Current liturgical conventions at Catholic Churches are as much a puzzle to me as anyone, and so I’m ever curious about what goes on and why. There is always insight to be gained by attending a random parish liturgy, as I did today in the Chicago metropolitan area.
The days of tearing up the pea patch are over, and there is no question that the priest, cantors, instrumentalists, choir, and servers were striving to do something of some of import, affecting a kind of solemn pose. There were hints of the goofiness of yesteryear here of course: glass vessels, bare altar, and the like. But for the most part, there was nothing here that smacked of deconstructionism at work.
In the end, however, the liturgy seemed unimportant, drab, and largely banal, despite the unending attempts by the homilist and musicians to somehow get the congregation involved and inspired. The problem here is not that anything outrageous or heretical happened. It was just deadly dull and seemingly unimportant.
A major problem was the music. In fact, it was the music that defined this event. One might describe the whole Mass as an hour-long ritual of 11 short, unintegrated commercial jingles interrupted by periods of talking about something.
The music was all composed and presented with the goal of having the people participate. To that end, they covered a small range, moved in predictable, formulaic ways and all were backed by a swing-and-sway rhythmic structure. They were all designed to be vaguely memorable like songs used to be used to accompany commercials on television. Beyond that, they had very little in common.
We began with a song called “A Fire is Meant for Burning,” with text by Ruth Duck and music from a Sacred Harp song. I was struck by the suggestion in the lyrics that our missionary work is “not to preach our creeds or customs but to build a bridge of care.” It’s hard to imagine St. Paul expressing such sentiments.
On the third verse we sang that the “mid earth’s peoples” are “many hued.” I conjured up an image of mutant people living underground somewhere, as in some sci-fi movie. As for the tune, Sacred Harp is nice but not liturgical, and there is no precedent in Catholic history for this type of music. So immediately with the entrance processional we find ourselves uprooted.
Next we moved on to the Gloria from “A New Mass for Congregations” by Carroll Andrews. It is tuneful in some way but predictable, trite, and dated. It’s really hard to take the Gloria too seriously when you sing it something so insubstantial.
Then came the Responsorial Psalm by David Haas, which was in three and had this gauzy lilt to it. The cantor was outstanding but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t infuse this evaporative piece with anything meaningful. I think the congregation must have sung the “antiphon” nine times. Then it ended abruptly and everyone felt a bit ridiculous. By then the text and meaning of the first reading was long gone from our memories.
The Alleluia followed the next reading, this time by Michael Joncas, and surely not his best work. It sounded childish—truly like a song for nursery school. It ended soon after it started.
Following the homily, there was the great Catholic intermission, a.k.a. the offertory song. The piece, called “The Summons,” had the same tune as the Belly Button song from the Veggies Tales series. I’m not sure which came first, but someone could sue for copyright infringement here. The fourth verse was the oddest: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name?” I’m not really sure how to answer that question, and I’m not entirely sure that I’ve been hiding the me that’s me, but whatever.
The Sanctus was from the People’s Mass by Jan Vermulst and mercifully short. It navigated from the tonic to the third to the fifth and back again and that was about it. Hard to believe that a hymn as glorious as Sanctus could be reduced to such a trifle.
From here on, the musical pieces became every shorter in length. There was a great explosion of organ for the “Danish Memorial Acclamation” but it lasted only 12 seconds. So too with the “Danish Amen,” which lasted 6 seconds, its length highly disproportionate to the pretend drama of that number. Then came a prosaic and predictable Angus Dei, which by Richard Proulx. Maybe it lasted 20 seconds.
Then came the big communion number called Bread of Life by James V. Mavchionda, which was another swing-and-sway piece in 9/8. The melody barely moved at all, with lots of tied notes and repetition. “Jesus, Jesus, bread of life, Jesus, Jesus, Saving Cup, Jesus, Jesus, live in us, we believe, we believe.” The biggest problem here was its repetitive, light rock quality and complete absence of anything audibly interesting.
We ended with the best tune of all by Ralph Vaughn Williams: Sine Nomine. But instead of the traditional lyrics (“For All the Saints”) we sang some words added in 1991 that just left my scratching my head.
And then the Catholic people scurried out the door and that was it. What were left with? Not much really. They received communion but nothing about the experience suggested that there was anything important to that. I doubt that any of the tunes stuck in their heads. Everything was disconnected from everything else. It was just one silly song after another.
I don’t blame the musicians, who were quite competent. It’s just that they don’t have much to work with. They are stuck in a rut that 80% of most parishes are stuck in. They have closets full of music for which they paid the big bucks though nothing would be lost if a fire came and burned every scrap of it.
What they need is an integrated style, with a text that comes from the liturgy itself. And the music they sing needs to have an integral relationship to Catholic history and worship. They need less discretion and they need more of a challenge. They need music that is solemn and suitable. They need to discover Gregorian chant.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Silly Songs with Father
UnknownMore recent articles:
The Oratory of the Forty Martyrs in the Roman ForumGregory DiPippo
The original day for the feast of the Forty Martyrs, who were killed at Sebaste in Armenia under the Roman Emperor Licinius, around 320 AD, is March 9th. They were a group of soldiers of the Twelfth Legion who refused to renounce the Faith, and after various tortures, were condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to f...
Ordo Hebdomadae Maioris & Memoriale Rituum: Useful Books for the Pre-55 Holy WeekPeter Kwasniewski
Saint Anthony Press, established with the mission of publishing rare or otherwise “lost” Catholic liturgical and devotional books, has reprinted the Ordo Hebdomadae Maioris (Order of Holy Week), containing the Holy Week liturgies and Order of Mass with seasonal Prefaces, according to the 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal (in use un...
Durandus on the First Sunday of LentGregory DiPippo
The following excerpts are taken from the sixth book of William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, chapter 32, 6-11. There are fewer ellipses than usual, but perhaps a bit more paraphrasing.This is the time of Christian warfare, in which the devil rises up against us more strongly. Therefore, lest anyone despair, the Church sings the introit...
The Station of the First Friday of LentGregory DiPippo
Many of the stories that form the corpus of Lenten Scriptural readings in the traditional Roman Rite are frequently depicted in frescoes in the catacombs, and on early Christian sarcophagi. We may safely assume that such readings were already part of the Roman Church’s lectionary before the end of the persecutions and the building of the earliest ...
Happy Feast of Saint Thomas AquinasPeter Kwasniewski
Today is the traditional feastday of St. Thomas Aquinas, Common Doctor of the Catholic Church, Patron of All Catholic Schools. March 7 is the birthday of the Angelic Doctor into eternal life, at the age of 49, en route to the General Council at Lyons. In his honor, it seems fitting to share the story of his death, as told by Bernard Gui in the Vi...
Cardinal Roche Repudiates Traditionis CustodesGregory DiPippo
Ever since Traditionis Custodes was issued more than 3½ years ago, its defenders have struggled to come up with a rationale for why it was issued at all. This is hardly surprising. The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, in repudiation of which it was written, was the fruit of decades of careful meditation on the Church’s liturgy problem, on the part...
Concilium’s Attack on Confession (Part 4.2): Mortal Sins Before Communion? No Problem!Gregory DiPippo
This is the second part of an article which we published on Tuesday, Mr Phillip Campbell’s investigation into what the writers of the “progressive” theological journal Concilium were saying about reform of the sacrament of Confession in the years which immediately followed the most recent ecumenical council. This installment is a detailed considera...
Ash Wednesday 2025Gregory DiPippo
Dómine, non secundum peccáta nostra, quae fécimus nos: neque secundum iniquitátes nostras retríbuas nobis. V. Dómine, ne memíneris iniquitátum nostrárum antiquárum: cito antícipent nos misericórdiae tuae, quia páuperes facti sumus nimis. Hic genuflectitur V. Adjuva nos, Deus, salutáris noster: et propter gloriam nóminis tui, Dómine, líbera nos: et...
What Might Christ Say to Us in the Confessional?Peter Kwasniewski
We enter today into the chief penitential season of the Latin Church’s liturgical year. After the loosening up of the 1960s, it isn’t very penitential anymore, although one might well think that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are worse than ever because no one has built up a habit of fasting, and so we hit those days like a car without shock absorbe...
Concilium’s Attack on Confession (Part 4.1): Mortal Sins Before Communion? No Problem!Gregory DiPippo
On Shrove Tuesday of last year, we began a series which Mr Phillip Campbell, author of the blog Unam Sanctam Catholicam, has very kindly shared with NLM. It is the result of his investigation into what the writers of the “progressive” theological journal Concilium were saying about reform of the sacrament of Confession in the years which immediatel...