This post: It was funny, and I removed it.

Tribe has a nice tribute up now...

Before Charles rends his Woodstock shirt into shreds...LOL. I have had facial hair in one form or another, since 1973. All the way from Fu Manchu, to Moses, to goatee. I also have Birkenstocks and Levis, but appearances are deceiving. I may look like the other side, but in no way endorse their views or goals. While they babble about peace, social justice, etc., I am working hard, but silently, to undermine them.

Power to the old people. ;-)

Order! Order!
Another perfectly important post hijacked by impudence. Do I REALLY have to get my paddle out?

David- a simple mum can find one hole in your argument. By the first definition you cite, we are all considered to be aging. It doesn't distinguish aging people of one age group, as you do by attaching 'hippie' to aging.

Sure, DUH, mega-mistakes are made by many in the previous hipster generation. But do we really need to keep pitting generation against generation? Wasn't that one of their primary mistakes, anyway? Soon enough (God willing) we'll be seniors, and how tiresome will it be if the generation to follow blames everything that went wrong with the Church on us?

Aim your arrows (and I will mine) at the rotten dissident ideas, not everyone in a particular age group.

I guess this points back to the original post and the dangers of cataloging people in a parish by demographic distinction...

If YOU can convince me that using the (partially true) aging hippie canard produces anything of value that would outweigh the reasonable sensibilities of some fellow musicians and friends on this forum, please do.

Until then, may I humbly suggest you put your great brain to something more worthwhile. Like Fr. Brown, you can find a way to say what needs to be said without the 'gong' approach.

I am very sure that I have absolutely no clue what this post is about anymore.

By the way, Shawn disabled my email jtucker@newliturgicalmovement.org so you have to write me at e.g. jeffrey.a.tucker@gmail.com

That is a good suggestion, Doug. Thanks for it.

"Jeffrey TuckerCommentTime8 hours ago
By the way, Shawn disabled my email jtucker@newliturgicalmovement.org so you have to write me at e.g. jeffrey.a.tucker@gmail.com"

I never read that NLM site to begin with. Sounds like I did the right thing.


David Andrew, don't worry so much about all that. Never a true hippie, I was only on the fringe. But I fully expect the young folks to say my generation did screw up the church. Doesn't each generation blame everything on the preceding one? How about, "aging flower children?" Our culture thrives on euphemistic language, so perhaps it has a nicer ring to it.

So very true! It's a good resource.

I'm having a hard time understanding what everyone here means by "charity". Here is an article on true charity: http://fssp.com/press/2010/06/on-being-charitable-dennis-mcinerny-series/

Here is a quoted passage from the text:

"A nice person is universally and indiscriminately tolerant, meaning that he is comprehensively non-judgmental, meaning that he is a de facto subscriber to moral relativism. None of his words, none of his actions, are such that would ever give offense. He is a veritable virtuoso of inoffensiveness, because, among other things, he has trained himself to be super-sensitive to all the reigning super-sensitivities of our day. He is positively fluent in the sanitized language of Political Correctness. And because the nice person never offends anyone by anything he says or does, he is, not surprisingly, warmly liked and approved by all. Everybody likes the nice person, and he is welcome wherever he goes.

But here is the problem: the nice person is ineffectual. And his ineffectualness is the direct result of his inoffensiveness. What the nice person has seemingly never learned is that sometimes it is necessary to be offensive, not for the sake of being offensive, mind you, but for the sake of truth, goodness, and beauty. Charitable people, in contrast to nice people, have no compunction about being offensive when they see a pressing need for it. They understand that sometimes it is necessary to offend others, for their own good."

What is the best way to be "truly" charitable to those groups like the one we are discussing? Shouldn't we withstand them to their faces and then firmly (and fraternally) guide them to the truth?

Ossian, thank you for your post. Some distinctions need to be articulated:
1. Virtually everyone who addressed the organization Jeffrey identified demonstrated the true charity you and others have championed with commentary reflecting those folks need fraternal correction. Myself included.
2. True charity and fraternal correction was what I tried to offer to another, totally different circumstance, specifically wholesale mischaracterizations and stereotyping of folks we encounter in our own domains with whom we have differences.
In the process, those two distinctions became blurred and mixed, IMO, and the thread went haywire. I regret that, but like David, stand by my words.
Our clustered churches completed a 17,000 family mailed parish assessment this last spring, self-generated. The guiding principles of that process were self-articulated by the pastoral council and pastor according to papal/curial documents, gospel "values" that are self-evident, and specific, local concerns. Political correctness was not a factor in the polling questions. Innovation with administrative, pastoral and liturgical structures were not factors.
I firmly believe, and have echoed publicly here, elsewhere and at parish department chair meetings, that the way out of any perceived ecclesial morass, either local or global, is the exhortation made by our colleague MOConnor to "become more Catholic." I don't think anyone on these boards disagrees on the meaning and intent of that method.
But I don't believe that we should nor need to purposefully alienate one another with unnecessary phrases that neither represents "true charity" nor advances the dialectic.
People do monitor this forum with the sole purpose of reinforcing their own prejudices about CMAA-people, and every time I encounter such folks and inform them that "it's not at all like that," it seems that we "shoot ourselves in the foot" with the disagreements we've seen in this thread. Again, I regret that and bear responsibility. Lastly, indeed it is not about being nice (lukewarm?) It is about being respectful.

Charles,

I don't think we're disagreeing here, except on one point. I think it is OK to stereotype people in some circumstances because it helps us identify them and talk about the issues clearly. We can do that in a respectful way and we should be careful of what we say on public forums.

God Bless,
Matt

.

Bruce, those are all excellent questions, and I wish I had answers. Sometimes I like to dream big!

Part of the problem of course is that the people qualified to do it already have good jobs. But if bishops never seek, they will never find.

The more I think about it, It wouldn't have to be a job for a single person, either (as it sounds like it is in St. Louis--I knew to an extent that it was only Fr. Samuel but it sounds worse than I imagined). There is plenty of room for collaborative thinking about how to improve music in parishes. If I were in the music expert's seat, I would certainly value input on other issues outside my expertise.

I think the difference is that Romeri heads the Office of Sacred Music and Weber heads the Institute of Sacred Music. The infrastructure there seems magnificent.

delete

All very interesting information, dad. Thanks for passing that along!

something along the lines of a visitation or investigation

Seems doubtful.

Putting aside the clergy who think this sort of thing is good-
Those in authority who understand that this stuff is ridiculous are, I think, so convinced of its ridiculousness that they have trouble thinking anyone else would take it seriously- so there is no understanding of how damaging it can be.

perphaps something along the lines of a visitation or investigation

Or, perhaps, they could be visited by Tomas de Torquemada for an auto-da-fe!

I'd be happy to bring along an Iron Maiden.

dad29:

I'd be happy to bring along an Iron Maiden.

Or would something from Judas Priest be more appropriate?

...Sorry. Couldn't resist. :-)

Charles and David: I've been known to toss "hippie" around somewhat indiscriminately, myself, often preceded by "dope-smoking." I probably should cut back....