My parish, as with many parishes, struggled a bit with congregational singing. They often just leave it to the cantor or the choir. One of my coworkers who has been here for a couple decades just told me that it’s because the music has changed. She remembers when this parish had more of the sappy contemporary stuff that was familiar to people of a certain generation; but as it has gradually veered more traditional, thanks in large part to my predecessor (though certainly exacerbated by me), the people don’t sing anymore. Do you hear this story in your parishes? Does this ring true of your congregations? How do you approach something like this? I am hoping to offer a music-reading course one of these summers, since part of the complaint is that if it’s not familiar by ear, they won’t bother. But I partly expect that if I offer something like that hardly anybody will show up. Not sure what to do about it.

By and large, the parish has been very receptive to the direction that I’ve taken the music program here. I’ve received hardly any grief about it; occasionally people do wistfully long for what they’re familiar with, and usually that’s more contemporary stuff from OCP or wherever, but occasionally it’s a classic like Holy God, We Praise Thy Name, or Lift High the Cross, which they love. But I feel like I should be doing something more to encourage them to refamiliarize themselves with the huge reservoir of traditional hymnody.