more to the op: Brian Holdsworth had released another excellent video directly related to this thread. https://youtu.be/L3EXlQKrTmQ
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Serviam,
[serious comment]
Thank you for that video link. I've never heard of Brian Holdsworth before, but he's got his head screwed on properly.
[frivolity warning}: He has a beard, too, and five children, just as I do (so, he must be intelligent)? -
Well yes, Chris -
It's so nice to run across people who, as you say, have their heads screwed on properly.
And! They are becoming such an increasing rarity these days. -
Mozart is more controversial here, but he made a definite split between his church music and his operas in the way he wrote for voices and organized each movement. Yes, he wrote in the language of his time (which some will take issue with), but this is true of every composer. The polyphony is far more developed and draws far more from Baroque practice than from Classical opera or popular music of the era.
To be honest, I think Mozart's Sacred music is very secular in it's approach. As a friend of mine said, his Requiem is a gem, but I would not have it played for an actual Requiem Mass. -
Chris, his videos, on the whole, are excellent and worth the watch. He’s a convert and a great communicator, and I think he’s very gentle yet well reasoned in his appeals.
Jehan, I have to agree with you; I think it’s rare (and it’s probably good) that his works are actually performed within a mass these days. He’s a great example of the operatic excesses that Pius X decried in TLS. -
You're going to have to point to specific features that make it operatic or secular, rather than tarring the output with a wide brush. My analysis has revealed a conscious effort to create a sacred Classical style distinct from his operatic writing. (And saying that about the Requiem—one of the most Baroque works in his oeuvre—is rather indefensible.)
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Honestly, unless we find ways to bridge the gap between the CMAA vision and the OCP/GIA reality in over 9/10 of America's parishes, there won't be any progress.
But there has been progress in the past decade or so, sometimes without a "bridge." And where there has been a "bridge," this is often exactly what blocks progress, as the bridge becomes just another obstacle to overcome. -
We could also list many songs that today are loved as traditional hymns that would have to be thrown out by such a standard. Be Thou My Vision is set to an Irish folk tune (SLANE), What Child Is This is set to the folk song Greensleeves, and there are many more examples that could be listed. The entire style of hymnody bears more than a passing resemblance to the tavern songs that were sung at the time of Luther. I don't think any of this information is actually a good reason to ditch these treasures.
Yes - at the time of Luther. But does anyone alive now connect these tunes with drinking in a German tavern c. 1520? (Not to mention that the lyrics and whole style of performance is completely different - no drunken voices, raised steins, or a hurdy gurdy.)
There's a confusion about the meaning of "secular" here. It doesn't mean "once used for secular purposes." Most people aren't aware that the tune of "O Sacred Head" was originally for a secular love song. But after a few centuries that secular connection association has been completely lost. For all intents and purposes it's a sacred song. (Similarly for a secular tune buried in a polyphonic Mass setting.)
With P&W, we're not talking about a tune that was used for secular purposes 500 years ago, but a style that is firmly associated with secular purposes - i.e. commercial pop music. So the test isn't "Was this music ever used for secular purposes?" but "Does it have a secular association now?" For P&W music, the answer is obvious. -
Not only that, Rich, but that is precisely its appeal to certain types. It is not different from, indeed it sounds just like what they listen to, and very much like, on their radios and TVs. Best of all, thank goodness, it doesn't sound churchy.
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I think some of you don't realize how deeply spiritual and solidly Catholic some young adults are who listen to, sing, and enjoy the best of P&W music at home, during devotions, and at Mass. Many are solidly orthodox, and you should be trying to make them allies instead of false enemies. Many of them like chant too. For them it's not either-or; it's both-and.Thanked by 1contemporaryworship92
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I have no problem, assuming the songs are biblically sound, with them enjoying such music at home or during private deviations. I’ve indicated as much further up this thread when I said explicitly that “I’m not saying this music should not exist; simply that it shouldn’t be used at mass.”
Absolutely great that there are spiritual young people. I hope there are as many as stars in the sky. But I really fail to understand why people are so lackadaisical on their approach to worship and why they’re still OK with permitting sub-par liturgy and even out right liturgical abuse.
And if, as you say, the young people do indeed enjoy plainchant, then we certainly do them no harm by using it at mass as holy mother church asks for. On the other hand, if they do not know chant, it is because they have never heard it and it has never been fostered in their lives; do we not have an opportunity therefore to teach it to them? -
I think some of you don't realize how deeply spiritual and solidly Catholic some young adults are who listen to, sing, and enjoy the best of P&W music at home, during devotions, and at Mass. Many are solidly orthodox, and you should be trying to make them allies instead of false enemies. Many of them like chant too. For them it's not either-or; it's both-and.
Roughly speaking, there are two camps of young adult Catholics: those who are very traditional, and those who can loosely speaking be described as charismatic. And, there are many in between. This second camp is typified by people involved with Franciscan University of Steubenville, FOCUS, Lifeteen, Awakening, NET Ministries, St. Paul's Outreach, so on and so forth. Quite a lot of Catholic young adults are involved with these groups, who as MarkB notes are deeply spiritual, doctrinally orthodox, and truly trying to follow God in their lives.
A lot of younger Catholics who didn't witness the fights over liturgy stuff after Vatican II don't want to be made combatants in their parents or grandparents liturgy war. To people such as myself, traditional music is great, contemporary music is great, in-between stuff like Taize is great, and I don't see these things as being in opposition to one another.
I'm frustrated by a persistent effort on this board to characterize more charismatic adjacent Catholic young adults as being 60s era liberals who want to throw out traditional Catholic teaching and want liturgical dance and clown Masses. Almost all Catholic young adults who are making a genuine effort to follow their faith are not interested in 60s-era liturgical nonsense.
Praise and worship is part of the culture of the charismatic Catholic circles such as the ones listed above. These movements are doctrinally orthodox and faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. They are inspiriting people to live faithful lives and in many cases winning a lot of converts and reverts.
To add to that, the community that writes praise and worship is an ecumenical group that is doctrinally conservative and faithful to the tenets of Mere Christianity. While you may not like their musical style and some of their lyrics lack content, you are unlikely to find rank dissent from what Christians have held in common since the time of Luther in any of their lyrics. Evangelicals such as Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman are extremely unlikely to produce any lyrics that anyone on this board would theologically object to.
What I'm trying to say, in effect, is that praise and worship is OPPOSED to 60s era liberalism, and attempts to paint an equivalence between the two is a cheap escape from having a real discussion.
If I may venture to speculate, I believe that the impetus to tie praise and worship music and the associated charismatic Catholic movement of FOCUS/Lifeteen et al to a failed and decrepit cultural, liturgical, and theological movement is that the existence of faithful charismatic Catholic young adults falsifies a common trad meta-narrative that the only way we'll get young people to be faithful is by a "return to tradition", with "tradition" defined as some combination of Gregorian chant, polyphony, hymnody, use of Latin, or even the Traditional Latin Mass. I would prefer that we dispense with this empirically falsified meta-narrative, and have a real discussion about the issues. -
I have no problem, assuming the songs are biblically sound, with them enjoying such music at home or during private deviations. I’ve indicated as much further up this thread when I said explicitly that “I’m not saying this music should not exist; simply that it shouldn’t be used at mass.”
I sincerely appreciate that you've been making this distinction. Others have not been as careful.Thanked by 1ServiamScores -
This second camp is typified by people involved with Franciscan University of Steubenville, FOCUS, Lifeteen, Awakening, NET Ministries, St. Paul's Outreach, so on and so forth. Quite a lot of Catholic young adults are involved with these groups, who as MarkB notes are deeply spiritual, doctrinally orthodox, and truly trying to follow God in their lives.
These groups focus very much on the ethos and development of a personal spiritual connection with God, which some (not myself) would refer to as distinctly Protestant. They have precious little to say on liturgy and its solemnity, which barely seems to be of importance.
While there is definitely space for both groups in the Church, we shouldn't be taking lessons from the former on liturgy when it isn't their focus or interest. -
Jclangfo,
Lifeteen certainly(and perhaps the others) presents a fundamental problem: Mass praxis aims at a changing stability. NeoCatechumenal Way has a similar cognitively dissonant approach: believe everything the Church teaches and practice what she preaches.... except that we have our own rite/adaptation of rubrics. -
Indeed we shouldn't be....we shouldn't be taking lessons from the former...
But, oh, how they presume to do so! -
"Put simply: Attention to what we sing is not an exercise in nit-picking."
We are reminded that “Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western, has from antiquity been acutely aware that hymns and other songs are among the most significant forces in shaping – or misshaping – the religious and theological sensibility of the faithful,” as we have already seen.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/01/03/learning-to-sing-catholic/
(I apologize, if this has already hit this thread) -
Many of those who sing this music are excellent musicians in their own right. And the music has its place -- just not at Mass. In the same way that I do not want a rap battle in a biopic about Herbert Howells.
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CCooze: discussion on the forum about a month ago and link at the ChantCafe on Dec 11.
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In the same way that I do not want a rap battle in a biopic about Herbert Howells.
A huge pet peeve of mine is when the wrong music is used in the background of documentaries about composers. I found a few various documentaries online and it’s incredibly irksome to be listening to a narrator talk about Bach’s life whilst Chopin is playing in the background or hearing Beethoven in a documentary about Vivaldi. These men literally wrote hundreds of hours of music and you couldn’t be bothered to play their own music in the documentaries about them?! This happened multiple times. -
Bach gets Chopin? Vivaldi gets Beethoven?
Travesty.
Who gets Mozart? -
Silly, I know, but it is seriously annoying.
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Serviam, it isn't silly to be annoyed by that. The people who make those documentaries deserve some ridicule.
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Mozart gets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzgSMXKfJl4
And Brahms would get Bruckner. Mahler would get Debussy. Schoenberg would get Saint-Seans -
Well, there is Bach in all of them.
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It is well-known that I am a defender of Latin and the traditional rite, but I also went to FUS, for all sorts of reasons, so this was the trade-off.
The Mass of Renewal has long been their choice for the ordinary at the main Sunday Mass and what I would call community or all-campus Masses, so it's true that the songs sold by OCP are widely rejected, but not everything contemporary. That said, there's a soft spot for 70s and 80s music that basically was never popular outside of charismatic communities with connections to Steubenville, which is why the Canticle hymnal failed. Some of that music was recorded, however, by musicians like John Michael Talbot; I've posted "Lift High the Banners of Love" before, I think, but here's JMT's version, which has more instrumentation than we ever would have experienced at the Masses for households every semester; indeed, when they changed the song, we got upset, because we knew what we could tolerate, and what we couldn't.
I largely agree that Bethel, Hillsong, etc. are problematic, for reasons which go far beyond reasons of style. However, I got through baccalaureate Mass with a combination of Matt Maher ("Your Grace is Enough,
"Lord I Need You", Bethel ("Wonder"), and even Michael W. Smith ("You are Holy/Prince of Peace") and was reasonably happy, all things considered, even though I knew that we could do better; really, it's for the Zoomers, to be honest, because in general, they're more open to being radicalized on this (like everything…).Thanked by 1irishtenor -
Matthew,
You confirm my sense of why, a few years ago, I nearly broke out in hives at the suggestion that FUS was a Catholic University. [Like you, I am a defender and promoter of the traditional rite.]
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