Go here to read more on the Pope’s remarks. As an American, he has to know what a tedious mess, bad hymns preserved in amber over the last half century, most Mass music is in this country. However, I suspect that he is a true ideologue, and ideologues never let mere facts stand in their way.
LeoWatch: A Flat Failure
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
With all the people praying for him, the Pope needs to respond accordingly.
Or worse, he believes “Gather Us In”, “All Are Welcome”, and “One Spirit, One Church” all glorify God and sanctifies us. I’d be willing to bet he uses the misquote from St. Augustine of “he who sings prays twice.”
“long tradition” means 60 years.
Maybe he’s forgotten that music since he hasn’t lived in the United States since 1985 and became a citizen of Peru in 2017. I’m not sure that churches in Peru sing all are welcome or gather us in. He might not even know the state of a lot of music in United States churches.
I hear that sacred Peruvian mariachi music is something!
Dunno about Peru. In my very limited experience in this country, the dignity of a Novus Ordo liturgy is strongly correlated with the ratio of Hispanics to others in a congregation.
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I’ve never figured out the motor of the wretched musical programs you see in all but a few parishes. The music director (usually a dame who can play an upright piano) is certainly implicated. Somebody hired that dame. Did they tell her to do that or are the pastor / administrator and the parish council merely indifferent and running interference for her?
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I do recall I was given a precis of internal controversies in one parish by an established parishioner. There were a lot of complaints about the musical program so the parish hired a local music professor (a medieval specialist whose avocations included directing an amateur troop which offered concerts of early music) to improve the program. He eventually resigned in frustration and took his talents to a parish about 12 miles down the road. Evidently, the purpose of the music program at that parish was to please the music director.
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FWIW, there has been lousy “church music” for hundreds of years.
The only Pope who gave us good direction on musica sacra was (at the time) a Cardinal: Ratzinger. His speech for the Int’l Church Music Congress in Vienna is a gem. Sad to say, few “church musicians” have ever read it, and fewer actually understand it.
That’s why we call this a “vale of tears.”
Did the Holy Father lament the fact that you are more likely to hear Gregorian chant as background music in a new age coffee house than you are at a Catholic Mass today?
When is the Pope going to start preaching about Christ crucified and risen from the dead, about repentance and conversion, about righteousness and holiness?
@ Mary Devoe, David WS: You both nailed it.
As well as others. No solution to this problem in sight under this caretaker pontificate—just Pope Bob trying to preserve in amber (re-using that metaphor) Pope Frankism. .
“…you are more likely to hear Gregorian chant as background music in a new age coffee house…”
Frankly, that is a WIN for the Church. Same as the recent run of snippets from Mozart’s Requiem in commercials–or of the first few notes of the Dies Irae.
Right out there in the open. People actually notice and that is good.
The only Pope who gave us good direction on musica sacra
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Pius X issued a revised antiphonary in 1912. Is this bad direction?
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https://archive.org/details/antiphonale-romanum-1912
I suspect most parishes could recruit a choir and perhaps a cantor or schola. (Figure a ratio of six women per man). You have the choir in the balcony chanting the ordinary and the cantor or schola in the sanctuary chanting the proper. One or two young men as acolytes. An eleven minute homily with the Gospel as the point of departure (and the place and time specified).
“Frankly, that is a WIN for the Church. Same as the recent run of snippets from Mozart’s Requiem in commercials–or of the first few notes of the Dies Irae.“
Yeah, in that many whack brain new agers understand the value of true liturgical music than most Catholics do. Or, should I say, most Catholic liturgists do.