So worship is a "personal" preference. Hmmmm.

I was just reading a relevant passage in Volume II of Cardinal Ratzinger's Collected Works, in "The Essence of the Liturgy," p. 12:

"The worship of the golden calf is a self-generated cult. When Moses stays away too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification. The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is concerned, no longer with God, but giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse, it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God."

I never know what to do with these topics... On the one hand, it's clear to me what the best music for the Catholic liturgy is (chant, polyphony), because the Church has said as much and they are very obviously venerable and cross-culturally attractive. On the other hand...

I don't necessarily mind people doing praise-and-worship type stuff for devotions, a la Franciscan U., provided they realize it's not liturgically appropriate.

I see this repertoire (yes, I know it's not monolithic) in Protestant services somewhat as I see their clerical debates (I'm fine with female "ministers", since they don't claim any heritage to the priesthood in a real sense, but I'm not ok with female "priests", ala ECUSA and even the continuing Anglican groups, for that matter).

Here in Birmingham at Samford U, Eric Mathis does wonderful things with more contemporary forms in his "Anima" project. Likewise, I have good friends who work in a PCA context that make great use of modern forms while utilizing psalmody and scriptural texts in a very tasteful, integral way. These folks are classically trained, too, and the compositions are not trite, if not as inspired as the chant repertoire.

In the end, I suppose (outside a Catholic liturgical context) it comes down to aesthetics (is this true, beautiful, etc.) and how much you want to blend things. I've worked in a "blended" context (I'm tempted to say I "did my time"!) and do find that it detracts from the trajectory of a traditionally-based program. I've yet to see anyone in a Catholic liturgical context really roast that bird properly.

OK, too much talking on Monday morning!!!

My point in posting this was that we are dealing with only one other style, as guitar masses are diminishing in popularity.

The Protestant churches are dissolving in multiple styles.

Which will recover faster - our situation or theirs?

If musical confusion causes general confusion among heretics, who am I to judge?

What will be synthesized, and what will be used (or, at least, would you consider necessary or welcome components) to create the synthesis?

As people in the 1950s would never have thought that church music could change so radically in the next decade, it is not any more possible to know what it will be like 10 years in the future. The next Catholic music god could appear on the scene and the U.S. church would fall in line and buy the godly or ungodly stuff he produced. I would like to think chant would be so re-established it would be the wave of the future, but I don't see any indication of it. Pope Benedict tried, but the Vandals have retaken the eternal city and who knows where all this will go next?

Yes, but also, no. If your father told you not to do something but never followed through with any consequences if you did it anyway, how much effectiveness would any other thing he said have? Wouldn't you completely lose respect for him? We are in a similar situation. The church says in document xyz, blah-blah-blah. If you ignore it, what happens? Nothing. As an easterner, I don't have that problem in my own church. Tradition is a sacred thing not to be tampered with. However, in the Latin church where I work, it is an entirely different situation.

o Abbot J C... it goes far deeper than that.

That subject has been deeply thought about by the Christian Church Universal and her decision is chant and well crafted / composed music based on chant. Consider that the one thing all great sacred music of all Christian sects have in common - that they are all in some way based on chant.

Yes, this is true. However, the inconvenient truth is that almost all of western music, including secular forms, is based on chant. Chant is our common seminal form. Our job now, I think, is to use our informed intellect and formed spirit to choose and perform the best music we can for liturgy. (As I suggested above, we need to take this liturgical job a lot more seriously than most of our bosses do.) I think we can safely trust that the experience of the people we minister to will then be enhanced. Not all of us will choose the same music and, in fact, we might strongly disagree about repertoire. So be it.

We wait for the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove to land on the head of the next Palestrina/Bach/Mozart and coo to him or her how to write the next great sacred music. I don't know about you, but I am getting impatient.

the messy man. I like to listen to his music but not during mass.

MBW - correct, however, there are forms of musical structure there are profane and not suitable for the liturgy.

Do you refer to dance forms? Or other forms? Whatever they are, their roots are in chant. This makes our job in making music for liturgy harder. We cannot just say "chant and chant based music is appropriate" because even "profane forms" are chant based.

If one believes that some music is profane, one must make a judgement about where in musical history or the compositional process the line was crossed. This judgement has not been clearly made by the Church (debatable, I know), and certainly has not been modeled by the church (not debatable!). Yes, we can say that music must be inspired by Renaissance polyphony, but where does the inspiration stop?

By the way, what do you mean by profane? Secular - or something worse?

Additionally, sacred text wedded to the appropriate music places such music in the obviously different category from secular music in our western musical heritage.

Yes, text is of primary importance. In the spectrum of the development of musical form, we must make hard decisions about what forms it is possible for sacred texts to "baptize". Also, not an easy task, or one where everyone of good heart will agree.

Yes, Chonak, that was too comprehensive a statement. I should have said that the development of western dance music, as we usually understand it, owes much to chant and chant based music in its melodic and harmonic language. Clearly there are other inputs both pre Judaeo/Christian and extra-European.

To respond to some of the wonderful insights previously herein above, I believe that I once read a few years ago a wonderful article on what is sacred and what is profane by Dr. Marht. Also, do I recall correctly a youtube video on this same subject as given by him at a lecture?

Additionally, I do think that "intent" of a musical work carries weight in this decision on what may or may not be liturgically appropriate. While there are many works of great spiritual depth and divine inspiration that might be appropriate within the walls of a sacred space, they would not necessarily be appropriate for a given Mass or other liturgical function. The Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams has deeply moved many including myself. If one had the resources at a church for its performance as a prelude to a liturgical event, all the better. However, within the context of a liturgical event, it would most likely be out of place. On the other hand, I must confess, I would rather hear it at a Mass in place of most homilies!

as the postmistress (illegally) reads their mail to people unable to read.

Sounds like something from an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Noel, you're a long way from Manhattan now, I take it?