My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast: I will sing and make music,
Awake my glory: awake, harp and lyre: I will wake the dawn.
I will confess thee, my lord, among the peoples: I will make music to thee among the nations.
Psalm 57:7-9

[Of] the human means that Providence has given man for his purification and elevation,
for breaking away from his egoism and turning toward universal horizons,
music is certainly among the first and highest.
Pope John XXIII, Address to the Delegates of the International Music Congress, UNESCO, September 29, 1962

In keeping with her Judaeo-Christian heritage, the Catholic Church has consistently integrated music into her worship and education. Both David's harp and John XXIII's counsel are significant to the history of music in the Catholic tradition.

This study, however, considers in detail only one movement within the nearly two thousand years of the church's existence: the National Catholic Music Educators Association (NCMEA), 1942-76. Although the NCMEA existed only thirty-five years, it merits careful study for three major reasons. First, the organization developed from an ancient but ever-evolving musical tradition, thus linking old and new. Secondly, the NCMEA enjoyed its greatest importance during the 1950s and 1960s, the years when Catholic schools expanded to embrace their largest student populations. The NCMEA, therefore, affected the lives and education of millions of persons in all age brackets. Finally, and especially during its final decade, the NCMEA effected in its members an awareness of the needs and responsibilities of the professional music educator.

Ultimately, the NCMEA led its members naturally into more broadly- based organizations, such as the Music Educators National Conference, and more specialized groups, such as the National Pastoral Musicians' Association. That these developments have promoted both a more scientifically-based curriculum and more liturgically appropriate practice is an assumption held by those key people who carried out the dissolution of the NCMEA. Whether such growth ever would have occurred without the stimuli provided by the NCMEA is doubtful. Thus, the relatively brief history of this significant organization deserves to be better known.

The proceedings of the 1932 convention of the MSNC contain a section on Catholic music. The Most Reverend Joseph Schrembs, Bishop of Cleveland, gave a general address to the Catholic music educators.
[...]
Yet, the Bishop reminded the Catholic teachers of the prominence of sacred music in their curriculum. "As Catholic teachers, however, you face another problem because our children are to be taught singing not merely for the school or the home, but for the highest and holiest act of human life, namely Divine Worship."4
[...]
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4. Thc Most Reverend Joseph Schrembs, "Music in Catholic Schools," MSNC Proceedings (1932), 241.