Last evening I had the opportunity to attend a concert put on by the Chroale and Schola Cantorum from Holy Family Academy here in town.  The concert was held, as so many wonderful things in this city, at Ste. Marie’s church, which provided magnificent acoustics, even for those young men and women who were a little nervous in front of the good-sized crowd that had assembled.  Seeing them give glory to God in their singing, and particularly so in the many pieces of sacred music, was a truly powerful experience of hope.  When they intoned the Kyrie to start the concert I quite literally felt a chill run down my spine.

This is the future of the Church – this new generation of children and young adults growing up receiving a more full education both in the world and in the Faith than has been seen in decades, and growing up in love with Christ and His Church.  As much damage has been done in the past decades by terrible-to-nonexistent catechesis, the future looks even more bright.  Deo gratias!

In an effort to get my new blogging string off to a roaring start, I thought I’d pull a draft from the archives that I didn’t quite have the guts to finish blogging before.  In all the discussions I’ve had with people from the many corners of the Catholic faith I’ve found that not even the issue of denying the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians invokes the level of emotion one finds in a discussion about … liturgical music.

I have to admit that I don’t yet know why this is so but it seems there is some sort of innate personal identification between music and belief.  I think there are two aspects which form this identification: 1) the ages old maxim lex orandi, lex credendi (or, the law of prayer is the law of faith) ; and 2) an innate understanding that liturgical music is a part of the Mass, not added to it – that it flows from the faith expressed in the Mass and is a part of it.

But that’s not what I’m here for with this post.  I’m here to cause a little trouble with a quote from then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, a work I’d say is a must-read for anyone interested in discussing the Catholic liturgy in the modern day.  Why cause trouble?  Because he displays the question of music in the liturgy in this quote in a way that opens the discussion on both sides of the new music / traditional music divide with equal parts gratitude and remorse for those who would hold to either.  In just this short paragraph he gives everyone a great deal to think about and an opportunity to reassess old positions.  And people wonder why I’m so impressed with this Pope…  Here’s what he had to say:

As the Church was uprooted from her Semitic soil and moved into the Greek world, a spontaneous and far-reaching fusion took place with Greek logos mysticism, with its poetry and music, that eventually threatened to dissolve Christianity into a generalized mysticism. It was precisely hymns and their music that provided the point of entry for Gnosticism, that deadly temptation which began to subvert Christianity from within. And so it is understandable that, in their struggle for the identity of the faith and its rooting in the historical figure of Jesus Christ, the Church authorities resorted to a radical decision. The fifty-ninth canon of the Council of Laodicea forbids the use of privately composed psalms and non-canonical writings in divine worship. The fifteenth canon restricts the singing of psalms to the choir of psalm-singers, while “other people in church should not sing.” That is how post-biblical hymns were almost entirely lost. There was a rigorous return to the restrained, purely vocal style of singing taken over from the synagogue. We may regret the cultural impoverishment this entailed, but it was necessary for the sake of a greater good. A return to apparent cultural poverty saved the identity of biblical faith, and the very rejection of false inculturation opened up the cultural breadth of Christianity for the future.

So now, I ask you, what does it say to you?  I find great challenge for those on both sides of the debate in this writing, but I’m curious if I’m alone.  Don’t let the combox grow cobwebs…

…rather than just scare the cats and make the dog have that sad “please stop the pain” look

One of the primary reasons I looked into Catholicism lo those many years ago was the papacy.  I just couldn’t get around “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt. 16:18).  It should come as no surprise that these very words are the basis of a beautiful song, as the Church has always expressed her great joys in music.  It is with great joy, and a hat tip to CathCon, that I give you this gem:

My son has been telling me for several days now that they’re working on a song in Latin in choir practice, but he couldn’t quite remember exactly what it was.  Today I had the chance to pick him up from choir after school and I figured he’d be able to remember the name right after practice.  In his best third-grade I’ve-never-been-trained-in-Latin he tells me it’s Adoramus Te, Christe.  A beautiful, if short, piece and one I’ll be quite glad to hear at Mass this Saturday.  Ecstatic, even.

Then something … unexpected … happened.  Out of my random selection of MP3s I’ve copied to my Sirius Stiletto comes … wait for it … Adoramus Te, Christe from the Catholic Latin Classics CD from Richard Proulx’s Cathedral Singers.  Somehow, I think we have a certain approval of the selection.  Even though there’s no way the childrens’ choir will sound anywhere near as polished as the Cathedral Singers, it will be music to my ears and bliss in my heart.

On my recent post regarding liturgical music, commenter Orvis asked some very good questions.  I’d like to lay out a brief response here as I now realize I was far too brief in that last post to be intelligible.

Am I saying “yes” or “no” to pop music as a part of the Mass?  That depends largely on your definition of “pop” music, since as a rule the definition of the term morphs with each day.  In a nutshell, if it is proper liturgical music I have no problem with it at all; if it is, in the words of both Pope St. Pius X and Pope Benedict XVI, “profane” then it is both explicitly and implicitly not appropriate for Mass.  In Tra le sollectudini Pius X stated:

Still, since modern music has risen mainly to serve profane uses, greater care must be taken with regard to it, in order that the musical compositions of modern style which are admitted in the Church may contain nothing profane, be free from reminiscences of motifs adopted in the theaters, and be not fashioned even in their external forms after the manner of profane pieces.

Now, some will object to bringing Tra le sollectudini into the discussion as it’s over 100 years old and refers to issues no longer facing liturgical music (i.e. the Pope’s concern regarding overly operatic performances, thus his reference to “the theaters”).  Yet, does his point not continue to hold given how far modern music performances deviate from what could and should be expected at Mass?  Even standard Praise and Worship performances usually lack the sobriety befitting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Do I deny their usefulness as Christian music?  Not at all.  Do I deny they belong in the Mass?  Unless properly formed to the Mass, indeed I do.  There is a place, as Pope Pius XII wrote in Musicae Sacrae, for this type of music:

We must also hold in honor that music which is not primarily a part of the sacred liturgy, but which by its power and purpose greatly aids religion.  This music is therefore rightly called religious music.  The Church has possessed such music from the beginning and it has developed happily under the Church’s auspices.  As experience shows, it can exercise great and salutary force and power on the souls of the faithful, both when it is used in churches during non-liturgical services and ceremonies, or when it is used outside churches at various solemnities and celebrations.

So do I think the Church should support such work, encourage and even host it?  Absolutely.  Do I think it belongs in the Mass?  Absolutely not unless it is properly conformed to the requirements of the liturgy.  The Church has a great need in this day for ways to involve people in their Catholic faith outside of Sunday Mass.  Periodic concerts of this type would both encourage that active participation of the faithful and provide opportunities to reward the work of the artists, writers and composers involved.  An old pastor routinely did this as part of his Life Teen work and had great success, and neither the Mass nor the music had to suffer for it.

As to whether I believe the Farther Along Octet (the actual name of the group from Goshen College) serves to prove anything as regards the status of “pop” music, no I don’t.  I bring them up precisely as an illustration of youth who have sufficient respect and appreciation for chant and polyphony to not only listen to it but learn to perform it as well.  Do I think their performance of other music forms has any bearing on the appropriateness of those forms in the Mass?  No, I do not.  Even their performances of sacred music were non-liturgical and do not address the question of appropriateness.  What they all do, however, is address the question of whether you can attract youth of their age with anything other than pop music in general and with sacred music in specific.  So yes, use all the forms of music that attract people to the Church, but be selective in when and where each form is used that they may each be used only where appropriate and where they will have the greatest effect.

I’m quite certain I have gone on far too long already, but please do let me know what you all think.  I could write far more but I’d prefer to move in small paces unless absolutely necessary.

And then explain to me again why going against the express wishes of every Pope since Pius X is the only way we’ll interest kids.  These young men are from Goshen College – the precise age range being targeted by those who want to add guitars and drums to the Mass:

The young want a challenge – they want authentic Catholicism, to live a life of true holiness with all the beauty the Church has to offer.  We ought to do nothing less than give it to them.  All of it.

Reading this post by Jeffrey Tucker at NLM made me wonder for just a second if maybe he wasn’t probing around in the small amount of gray matter still under active use in between my ears. Now, to be honest, the music at my parish is nowhere near as bad as that which many are forced to endure Sunday after Sunday – in fact it is generally well-sung and the selections are occasionally even quite good.

What I find missing, and which Jeffrey alluded to in his Second Great Catholic Radio 2.0 Liturgy Debate, is any linkage at all between the liturgy we are experiencing and the music. We’ve gone from music that was created for Mass to music that occasionally sounds good at Mass – from a unified whole pointing to the unity of both Creator and Church to an amalgam which speaks more of the community as a collection of dispersed talents. I want to be very clear on this so no one thinks I’m just complaining – the songs are almost always performed very well and I have yet to hear a single song that outright does not belong in Mass. At the same time there is a great opportunity to use that music for everything great music can do – spiritual uplift, catechesis, etc. To put it another way, it’s okay as it is, but it could do so much more.

Perhaps the one difference I have with Jeffrey (besides not knowing a fraction of what he does when it comes to both liturgy and music) is that I haven’t the slightest hint of musical skill. As the saying goes, I couldn’t hold a note with a bucket. He, and all true musicians, can speak to the situation of liturgical music “from the inside” as it were, whereas I can only look at it and say “it seems odd” or “it seems right”. Perhaps I am too picky. Perhaps I am one of those who will never be satisfied. Or perhaps I’ve, through a combination of luck and persistence, sniffed out one truth from a pile of assorted options. Which that is, I’ll be honest and say I don’t really know.

Every priest and music director should be required to read and listen to every link on this page. Just the tiniest amount of imagination and one can easily move from hearing only Aristotle Esguerra‘s voice to that of a full schola and/or the many and varied voices of an entire congregation. To dream, perchance to hope…

H/T to Jeffrey Tucker at NLM.

Well, actually, my wife got it for me and it chants but the point still stands. I’m listening to the CD from the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuzand I can see why everyone has raved about what they have done. Maybe some day we’ll hear music like this in our churches now that the silly season has been seen for what it is. Until then, buy one and do your ears – and your soul – a favor.