Recently, this letter, allegedly a draft of a letter (I certainly hope it is not authentic!) intended for publication in the Diocese of Charlotte, came to light. It is shockingly restrictive of any musical and aesthetic diversity, imposing a kind of 1980’s norm of liturgical praxis. Diocese-wide.

If it is authentic, it has not been published, and I hope it never is. Perhaps commenting on it before it is might prevent that, or it might just make them madder. Or, more likely, no one will care either way.

Nonetheless, I compiled my thoughts in a Facebook post, which I would also like to share here for any comments people might have:

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I normally don’t comment on controversial current happenings in the Church. Nevertheless, I couldn’t ignore this. I offer the perspective of someone who has learned, sadly often at great pain for self and others, a certain degree humility and charity through nearly two decades working in and trying to navigate the current Catholic liturgical landscape.

To this as-yet-unpublished letter, I will only say that it can be very tempting to minister *exclusively* to the “average” denizen of one’s Diocese / region / etc. This is the ‘Rebuilt’ model, constructing a profile of ‘Timonium [Maryland] Tim’ and designing a church around what one expects he is after. In our very mobile society, perhaps this kind of thing can work at a parochial level. But people will be missed. Not everyone is average — or maybe, no one is.

As I once heard it attributed to Monsignor Richard Schuler about the music of the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale and the liturgical life of St Agnes, “It doesn’t need to happen everywhere, but it should happen somewhere.” Shouldn’t this be true in making full use of the riches of our patrimony?

I know plenty of people ‘off the street’, for whom the beauty of choral singing felt more inclusive than a strictly congregational-singing diet. Why? Because they don’t know the hymns, or don’t feel comfortable with their own voice, but the beauty of the singing was accessible and enriching to everybody with ears to listen.

Indeed, to speak to the missionary aspect, I have occasionally been tracked down after sung services by people off the street who happened to walk in to some beautiful work of perhaps Mozart, in the context of a splendid, multi sensory liturgical environment, were not Catholic, but had their heart opened in a very particular way by it.

Letting aside (important) questions of older forms of the Missal, it is worth reflecting that the current Missal offers a wide berth in terms of ritual and musical choices, allowing a unity in diversity in the Church that can truly bring Schuler’s words to life, namely, “it can happen somewhere”.

Do we really want to artificially restrict this broadness to one fairly narrow, arbitrary set of options on a regional level?

I’m not going to pretend that everyone I work with in a variety of liturgical environments is an incredibly well-formed Catholic with an open mind and open heart to forms of liturgical expression that are not their preference, that they don‘t find expressive of their piety.

Nevertheless, in my experience, rather arbitrarily depriving people of legitimate options to which they have become accustomed, through the use of bare legal force, is not a corrective to that, but rather breeds entrenchment and resentment.

It is the desire to return nearly instantly by legal fiat to a complete uniformity of practice - trying to impose the praxis of the 1980’s as though it were still the 1950’s -, in my opinion, that is the true antiquarianism, not the desire for the old Latin Mass or any particular kind of celebration of the current Mass.

That perspective fails to appreciate the complexity of the Church since the postconciliar liturgical reforms, the fact that different parts of those reforms were or were not accepted tranquilly by certain segments of the faithful; that there were real injuries to ecclesial communion owing in no small measure to the confusion and hurt experienced by some Catholics by the change in liturgical praxis or music; that there was also alienation among some of the faithful who had become attached to the new forms by clergy attempting to redress what they thought was excessive of the reforms.

It is a fraught environment, and should not be navigated with a sledgehammer. Hearts are at stake. Souls are at stake.

Navigating the complex environment of Catholic worship in the 21st-century, particularly in the always multicultural, multi expressive, and extremely diverse situation of the United States, requires a good deal of meeting people where they are, and having an open heart to the options that are available and the customs that have developed.

It also means being willing to forgive people, to be understanding, of theit often closed-mindedness and narrowness, recognizing that very often generations of confusion and hurt are behind those sentiments, and dealing to forcefully with the situation will only re-open, rather than healing, such old wounds.

And I truly mean that on both sides of the equation. I speak of course to those who love the older form of the Mass, but I have also experienced very faithful communities that had becomed accustomed to worship exclusively in the vernacular, with music in very different idioms, who when a well-meaning priest re-introduced Latin and chants, reacted with the sentiments of the women in the garden, “Where have they taken the Lord?”

We eye each other was a great deal of suspicion when it comes to divine worship, probably because we have unfortunately developed a habit of continually hurting each other.

That is ultimately what is most satisfying to me about the work that I currently do. Along time ago, I realized that there is no path forward in matters this close to the human heart that is not gentleness. At the same time, I have developed a love for and a very particular expertise in musical and liturgical expressions that run very deep in the heritage and tradition of the Western Church.

I know that, at this historical moment, that manner of music and liturgy cannot be done immediately everywhere while respecting the law of charity, but I am very firm in the conviction that they still have a lot, a countercultural value, to offer the 21st Century, and that they “need to be done _somewhere_”.

I am so grateful, then, to ply my trade in a “somewhere” where these practices were never lost, and so where they are received simply, gratefully, with tranquility, with love, and with great devotion.