Sacred Music Apologetics
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Just slowly get people used to the idea that the congregation doesn't have to sing everything.
I agree with this, except there is one problem: when the priest says otherwise. Unfortunately, as minsters of music (and therefore ministers of the church) we work for the church and must submit to the authority of its duly appointed leaders. At the parish level, that is the pastor or priest. I think that the congregations are normally ok with not singing everything. Case in point: I programmed the wonderful Gloria (from Jacob Bancks' Mass of the Most Sacred Heart) for Christmas, which was new, and not known by the congregation, but sung sublimely by the choir and cantors. Fr. was upset that not everybody could sing with it, and directed me to make sure that I expose the congregation to new music enough ahead of time so that they can sing it when the time comes. Since then, I of course have obliged. -
Just slowly get people used to the idea that the congregation doesn't have to sing everything.
Are they singing well currently?
Or does no one really sing at all, but a small handful of parish experts thinks everybody should have the opportunity to sing?
I will keep saying this over and over:
Taking singing away from a congregation that wants to sing and does it well is a travesty. (And taking the expectation of singing away from a congregation that has no interest in it is probably a relief.)
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I agree with this, except there is one problem: when the priest says otherwise.
We as music minsters have been blessed with a to be saint in our life time who stated quite matter of fact, that active participation is also listening to the word, the priest prayers and the music.
Its hard to argue with a saint especially one we all know and love. -
is also
And not exclusively.
The clarification that "Active" or "Actual" participation includes listening, praying, and meditating shouldn't in any way be construed to suggest that it does not also (or, perhaps, primarily) include actually doing something actively.
If you don't want anti-chant people to create an entire hermeneutic over "other things being equal" ("ZOMG!1! Things aren't equal, so we can ignore you! LALALA!"), it would be best not to do something similar with "the true meaning ofChristmasactual participation."
And for goodness sakes, what kind of fussbudget meanie specifically wants the congregation not to sing?Thanked by 1Gavin -
I apologize for starting this tangent, and being somewhat off topic, but I feel it is related to the subject of the thread. One obstacle to the defense of Sacred Music in the church will be those who feel that everyone should be singing. Though this is not bad in principle (it would be great if everyone could and would do so!), in practice it is more complicated than some of its proponents realize, and while I believe that everyone CAN sing, or CAN LEARN to sing, I also realize that not everyone is going to be WILLING to sing or even try to learn. The idea that everyone should be singing as part of active participation also limits the type of music you can perform at Mass. Here's why: not every congregation has the same level of singing ability, and as we all know, singing is not easy, no matter what the untrained try to tell you, and neither is learning to sing. Also, the amount of time it takes to teach and learn music of higher quality is much greater than most of the P&W stuff we have now, and the average parishioner is generally not willing to make that kind of commitment to music, especially in a culture where music is not important, but only "background sound" to whatever else is going on. There is also the view in many places that music is "someone else's job" and that only a certain few people have the responsibility to make it happen (and there's also the view that music "just happens"). So I think that in addition to convincing the clergy that Sacred Music is of the utmost importance, we are also fighting current social conventions regarding the place and purpose of music in general.
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So I think that in addition to convincing the clergy that Sacred Music is of the utmost importance, we are also fighting current social conventions regarding the place and purpose of music in general.
it wouldn't be called taking up ones cross daily if it were easy. It would be called drinking a pina colada near the pool daily. -
I didn't say anything about whether (hypothetical, abstract) people should sing or not.
I said that people who are already singing, especially if they are singing well, then singing should not be taken away from them.
If one wants to get into "obstacles for the defense of Sacred Music in the church," high on my list is disrespect for pastoral realities in particular places, coupled with the (completely insane and unprecedented) notion that there is, truly, a single ideal praxis which could or should be implemented in all places in the same way. -
Bootsbrown,
I suspect that, both in the parish where you attend Sunday Mass and on the continent of North America, you're in the sizeable majority. I hope, therefore, that you will accept a few observations from someone who has never enjoyed majority status in North America.
50 years ago - or thereabouts - a group of persons claiming to do what "the people" wanted committed themselves and their parishes to making the Mass neither look, nor feel, as it had felt for the lifetimes of anyone then alive. Everything which "the people" had known and loved (or known and not understood) suddenly became taboo. Some individuals revolted, choosing to leave the Catholic Church, which they felt had left them. Others chose to hide, like the Recusants in England at the time of the so-called Reformation. Others chose to go along with the changes (for a variety of reasons, none of which it is my purpose to explore here). Still others rose up in defense of what they had known.
The members of the group of individuals who lived through this whirlwind are now greying at the temple, and have - therefore - been belittled as merely nostalgic, or too rigid to change..... but a funny thing has happened: a younger generation, which didn't live through the change at all, or didn't endure it as adults, has come to see the truth and the beauty which has been banished from most parishes lo these 50 years. Some are refugees from places where the "majority" or the "people" or "the Spirit of Vatican 2" reigns, while others were never Catholics. This younger generation doesn't want to overthrow anyone or anything: it merely wishes to be able to worship God in communion with the Saints of every generation.
Now - who were the people who spoke for the people? In general (as often happens) they were people who had a preset agenda, and who claimed that the people wanted it, were clamoring for it, needed it and would benefit from it. As a rule, they didn't ask what people wanted, because they weren't interested in such opinions. "The people" was a convenient whipping boy.
If you're sure that someone is now imposing some agenda on you - or even proposing to force some ideas down your throat - I suggest that you consider the historical reality: the forcing already happened, 50 years ago. The people who promote what I've been describing (and others here have been describing) as Sacred Music are merely prescribing the medicine for the illness which has infected the Church in North America for two generations. Is medicine sometimes painful? Yes. Is it being forced on you, some unsuspecting "people" who just want to live their faith? No. If you believe what the Church has always taught about the Mass, then even though the music promoted (at least by some hereabouts) is that fitting and just for the task of worshiping God publicly.
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Adam,Taking singing away from a congregation that wants to sing and does it well is a travesty.
It matters WHAT they sing. If they sing a 4-hymn sandwich well, this is still stopping short of what the Mass requires by its nature -- and not by some document somewhere. If they lipsynch Justin Bieber, or can sing John Lennon's Imagine, while these are interesting they have no place whatsoever at Mass. If they sing these extremely well, such music has no place at Mass.
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If they lipsynch Justin Bieber, or can sing John Lennon's Imagine, while these are interesting they have no place whatsoever at Mass. If they sing these extremely well, such music has no place at Mass.
Right. And we all have lots of experience with congregations that regularly sing Bieber and Lennon, and sing it well. So many parishes like that out there, blaspheming the Holy Spirit and everything with their active participation in congregational renditions of pop and rock songs. I can hardly take two steps in my diocese without running into a congregation that can belt out a Marian-infused version of "Favorite Girl" in unaccompanied SATB, shape-note style. Better make sure we direct all our rhetorical efforts at that problem.
Thanked by 1Gavin -
Adam,
How many parishes, however, sing a regular menu of Haas, Haugen, Joncas, or such equivalent stuff.?
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1. That's a different issue that singing Bieber and Lennon.
2. I didn't say, "People who sing well should keep singing the same music over and over, even if it's bad."
A reasonable person would probably assume that I am of the opinion that a congregation that sings bad music well should be moved (however slowly) toward singing good music, which they will likely also sing well. Possibly better.
But, you know- it's easier to argue if you misconstrue what other people say and think.Thanked by 1Gavin -
cgz, I am the DM of Bootsbrown's parish (a mega parish of four churches.) He (as disclosed from his seminary days) is a very talented singer and leader of song in our large music leadership. This can all be discerned easily if one reads through the series of my posts on the thread. I say this for full disclosure.
However, I assure you and everyone else participating, reading or "auditing" this and other threads, that no one under my "management" is being pressured or otherwise imposing "my" personal agendae upon the conduct of their duties. I have actually shown great transparency in my posts in this thread detailing the pastor's expectations and providing a local article just printed in our newspaper that could serve as a model of local "apologetics" for the musicam sacra cause celebre. I have also stated what you have: not everyone shares my colleague's exuberant memories of V2, in fact quite the opposite, and we are left to sort it all out.
I have already said that the solutions to our preconceptions and prejudices must first find "purchase" in our hearts via love of neighbor, true humility before all, and then by proceding to choose the song rightly from all perspectives of influences.
And I'm personally thankful to cgz for the mention of likelihood that Bootsbrown's notions about service music being one among the vast majority of American RC's. But rather than that compelling "us" to shout for interdiction immediately from above ( ala "No Justice, no peace!), it should remind us to remain hospitable to diversity when challenged personally, not to use strident and imperious language and strategies to persuade others to the cause. YMMV.Thanked by 1donr -
This is why I think "apologetics," as such, is a dead-end.
Adam,
Actually this is precisely why we need apologetics. We need to have a consistent message that we can all recite from memory or cue cards to a defense for what we believe.
However, we need to do it with the knowledge that temperatures will be heated from others and we need to be the A/C that cools it all down. Then we will see some turning the Churches way.
We should not return fire with fire but work to put it out. Its hard to think and talk over all the yelling. -
I had composed what I thought was a rather thoughtful commentary on congregational singing, but after reading cgz's commentary on it, as a child of the 1980s I see that the issue is much deeper than I had assumed. I can only imagine what the times after the Council were like to live through. I, in fact, have dealt for my entire life with the aftermath. But while congregational singing may have been used viciously as a tool to undermine the Mass in those years, I do not believe that it is in and of itself the problem. And to discuss it intelligently, we need to accept that.
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I have actually shown great transparency in my posts in this thread detailing the pastor's expectations and providing a local article just printed in our newspaper that could serve as a model of local "apologetics" for the musicam sacra cause celebre.
Great article by the way. -
Well, you know, when rhetoric fails, one is left with simply trying to communicate a feeling.
When I hear suggestions that "we" need to have a consistent message or view point, or that such an important and complicated issue as liturgy and music should be reduced to memorizable talking points... it kinda makes me wanna wretch a little. -
When I hear suggestions that "we" need to have a consistent message or view point, or that such an important and complicated issue as liturgy and music should be reduced to memorizable talking points... it kinda makes me wanna wretch a little.
Well, thank you, Adam, for communicating that feeling.
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One of our priests does the Doxology in Latin telling the congregation that it brings us into the universal church and in tune with our neighbors. Perhaps more comments like that will make the people understand that community is great, as long as it doesn't take away from the common good of the entire Church. A convert friend of mine said a big reason for his conversion to Catholicism years ago was that he found comfort in knowing that wherever he went, the mass was the same, including sacred music. Perhaps we need to educate our congregations on this, as most have no idea that Latin is the language of the Church. Most people are sheep that need to be lead. It's been my experience that people don't know what they like until they've been able to experience everything. They are sheep that follow the unguided flock around.Thanked by 1donr
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"This is why I think "apologetics," as such, is a dead-end."
Protestant: Why do y'all worship the pope?
Catholic: We don't. We esteem him and his office as the God-guided Vicar of Christ, who keeps His Church from officially teaching doctrinal error. Christ built the Church on Simon Peter (Petrus, rock), and we keep this hierarchy in a real visible form today. But the pope is just a man, and we revere him for his office.
Protestant: Yeah but God says don't be worshippin' the pope.
(totally unrelated to Adam's exchange above...) -
I gave up on following the blow-by-blow exchanges of this discussion, but just had a thought about the word "apologetics"--doesn't it mean "to give a defense" as in I Peter 3:15:but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
There is a need for apologetics but it's something to have ready to deliver when the opportunity arises, not to unload on one and all. As a convert to the Catholic Faith, I have been helped tremendously by Catholic apologists. But I was already converted before their message made sense to me. What won me to the Church was the faithful witness of the lives of many faithful Catholics (I call them "happy Catholics") whom God put in my path. None of them tried to convince me of the truth of the Catholic Church; I just wanted what they had in terms of living the Christian life. Reading apologetics later helped me to realize the foundation of what I was seeing and experiencing in the Church.
So with "sacred music apologetics"--I eat this stuff up (and thank you to all who have offered it so beautifully!) but I am already "converted" to sacred music. My role is to share the experience of sacred music with our parish (n.b I wrote early on in this thread that our choir was "buried" and I no longer had a role as choir director. However, this past Sunday, our pastor asked our family to return to serving as cantors so we will be offering the antiphons again.) and when they are "converted" perhaps I can share more "apologetically."
Also, there are those who will challenge us and then is the time with "gentleness and respect" to give a defense of sacred music.
KathyThanked by 1donr -
I was already converted before their message made sense to me. What won me to the Church was the faithful witness of the lives of many faithful Catholics (I call them "happy Catholics") whom God put in my path.
This.
And, for me, also great thinkers and creators in history.
I can make no (convincing) rational argument for my faith, nor can I fully square the notion that I (like to think that I am) smart, well-educated, thoughtful, and science-savvy, and yet believe all these (really, when it comes down to it) completely crazy things.
But I look at who has believed in them, and who has not, and which group of people I have more respect for, which group I consider to be (otherwise) the clearer, more lucid, more thoughtful, more creative people.
A debate between Dawkins and Desmond Tutu is unlikely to move me to agree with one or the other. But the way Desmond Tutu giggles when he says his own name is more convincing than Dawkins and his snarly despondency.
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There is a need for apologetics but it's something to have ready to deliver when the opportunity arises,
Yes, Amen, Sister, sing it from the roof tops.
I am suggesting this also. 1 Peter 3:15 is exactly what we need to do and have ready.
We need it ready for the masses (pun intended). We should have an apologetics short book available to all who would like one, even have them available in the backs of churches so people can grab one.
Apologics is making a defense and you can't do that if no one is making an accusation. That is why I believe we need to Evangelize, Catechize and Advertize as well as Apologiticize :\
The reason for starting this whole topic off was to have the discussion, We know the teachings, others do not. When we bring it out to the forefront people think we are attacking them or their church. This is why we need to learn to do Apologetics for Sacred Music. We have all lot of it already, we just need to refine the message and keep refining it.
Yes we need to do it in our own churches but we need to "always be able to make a defense for the hope that is in us". That is the Liturgy and the way the Church would like it completed all over the country. -
My hope is not "in sacred music," but in Jesus Christ.
He gave us the Church and its Liturgy as instruments of grace, not as idols. -
Dawkins and his snarly despondency.
Or Bart Ehrmann (Dept. Chair, UNC, Biblical History/Theology) and his sniveling agnosticism....
Oh, is it bad to say I miss Chris Hitchens being in the mix? God rest his soul. He, like Fr. Neuhaus, could really turn a phrase! -
Nah, if I've over-reached in admiration for style and wit rather than for substance, I get me to Fr. Rutler for a good strapping. I should tell y'all 'bout the time I barged in and sang with his schola one Sunday in December a few years back, and then near broke his dagnabit (Latin pron.) hand shaking it after Mass at Our Savior's.
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Adam,
Maybe you and I should engage in dueling clerihews?
Seriously, though, the reason I responded to your claim (about singing congregations) the way I did is that if a singing congregation is the goal (as it is in very many parishes; in some it has devolved into what Thomas Day calls "pretending", if memory serves, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm trying to discuss), then change which reduces a singing congregation to a less-singing congregation is, by definition, bad. A singing (or not singing) congregation is, finally, not the measure of its "participation". It matters not if a congregation is singing, or how much it is singing, unless it is singing something worthy of the Mass.
Cheers,
Chris -
cgz (Chris):
I don't want to be this
argumentative,
but I despise PIP-voice preventative.
Pretending to sing is not the same as singing. Claiming that your congregation sings well, when they really just mumble along to some bad folk-mass hits, is not the same as singing well.
When I say, "A congregation that sings, especially one that sings well" I really mean exactly that- one where people really are singing. Not pretending to. Not imagining that they are, but aren't.
When one finds such a congregation, and it is indeed a rare treasure in the English-speaking Catholic world, it would be a travesty to silence them. Teach them to sing Gregorian Ordinaries. Teach them better hymns. Combine hymns with propers, or sing propers-based hymns. Drop the weird and crappy, but don't silence them.Thanked by 1Gavin -
.One obstacle to the defense of Sacred Music in the church will be those who feel that everyone should be singing. Though this is not bad in principle (it would be great if everyone could and would do so!), in practice it is more complicated than some of its proponents realize... The idea that everyone should be singing as part of active participation also limits the type of music you can perform at Mass
Indeed.
To my mind, the single most reprehensible option is Xeroxing and distributing the Introit/Offertory/Commuion antiphons, then collecting them after every Sunday Mass. (We don't have budget--nor space--for purchasing 200 of Bartlett's books.)
So I'm chewing over the possibility of having the congregation READ the antiphons and having a cantor sing the verses. Ugly, ya'know, but at least it's the text of the Mass rather than some unrelated hymn-stuff. -
Dad, what about people reading the propers in their own missals while the schola sings them? Everyone is participating that way...
Not a new idea, but hey. -
Hi Dad, always enjoy your pithy, spot on assessments.
From casual observations here (and also in my case) many have joined the benign innovation of the famed Mahrt "stuffed Mass propers manifesto." We sing the SEP Introit just prior to the Entrance as a mini prelude, if you will. Chant soothes the chatty chums. We have only done actual Offertorios twice in six years as I like to keep that part of the stuffed sandwich open to options. However, as we've three of four churches in the parish that have large congregations, we can easily sing/chant either SEP or either version of the Rice Choral Communio settings as they receive.
After each of these, obviously, we segue to a processional alius cantus. Works for us. No complaints, at least to my face. I would prefer all propers and sung by the people, which is not kosher in the GIRM, but the GIRM napped thru all these new chant resources, so what's a mother to do? So, we're actually in compliance sort of, tho' we're singing a proper and an alius. And GIRM don't say nuttin' 'bout dat, silence = ? -
Seriously, though, the reason I responded to your claim (about singing congregations) the way I did is that if a singing congregation is the goal (as it is in very many parishes; in some it has devolved into what Thomas Day calls "pretending", if memory serves, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm trying to discuss), then change which reduces a singing congregation to a less-singing congregation is, by definition, bad. A singing (or not singing) congregation is, finally, not the measure of its "participation". It matters not if a congregation is singing, or how much it is singing, unless it is singing something worthy of the Mass.Pretending to sing is not the same as singing. Claiming that your congregation sings well, when they really just mumble along to some bad folk-mass hits, is not the same as singing well.
When I say, "A congregation that sings, especially one that sings well" I really mean exactly that- one where people really are singing. Not pretending to. Not imagining that they are, but aren't.
When one finds such a congregation, and it is indeed a rare treasure in the English-speaking Catholic world, it would be a travesty to silence them. Teach them to sing Gregorian Ordinaries. Teach them better hymns. Combine hymns with propers, or sing propers-based hymns. Drop the weird and crappy, but don't silence them.
For the most part, I believe a singing congregation is a symptom of a healthy congregation, not a cause of it. This is the distinction. Also keeping in mind not all healthy congregations always exhibit the same exact symptoms. -
Melo, we stuff away, too. If there's time for it, why not? Sung propers and hymns- often chant hymns for us. Works for everyone.
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Hey daughter o' SD and mine, how do you stuff a TLM? ;-)
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Easy- it's a little longer when they take their time with incense.
Some parishes sing vernacular at the offertory- we do sometimes.
Latin hymn after communion- or a motet. -
Ok SACRED MUSIC PROMOTERS:
In your charity, please pray for me. It wasn't my idea, but someone from Catholic Answers will be interviewing me today about Chant Camp. Radio is great, but this will be a video interview... I asked about a chin reducing camera attachment- apparently there is none! Wazzup with that?!?
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Yeah, low mass is when we sing the vernies.
And there are are two sturdy vernies at all choir masses- before and after the mass.Thanked by 1Adam Wood
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