Preposterous.

I have always said, if you see a nun coming toward the door with a guitar, shoot first and question later. Don't even let her near the congregation. You will be doing a service for God and good music. ;-)

I have a big problem with mean penguins in school and at church, too. I'll bet the good sisters who ran my school would have a thing or two to say to them. Something about getting back to the South Pole.

I don't know that the obligation can be lifted, but the fact that it is not imposed on the Eastern churches would imply that it could be. Nor do I SERIOUSLY think it would fix anything. But I stand by the point: so many of the people at Catholic Masses seem to not want to be there. There are attitudes at work in the RCC that undermine seriously any hope of improvement.

I would even point to the Extraordinary Form as evidence for the general point. EVERYONE there is there because they freely choose to be there. No one is forced, under pain of hellfire, to attend the EF Mass. And the result? Beautiful music. Sincere liturgy. Strong lay devotion. And - dare I say it - full, conscious, active participation by most. They exercised their choice, and the result is beauty. See also OF parishes that have had a large change in membership. Beauty. People go to some of these churches out of choice, and the result is astounding. But where people go to fulfill a precept, the liturgies are uniformly dull and uninspiring.

I think "fear" is a weak descriptor, born out of an unfamiliarity with the Catholic ethos. After all, I made the same case to a Catholic priest once, and he responded, "The obligation doesn't exist. Sure, it's on the books, but no one believes it." I'd say "guilt" sums it up best. But whatever it is, the musical and liturgical culture will not reverse until people feel they have some stake in their parishes. I proposed that the obligation prevents this, but I really would rather propose that the "enemy" is the disengagement most Catholics feel from the parishes.

I have to say, I'm glad that I appear to be a member of a different Roman Catholic church than some folks here. In my universe, most people appear to be attending church because they want a relationship with God and each other. If they don't like to sing, it's not primarily because of traumatic incidents during youth. More likely, they weren't encouraged to learn singing and were brought up listening to radio and watching TV as a passive audience.

I guess you see what you want to see.

singing is far overrated and highly misunderstood concerning what god wants or requires for the pips for the liturgy. mainly because the mass is about what God does, not us. so therefore, i wouldn't base any kind of summation or analogy on what pips do in the pews. it's what God does on the altar that really counts...

so what you (whoever you are) have observed, well, you are just reading the book by it's cover... nothing more. if you understood the mystery and signficance of the Mass, you'd be a Catholic in an instant... singing or not.

Really, there is absolutely no reason or requirement for singing at Mass.

It adorns the sacrifice when well done, but detracts otherwise.

While "participation" pops up as an ideal, all the little old ladies who said the Rosary during Mass are not banned to hell because they failed to "participate". Who is to say that their prayer was not the equal, or even more powerful, than that of the priest saying Mass?

Preposterous Indeed!

Ok, friends. I'm getting a little tired of berating the pips. Hello?!? most of us ARE pips when we're not 'on duty'.

We have as much right to presume the motivations of fellow churchgoers as we do to force them to sing.

And even if, in some alternate universe, we were given the competency to read the hearts of our fellow Catholics, and weild error-free guilt-o-meters that revealed the level of fear in any given pew sitter, that would put us farther ahead in our own duties... how?

Please, stop downing, denigrating, and otherwise demeaning Catholic laity. We serve God through serving these people.

But where people go to fulfill a precept, the liturgies are uniformly dull and uninspiring.

I get what you're saying. Really. Folks attending Mass should want to be there. But if folks don't want to be there and they come, there's a greater chance of shaking them up than if they don't want to be there and they, therefore, don't come.

Besides, this seems to take a low view of sacramental grace. Feelings don't effect this objective grace. If you don't feel sinful but you are, go to confession anyway. If you don't feel like worshipping God, go to Mass anyway. This is another vital element worth considering.

This is, anyway, another situation easily described under the "either-or/both-and" rhetorical tool of Catholic apologists. EF-ers do go to Mass to fulfill a precept. These folks are the sort who memorize the precepts of the Church, you know, and are called "legalists" and "Pharisees" in many situations. It's true that they also go to worship God.

Folks should go to Mass to worship God, yes. This does not happen at the expense of precept but in conjunction with it.

"Pure terror of God?"
Yup, that must be why there are so few Catholic mystics, martyrs, spiritual writers, vowed religious and dedicated laity serving their fellow man throughout the world, in every area, since the time of Christ. But people who don't observe an obligation to worship on Sundays are clearly superior, and have produced thousands upon thousands of remarkable human beings.

Seriously?

The writer seems to be unfamiliar with 98% of the Catholics I've known.

People writing ignorant, hostile crap like the bolded post above make me think conditions are ripe for Catholic persecution. May God strengthen us all in His love.

MACW, child o' my heart, the big WE of global Catholicism is already "in it." We in the west, particularly the US, should welcome any coming times of trial and persecution as we have tread water far too long while deciding whether to head for mammon or for redemption. As in to "redeem," to go "all in," to "cash out." The tract-speak writer does the HRCC a favor by challenging at once both our faith and our works. What we should be wary of are those among our own, whether on the right or the left, who would distract us from our worship and our missio with their politics and their rhetoric and their "self-evident" righteousness and smug surety. They play "parce" to divide, but not "parce Domine."
Prayer ever vigilant, simple prayer in perseverance and, if so called, through pain. Find a saint who never had to dwell in pain. Not sure one can. God be praised if real persecution takes root and tries to choke the Living Vine in this land. Enough.

"Please, stop downing, denigrating, and otherwise demeaning Catholic laity. We serve God through serving these people. "

Ok, you are absolutely right. So let's use the Spanish-speaking Catholics as an example instead. It is much easier to analyze and study a problem when you can stand back without injecting yourself into the mix.

Why do Spanish-speaking congregations have such poor music?

They are as catholic as any anglo congregation and are also not into the entire, "we're upper class, we drive SUV's" we are entitled." mess that drives so many parishes.

Lay out a plan to improve the music in the Spanish-speaking US congregations and then you have a plan that will worm its way into and work in the Anglo congregations.

WiesOrganista

And I have to say that I'm kind of offended by those that imply that only EF Mass attendees actually want to be there. Way to turn people off to the EF with an elitist attitude like that.

I know a woman who used to sing in our choir who was so upset that Father was going to have the Mass in which the choir sings a Tridentine Mass, she left. She stayed long enough to sing in about half a dozen Masses but she didn't like it, so she left and tried to convince other parishioners to do the same.

Only the uninformed "EF-ers" believe Catholics choose to go to the Mass of Paul VI because they are unfamiliar with the Mass of Pius V. My complaint, and I suspect the complaint of other "EF-ers" on this forum, is the vast majority of Catholics are never even given the opportunity to choose which Form they would prefer. Why? They are not given the opportunity because quite a few priests who were ordained before the mid-90s ridicule "EF-ers" to their own parishioners and their disdain for the EF is palpable, tantamount to, dare I say it, fear. If it is fear, it is a baseless fear. Catholics will choose the Form they prefer if given the opportunity.

What Ruth is talking about, provide all an opportunity!

I want an Angelus Press Missal. I don't care anymore that they are Pius X, their Missal is just better. Their ribbons are better and the chants in the back have verticle episemas!

EVERYONE MUST READ THIS!

If rules are going to work, folks also need to want to follow them. (Including us.)

There are rules for the OF. The problem is that no one in authority is enforcing them.

Well --- the problem is that nobody is following them. All authority can practicably do is to tell people about the rule. We have to enforce it, under pain of conscience.

Doug, I agree. And I contend that part of the reason many people are ignorant of the rules is because they are so very confusing. And they are so confusing because there are so many, too many *options*.

Without a hermeneutic of continuity, people don't know how to prioritize the options so they either go their own way because no one enforces anything or they do what everyone else is doing.

At this point in the Church, at least in the US, I'm convinced that 90% of liturgical abuse or odd choices are done out of ignorance.

Mary Ann, although I basically agree with what you're saying, I don't think it's the number of options that poses a problem. After all, people make it through the grocery store just fine.

The bigger issue, as I see it, is that people don't understand the options that are given to them. Here the grocery store analogy is also good: even with excellent options, people still make bad choices when it comes to their eating.

So who gets the blame? The grocery store? The companies that create the bad products and use the grocery store as a platform for sales? The customers who don't know any better? The people whose job it is to inform the customer base about healthy choices?

"Lord, to whom shall we go?"
What I find ironic about where the discussion's going is that we're confusing our various roles by reacting to the ego driven assessment of Catholics from the quoted poster in a very predictable manner. "We're stupid, we're superstitious, we're cowering in fear...yada." And by and large, especially in the US, we comprise the most educated RC populace the Church has likely ever known. I would refer people to two books concerning the history and demographics of RC's in the US, AMERICAN CATHOLIC and A PEOPLE ADRIFT. Back to my point (and I do have one)-it is decidely NOT about knowing the rules. More likely, it is about willfully (a nod to MACW) IGNORING the rules in various manifest ways.
The Music Wars, The Liturgy Wars, The Ecclesial Wars (Vox Clara, Curial stuff, HHS Church/State, LCWR etc.) are all predicated not upon Catholics unwilling to agree (which is still true) but upon Catholics unwilling to faithfully yield and follow divinely ordained authority. "All we like sheep" is not, for me, a discomfiting allusion. BUT, it presumes that at every strata of the faith community a worthy and true shepherd is known to all his sheep, and that relationship is complimentary. How many times did Our Lord give the author of my quoted passage above a "slapdown" before Peter finally got it? The shepherd has to know the "program" down to his DNA and then be willing to sacrifice his ego to lead and care for the integrity of his flock. And we will then follow. I'm absolutely convinced of this supreme principle.
If we are to be disciplined people, we must first think, in free will, of what a disciple is called to follow. And in short order we should understand that ultimately we don't follow a what, we follow a who. I don't care if if you're a slave to quantum physics, musical composition, baseball or faith, a human is ultimately disciplined upon the work of other humans before him/her. No one is gifted with a pure abstract knowledge from on high that has no association with a person, or a personage.
So, I personally think that these modern (and antiquated) "failures to launch" has everything to do with: a. the abrogation of pastoral responsibilities for whatever excuses by "clergy": and b. the misappropriation of those pastoral responsibilities (because of a perceived vacuum) by "the sheep."
This is no way to run a church. (And I'm part of thte problem, presuming to so assess our faults.)
To sum up- we all need to vigilantly prepare for our various roles as best we can with whom we can. Knowing Peter's learning curve is always a good reminder. YMMV.

E_A_, the options are inherent in the Mass itself. Why blame someone for exercising them?

And this is true: "That there are options at so low a level as a parish detracts from the sense that there is something more important about the liturgy in a Mass than the liturgy. "

That's something one would need to take up with the authors of the Mass.

Said the the Big Bad Canis Lupus Attorney who bore a striking resemblance to Al Pacino in "the Devil's Advocate."
Just for kicks, imagine someone like Gloria Allred at the personal judgment.
Unfortunately, I think the original authors are all dead. I wouldn't think so, CDub, just don't go havin' a seance to have a consultation! ;-)
Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Exactly, DougS. What get annoying, are those on the forum who respond to everything with, "The 1962 missal says..." Who cares? I don't. The 1959, or any other missal date you choose says something, too. It applied and was law until superceded by a later missal. The 1962 has a specific function with the celebration of the EF mass. It has no authority or bearing on any later missals and it's a real stretch of the imagination to imply that it does. If you attend EF masses, that missal means something to you and to others who are part of that mass. When I work with NO masses, I don't look to the 1962 missal for anything. It is irrelevant.

In your opinion, EA, in what precise ways is the 1962 missal relevant for the planning of an OF Mass?