Article RE: Sentimental Music at Mass
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Is the question of
    hymns and other pieces of music are not bad in se, but rather merely inappropriate for holy Mass


    solved by expanding the liturgical and non-liturgical life of the parish in the lives of the parishioners?
    Thanked by 2a_f_hawkins ServiamScores
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,424
    solved by expanding the liturgical and non-liturgical life of the parish in the lives of the parishioners?
    That is what I advocate. We have a proliferation of deacons but seem reluctant to ask them even to discharge their obligation to the Office in public, or is that just an English failing?
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,048
    In my experience, good luck getting people to come to parish prayer outside of Sunday Mass. Many families don't even bother with religious education classes outside of the preparation necessary for First Communion and Confirmation. It's a big problem, and families are busy with so many things. Parish life is not a priority. Sunday Mass is barely a priority.
    Thanked by 4ServiamScores Liam LauraKaz tomjaw
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,016
    You can certainly try programming more things that people won't likely come to in numbers. It was perhaps different when the local Catholic parish was the most significant anchor and fulcrum of daily/weekly social and family life, but that paradigm sailed from port in a lot of the First World even before Vatican II, though it can be hard for people with heavy liturgical ministries to see that as clearly because for those ministers the parish as employer (or sponsor, in the case of voluntary ministry) still operates as such an anchor and fulcrum.
    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,424
    My impression pre-VII was that once Mass in the afternoon/evening had been permitted clergy thought 'this is more popular than Vespers' so they put their time into extra Masses and dropped Vespers, and Holy Hours. That may well have decreased the total numbers attending services! As I said, we now have significant numbers of clergy who can preside at Benediction, or Evening Prayer, but not at Mass. Our Deanery has 4 priests, 3 deacons, and 7 churches (plus a Sunday Mass in the prison).
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,187
    Let me remind the users that the forum is intended to be a family-friendly site. The Forum Etiquette Guidelines remind users to "Keep it Clean", but apparently this is not enough.

    If a user thinks that he cannot make his case without dreaming up some bizarre, shocking, sinful scenario to use in argumentation, he should still desist from it.

    I've deleted that material from the thread. Also, I've removed the responses to it; my apologies to those affected.

    I am disabling the account that posted the material.
    Thanked by 7CHGiffen Liam Salieri LauraKaz Heath MarkB bhcordova
  • Chrism
    Posts: 869
    In my experience, good luck getting people to come to parish prayer outside of Sunday Mass. Many families don't even bother with religious education classes outside of the preparation necessary for First Communion and Confirmation. It's a big problem, and families are busy with so many things. Parish life is not a priority. Sunday Mass is barely a priority.


    I think this is confusing problems. True, many Catholics are nominal at best. But for many devout families, Sunday Mass *is* the priority. With regards to parish life, somehow, perversely, the attractiveness of one's parish increases with one's physical distance: either we will drive two hours to a Latin Mass filled with like-minded people, but now we're too far to have much of a parish life outside of Sunday Mass, or we will barely tolerate the parish next door and would rather get together with other like-minded families at our homes.

    Sociological explanations might vary, but we can see a trend over the last half-millennium or so in which "popular" devotions have slowly merged with the timeslot for Mass, first as accretions - done "at the same time" but not officially a part of Low Mass or immediately before/after High Mass but not officially a part, and then in the NO the idea that Propers could actually be supplemented as part of the liturgical music. Why shouldn't we see this as a natural development? I'm sure we've all experienced those occasions, however rare, when a closing hymn, a really good one done well, has taken hearts enraptured by the preceding liturgy to new heights of Christian resolve.
    Thanked by 2LauraKaz MarkB
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