. . . that means I’m going to go to Mass in a little while, and that means I’m going to have a bunch of horrible, contemporary liturgical “music” inflicted on my eardrums.
(At least the awful soprano shrieking of the over-dramatic, self-important cantor hasn’t been there for a couple of weeks, but she may only be on vacation.)
Thinking of all this makes me glad that I joined the Society for a Moratorium on the Music of
Marty Haugen and David Haas–those being two of the worst offenders in composing insipid, sugary liturgical ditties.
As I told the folks when I joined,
The songs of these two gents (plus Dan Schutte’s) should carry a warning label that they may cause diabetic shock and coma in perfectly healthy individuals.
You might take a look around the SMMMHDH web site and consider joining yourself. Some of the things that you’ll find there are filks of some of their songs, like this one:
Gather Us In
Here in this place, a bad song is starting,
Now will the altar turn into a stage.
All that is holy is slowly departing,
Making a way for the coming New Age.
Gather us in, though we are like captives.
But to miss Mass on Sunday, that would be wrong.
But Lord hear our plea, regarding M. Haugen:
Give him the courage to put down that bong.
Dear Father Smith make a beeline procession,
Run if you have to, make it real terse.
If you can start this Mass very quickly,
Maybe we’ll only have to sing but one verse.
O Dear Lord Jesus, You are the Savior
We’ve promised to follow, whatever the cost.
But we didn’t know this song had been written:
Would you terribly mind if we came off our cross?
“(At least the awful soprano shrieking of the over-dramatic, self-important cantor hasn’t been there for a couple of weeks, but she may only be on vacation.)”
You better hope she doesn’t have a computer or else she might read your comments! I don’t know your cantor, but it is possible she is doing her best, and possible that she has been encouraged to sing a particular way by people in the parish who enjoy her voice. I don’t *love* current church music either, it drove me to the Episcopal church for a while when I valued such things over truth. But I have learned something first hand that I read in C S Lewis (who hated the anglican hymns). Those second-rate poems set to third-rate music are being sung by a saint in the pew next to me, and I am not worthy to lace his boots. I remind myself of that every time we turn to On Eagles Wings or Hosea.
That said, I would be happy if they switched back to older hymns, giddy if all the music were sung in latin. Until that day, I use it as a lesson in humility.
The hymns referred to are indeed truly awful, and ought to be retired ASAP. But, at many parishes, in addition to the overuse of insipid, modernist quasi-Protestant or New Age “hymns,” there is also a total lack of any Latin in the liturgical music (e.g., Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei).
Some people seem to be truly frightened of Latin. I just don’t understand it.
Miss Nomers: This is part of why I haven’t mentioned what parish usually go to, and the woman in question wouldn’t know me from Adam. I prefer to be as anonymous as possible at Mass. As an exercise in humility, I want to be just a rank-in-file Catholic fulfilling his Sunday obligation, so I don’t obtrude myself. I don’t need or want to be a parish celebrity.
So you’re kind of like Clark Kent keeping your super powers a secret from the rank and file. Good idea. I do that too. ;>
n
Exactly. (Though normally I’m compared more to Bruce Wayne rather than Clark Kent. Something about me having a more Batman-like disposition than a Superman-like disposition.)
My work makes me a public figure involving my religion. It would not be spiritually healthy for me to seek celebrity status in the private practice of my religion as well. For humility’s sake, I need to have some area of my life where I am a humble, ordinary Catholic who nobody pays any attention to.
Once I attended a Mass where the priest (who was a Catholic Answers fan) recognized me, and he started including references to Catholic Answers in his homily. When I approached to receive Communion, he said: “The Body of Christ, James.”
Absolutely made my skin crawl. I *hated* it. It was far too immodest. When I am at Mass, I am just one Catholic among many, and I don’t want to be treated any differently. Before God, we are all equal, and it is folly to pretend otherwise.
What songs do you miss from your Protestant days, Jimmy?
I understand your preference to be anonymous but I am curious as to how you would acheive this?
Do you were a hat and glasses to mass?
And what about that beard??
Do you cover your glorious red beard?
How in the world can you be anonymous with that???
LOLOL
I wear a hat and glassses everywhere I go (see the picture?).
The difference is, in chuch I take the hat *off* and keept it in my lap (’cause men don’t wear hats in church).
This alone keeps me from being recognized. It’s like Clark Kent doesn’t get recognized as Superman when he puts on glasses and tucks the little forehead lock of hair that Superman has back into place.
Actually, I’m just not that famous.
And I’m better known by my voice than my face.
And I sit in the back. 😉
Oh man, I laughed out loud at that song parody. Too true. Reminds me of something I read recently (perhaps on Barbara Nicolosi’s blog?). She had a friend who was a trained opera singer, who was taking a very modest sum from a Catholic parish to sing, “and they want me to sing crap.” (I quote from memory.)
Ever read Why Catholics Can’t Sing by…er… Somebody Day, I think? Pretty interesting discussion of the lame state of the Catholic aesthetic experience, with a special emphasis on music.
My current parish has the best choir I’ve heard from a Catholic church. It has a strong German history, though, so I expect that explains it. (We Irish are one of Day’s culprits for the American Church’s tone-deafness.)
The best music at a Mass I ever heard was at an Indult Tridentine Mass in Rockford, Illinois. (Didn’t actually care for the liturgy as much as I thought I would. Guess my post-V2 childhood conditioned me to want to say responses.) But the music, Good Lord, it was glorious. Really elevating and transcendant. And, yeah, all in Latin.
Some people seem to be truly frightened of Latin. I just don’t understand it.
I don’t think anyone’s actually frightened of Latin. I think it’s more what Jimmy said above about LifeTeen, that parishes that don’t have a proper foundation to begin with cause their parishioners to form attachments to what are really liturgical improprieties. If parishes had only paid attention to Vatican II when it ordered primary place to be given to Gregorian chant in the Mass, and that Latin is to be preserved as far as possible in the liturgy.
I attend an indult Trid mass led by FSSP priest, and the choir is so good I think it must be professional. We’re blessed.
Awake from your slumber!
Arise from your sleep!
The homily’s over!
It wasn’t too deep!
Latin isn’t their crib tongue, just as Greek wasn’t for the Romans when Jerome translated the Vulgate, just as the Greek wasn’t when the 70 translated the TNK into Greek as the LXX..
If you want a ‘holy language’ use Quenya. 😉
Somehow I don’t think you are talking about the old hymns by such as Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, Count Zinzendorf and Martin Luther, but the horrid Nashville Rite ‘praise choruses’.
Jimmy, could you comment on the appropriateness of using evangelical-authored songs in Mass (assuming that the particular songs in question do not have anything in them contrary to Catholic doctrine)? Our choir sings a couple of Don Moen songs on occassion. Thanks.
Oo! Oo! I wanna play too!
Sing a Sixties Song to the Lord
REFRAIN:
Sing a Sixties song to the Lord
Let the tempo bounce to lyrics vague
Sing a Sixties song to the Lord
And the words should not rhyme.
Classic hymns are so passe
Let’s sing a pseudo-psalm
And strum along on steel-stringed guitar
And let the keyboard sound.
REFRAIN
Rise, O children, stand through Mass
The kneelers now are gone
Let’s all hold hands, pray “Our Father” now
Around the altar joined.
REFRAIN
Glad our souls, for we have sung
Our happy happy song
Theology shifts to poetry
The Council “spirit” lives.
REFRAIN
Aw, Steve! You left out all that *glorious* “harvest” imagery! What would an OCP song be without something agrarian rather than Eucharistic?