If there is truly questionable music in the hymnals that we are told to use, then it is up to the Church to better edit the selections. I believe that ultimately it is the pastor's responsibility to make sure everything done in connection with the Mass is appropriate.

one or two simple pieces that are beyond reproach

The passage about the widow's mite illustrates the necessary focus on God, not the type of music. That is, rather, represented by the Wedding Feast, to which one guest showed up improperly attired. That which is improper to the Mass is improper, and no amount of wishing it to be otherwise can change the fundamental incompatibility of most of the modern repertoire with the proper worship of God.

I was always told that music belonged to the congregation

This chant is sung alternately by the choir and the people or similarly by a cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone. ...

a_f_hawkins 2:17PM Thanks Posts: 2,285
piccolopat - you need first to look at the official instructions! These changed (but not much) in 2011 when the new translation came in. You find them in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). You can probably find it online, but Altar Missals should have it.

103. Among the faithful, the schola cantorum or choir exercises its own liturgical function, its place being to take care that the parts proper to it, in keeping with the different genres of chant, are properly carried out and to foster the active participation of the faithful by means of the singing.[86] What is said about the schola cantorum also applies, with due regard for the relevant norms, to other musicians, and especially the organist.

Schönbergian 3:37PM Thanks
Posts: 728
If one accepts Vatican II's call for "full, conscious, and active participation" in such a way, this would mean that "[speaking] or clapping in time" with the Canon, homily, and readings would also be required in order to fulfill this mandate. There are long swaths of the Mass in which we "merely listen" and do not "actively" participate, yet only music is placed under this scrutiny.

bhcordova 3:51PM Thanks
Posts: 895
piccolopat, the question is 'What parts of the Mass are proper to the choir and which are proper to the people?' The propers (i.e. those parts that vary (the entrance antiphon, the offertory antiphon, the communion antiphon) are proper to the choir. The ordinaries (the Gloria, the Responsorial Psalm (or the Gradual - not the same thing), the Alleluia (or the Gospel Acclimation), the Sanctus, the Angnus Dei) are proper to the people. Just as the readings are proper to the lector, the Gospel proper to the deacon, and the rest proper to the priest.

Chris Garton-Zavesky 4:08PM Thanks

Would you accept as valid the distinction between active listening and passive hearing? It seems to me that even hearing has ( or at least can have) an active element. If one is actively listening, one can make an appropriate response at an appropriate time.

Mass attendance has been falling, is this because we exclude so many from the Sacrifice of the Mass because they are uncomfortable with a one size fits all approach to active participation?

2 Circumstantes autem in Missis privatis semper genua flectunt, etiam Tempore Paschali, præterquam dum legitur Evangelium.

The fact that this is never emphasized is clear evidence, to me, of those shoving "FCAP" down the collective throats of Catholicism only being motivated by politics, rather than a desire to earnestly follow the Vatican's commands.

So, what to do? Cling to your traditional catechisms and morality manuals. Practice the Catholic Faith as it has always been practiced. Offer sacrifices, especially the Holy Mass, and do penance. Pray the Rosary. Pray Novenas. And never forsake that which has come down to us from the Apostles, the holy Catholic Faith. These are the weapons to resist the innovators, the modernists, and the masons. Our Lady at Fatima promised her Immaculate Heart would triumph. And so it will.

Some parts of the Mass are really most suited to be sung by a choir alone, without trying to include the whole congregation: in particular, the pieces that change from Sunday to Sunday.

I am speaking of the entrance chant, the chant before the gospel (whether it is "alleluia" plus a verse, or a Lenten acclamation); the offertory chant, and the communion chant.

27. Let care be taken to restore, at least in the principal churches, the ancient Scholae Cantorum, as has been done with excellent fruit in a great many places. It is not difficult for a zealous clergy to institute such Scholae even in smaller churches and country parishes, nay, in these last the pastors will find a very easy means of gathering around them both children and adults, to their own profit and the edification of the people.

8. As the texts that may be rendered in music, and the order in which they are to be rendered, are determined for every liturgical function, it is not lawful to confuse this order or to change the prescribed texts for others selected at will, or to omit them either entirely or even in part, unless when the rubrics allow that some versicles of the text be supplied with the organ, while these versicles are simply recited in the choir. [Here "choir" likely means true liturgical choir, ie-clergy, but could certainly be extended to a literal choir, just as the responses of the people are said by the altar servers in the TLM] However, it is permissible, according to the custom of the Roman Church, to sing a motet to the Blessed Sacrament after the Benedictus in a solemn Mass. It is also permitted, after the Offertory prescribed for the mass has been sung, to execute during the time that remains a brief motet to words approved by the Church.

9. The liturgical text must be sung as it is in the books, without alteration or inversion of the words, without undue repetition, without breaking syllables, and always in a manner intelligible to the faithful who listen.

While it's permitted for the congregation to learn and sing these several changing pieces for every occasion, it would be unrealistic to claim that the Church expects the congregation to take that task.

On the other hand, there is so much which the congregation is called upon to sing: texts of the Mass that are relatively unchanging from day to day: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, the Universal Prayer, the Sanctus, the Memorial Acclamation, the Pater Noster, Agnus Dei; and the dialogues with the priest in the entrance rite, at the Gospel, at the preface, before Communion, and at the blessing. A dozen parts of the Mass, some with unchanging melodies, and some with a variety of melodies that can be used. It is wonderful to see and hear congregations singing lovely decorative Gregorian melodies for the Kyrie, Gloria, etc.

Active participation certainly means that, in gesture, word, song and service, all the members of the community take part in an act of worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.

Conscious participation calls for the entire community to be properly instructed in the mysteries of the liturgy, lest the experience of worship degenerate into a form of ritualism. But it does not mean a constant attempt within the liturgy itself to make the implicit explicit, since this often leads to a verbosity and informality which are alien to the Roman Rite and end by trivializing the act of worship. Nor does it mean the suppression of all subconscious experience, which is vital in a liturgy which thrives on symbols that speak to the subconscious just as they speak to the conscious. The use of the vernacular has certainly opened up the treasures of the liturgy to all who take part, but this does not mean that the Latin language, and especially the chants which are so superbly adapted to the genius of the Roman Rite, should be wholly abandoned. If subconscious experience is ignored in worship, an affective and devotional vacuum is created and the liturgy can become not only too verbal but also too cerebral. Yet the Roman Rite is again distinctive in the balance it strikes between a spareness and a richness of emotion: it feeds the heart and the mind, the body and the soul. It has been written with good reason that in the history of the Church all true renewal has been linked to a re-reading of the Church Fathers. And what is true in general is true of the liturgy in particular. The Fathers were pastors with a burning zeal for the task of spreading the Gospel; and therefore they were profoundly interested in all the dimensions of worship, leaving us some of the most significant and enduring texts of the Christian tradition, which are anything but the result of a barren aestheticism. The Fathers were ardent preachers, and it is hard to imagine that there can be an effective renewal of Catholic preaching, as the Council wished, without sufficient familiarity with the Patristic tradition. The Council promoted a move to a homiletic mode of preaching which would, like the Fathers, expound the biblical text in a way which opens its inexhaustible riches to the faithful. The importance that preaching has assumed in Catholic worship since the Council means that priests and deacons should be trained to make good use of the Bible. But this also involves familiarity with the whole Patristic, theological and moral tradition, as well as a penetrating knowledge of their communities and of society in general. Otherwise the impression is given of a teaching without roots and without the universal application inherent in the Gospel message. The excellent synthesis of the Church’s doctrinal wealth contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church has yet to be more widely felt as an influence on Catholic preaching.

Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.

But it does not mean a constant attempt within the liturgy itself to make the implicit explicit, since this often leads to a verbosity and informality which are alien to the Roman Rite and end by trivializing the act of worship.

The use of the vernacular has certainly opened up the treasures of the liturgy to all who take part,

what treasures, pray tell us, were so locked up and hidden from us

Although the mass contains great instruction for the faithful people, nevertheless, it has not seemed expedient to the fathers, that it should be celebrated everywhere in the vulgar tongue. Wherefore, the ancient rite of each church, and [the rite] approved by the holy Roman Church, the mother and mistress of all churches, being in every place retained; and, that the sheep of Christ may not suffer hunger, nor the young children ask bread, and there he none who shall break it unto them,[14] the holy synod charges pastors, and all those who have the cure of souls, that they frequently, during the celebration of mass, expound, either by themselves or others, some portion of those things which are read at the mass, and that, amongst the rest, they explain some mystery of this most holy sacrifice, especially on the Lord's days and festivals.