A colleague contacted me and was looking for some quotes from liturgical documents explicitly banning secular music in a Catholic wedding ceremony. A couple she is advising had requested a Bon Jovi tune and something else completely inappropriate.
I haven't waded through my sources yet . . . but any quotes you have handy dealing with this kind of thing?
We once had a request from the groom for "Another one bites the dust". I'm sure someone else can give book and page for your request. Perhaps we could start a list of most bizarre songs ever requested for a Wedding? But, no- the list would never end.
You'll probably have to explain what "profane" means when the Church uses the term.
Musicae sacrae disciplina - "[P]rogress in the art of music shows clearly how dear to the heart of the Church it was to make divine worship more resplendent and appealing to Christian peoples, so too it made clear why the Church also must, from time to time, impose a check lest its proper purposes be exceeded and lest, along with the true progress, an element profane and alien to divine worship creep into sacred music and corrupt it."
Council of Trent, twenty-second session of September 17, 1562 -- "Let them keep from the churches those forms of music in which there is mingled, either by the organ or by singing, anything frivolous or shameful; also all worldly actions (saeculares actiones), as well as vain and profane conversations (profana colloquia), strollings, noise (strepitus), shouting (clamores), so that the House of God may both seem and be called a house of prayer.37 "
Motu Proprio of Pope St. Pius X on Sacred Music, November 22, 1903 -- "Sacred music should consequently possess, in the highest degree, the qualities proper to the liturgy, in particular, sanctity and goodness of form, which will spontaneously produce the final quality of universality.
It must be holy. Sacred music must, therefore, exclude all that is profane, not only in itself, but also in the manner in which it is presented by those who execute it.... since modern music has come into being mainly to serve secular purposes, greater care must be taken with regard to it. This must be done so that contemporary musical compositions, allowed in church, will contain nothing profane, will be free from associations with melodies used in theaters, and will be not written in the style of secular pieces, even in their outward forms."
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the Eighth International Church Music Congress in Rome, November 17, 1985 (not authoritative) -- "the appropriateness of liturgical music is measured according to its inner correspondence to this fundamental anthropological and theological form. Such a declaration seems at first to be very far removed from concrete musical reality. It becomes immediately concrete, however, when we pay attention to the opposing models of cultic music to which I briefly referred previously.
Let us think first of all, for example, of the Dionysian type of religion and music with which Plato grappled from the standpoint of his religious and philosophical view.22 In not a few forms of religion, music is ordered to intoxication and ecstasy. The freedom from the limitations of being human towards which the hunger for the infinite proper to man is directed is to be attained through holy madness, through the frenzy of the rhythm and of the instruments. Such music lowers the barriers of individuality and of personality. Man frees himself in it from the burden of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy, liberation from the ego, and unification with the universe.
We experience the profane return of this type today in rock and pop music, the festivals of which are an anti-culture of the same orientation — the pleasure of destruction, the abolition of everyday barriers, and the illusion of liberation from the ego in the wild ecstasy of noise and masses. It is a question of redemptive practices whose form of redemption is related to drugs and thoroughly opposed to the Christian faith in redemption. The conflict that Plato argued out between Dionysian and Apollonian music is not ours, for Apollo is not Christ. But the question he posed concerns us in a most important way.
Music has become today the decisive vehicle of a counter-religion and thus the scene of the discernment of spirits in a form that we could not have suspected a generation ago. Because rock music seeks redemption by way of liberation from the personality and its responsibility, it takes, in one respect, a very precise position in the anarchical ideas of freedom which predominate today in a more unconcealed way in the West than in the East. But precisely for that reason, it is thoroughly opposed to the Christian notion of redemption and of freedom as its exact contradiction. Not for aesthetic reasons, not from reactionary obstinacy, not from historical immobility, but because of its very nature music of this type must be excluded from the Church."
I use everything I can find to rid the liturgy of profane music.
Here is one more link that is promoted by the USCCB. It's not the greatest piece (as I think some have said on this forum recently), but you might add it to the wood bin as just another log for the fire. We will have a book burning at some point!
Ugh! I just played for a wedding (as a guest of the parish DM) and because the channels of communication were very dodgy, the groom and bride relied upon the advice of a "trained Catholic cantor" (who is actually a diva-cum-American Idol wannabe) who, of all things, sang "The Rose" during the prelude.
Thank goodness I'm a drinker!
This is such a difficult issue, and one, unfortunately, without a straight answer. Until the Catholic Church reclaims her rightful ownership and authority over not just the music of the Mass on Sunday, but of all liturgical celebrations, the music used for these "occasional" services will continue to be all over the map.
We can write all of the policies we want, but until the heirarchy learns to stand just as firm on liturgy and music matters as it can (and more recently has been) on matters of morals such as abortion and same-sex marriage, we must continue to suffer at the hands of a defective and permissive culture.
David...did you play it from the Urtext edition, or one of the spurious editions that have appeared....and were the Bette Midler ornaments properly presented?
Paul's correct...my D in ninth grade Latin from Miss Redinger in public school, [she had been organist for many years at our parish] is definitely showing, along with the lack of poetic ability of online translators.
"This is a free service provided for the Internet community. It has not been endorsed by The Church. If you have any doubts about using this service you should consult your priest."
Always good advice, eh?
[and all the punctum mora are dedicated to Mary Mezzo]
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