Alas, Charles, long gone are the days when church was the circumference and centre of people's lives. Their social lives and their service and activites were all about their church. My parents always sang in the parish choir and nothing could conceivably keep them from it... plus all their other activities were centred on the church. There are still people like that, but they are but a shadow of what was. It is a global phenomenon, isn't it. The Poles, once fiercely Catholic, now find other attractions and loyalties since the Church is not necessary as a counterforce to the communist tyrants. And the Irish, now that they are free of an outside threat, they give mere lip service, if that, to the Church. It's the same everywhere. And, sometimes, as in the recent sex scandals, the Church is its own worst enemy - more concerned with avoiding scandal than in cultivating holiness and ridding itself of evil. (But, I have digressed, haven't I). Choir and church are no longer the joyful source of life for increasing numbers of people.

I believe that the situation you mention re Proulx and Holy Name Cathedral had to do with his suffering a heart attack and his retirement. Just another situation of the type we encounter.

Although London is such a large city, with an unbroken tradition of superlative choral singing, that one can occasionally find a Gounod Mass, or the Puccini Messa di Gloria, performed, not with orchestra necessarily.
Places where one might encounter 19th c. Masses are the Brompton Oratory, St. James, Spanish Place, the Jesuit Church, Immaculate Conception, and the super-high church Anglican places like All Saints, Margaret Street, St. Mary's, Bourne Street, or St. Magnus the Martyr, in the financial district of the City. Bruckner double choir, with brass, one almost never encounters anywhere.
But in those places, the bulk of the repertoire was and remains the Masses and motets from the Renaissance period. A paid choir of 12-14 people can sing most of that repertoire, and there are many small paid choirs in Greater London.

The Korman is a real find! Fabulous, and Xmas eve, no less. "O come, all ye faithful" as a Kyrie. In my worst moment, I could never have imagined such a thing.
That Regina Coeli is an utter piece of trash. Great, if you like church music from the garbage can. And performed in a fancy church, where the ceremonies completely eclipse those of the Sistine Chapel.
Amazing.

ghmus: Proulx's heart attack occurred a couple of years after he left Holy Name. He was in Salt Lake City for an extended stay with the newly formed Madeleine Choir School when it he became ill. However, his frustrations at Holy Name may well have contributed to the health factors which led to the attack.

Wonder why they could, and did, raise the millions of $$ for one of the largest Flentrops ever built, and then put it into a large cathedral with an acoustic of a clothes-closet.
If an organ that expensive had gone into a room with manifold acoustical deficits, I, too, would have found a reason to leave---sooner, rather than later.
At some point in one's life, one gets tired of fighting the system of musically illiterate clergy, who, most times, are their own worst enemies.

Sounds like a scene from a Fellini movie, specifically, "Roma"!
Only in America could these absurd things come together.