Thank you! I appreciate the dialog happening here.
Peace,
Mary

I heard about your blog by a tweet from HuffPost. So glad I came across this! It is an affirmation to what we strive for each Sunday at St. Monica’s in Santa Monica, California. So much of what you speak about needs to be modeled by the hierarchy of the Church, but as you allude to, many cathedrals in our country, and most papal events for that matter, do not model liturgical music that is diverse and approachable by the common person in the pew.

I’m not sure if your blog will allow me to post a few links, but I would love for you to check out our weekly livestream. Offer me your comments. Do you feel a sense of connection? As director of music for this mass, and Media Ministry Coordinator for the parish, my prayer is that we can use our new “livestream ministry” to reach out to more folks who are looking for exactly what you have described.

I sincerely would love your thoughts on our weekly broadcast, how we can improve, and how we can spread the word!
Dan Houze
@randomhouze

Our website is: http://www.stmonica.net/live

Fav homilies:
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/31200331
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/27177615
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/13563687

Fav songs:
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/19552758
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/20501752
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/27709579
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/4596167

Eucharistic Prayer & Echo Our Father:
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/16485016

Singing of the Gospel (Feast of Christ the King):
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos/6881082

Complete archives:
https://livestream.com/stmonica90403/sunday530/videos

When I was a child, my Dad played organ at our parish, St. Paul’s in Staatsburg, NY, at 8:00 AM mass for many years when the mass was still in Latin. Needless to say, our family arrived very early for mass, and stayed late!

Not only would Dad play for mass, but Sundays he would play our organ at home and the songs would all be sacred ones. I even remember the cover of the music book he used. One of my Dad’s favorite songs was “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever I hear that song (hardly ever now) I get goose bumps and know that Dad is looking over my shoulder. I never knew it was a Protestant song.

But I do know that whenever I recognize a song a church, I always perk up and want to sing (even though I am horrible.) I am fortunate to belong to a parish here in NC that is so community oriented and wonderfully supportive. We have awesome priests and the homilies are so inspirational and relevant, so I consider myself very fortunate in light of your recent posts.

Also, our music people are awesome, but sometime I can’t go along with their choices. “Amazing Grace” is a big no-no for me . My husband is a firefighter, I’ve heard it too many times, and it doesn’t speak to the Catholic in me.

Thanks for your outlook on things that some of us have not, or cannot express! God Bless

I specifically said no one is asking for perfection. I’m certainly not expecting perfection. I’d much have some off-key notes or missed chords with a little sincerity and joy. I’ve heard from others over on Facebook who are feeling the same way, wishing for something they can at least TRY to sing along with, rather than standing there unable to even begin because the hymn is so un-singable. I have been a member of several contemporary choirs in my life. I have actually written spiritual music. I know what it’s like to get up there and have to sing in front of a congregation, and I can’t say we always succeeded in giving people what they wanted and needed to pray, but we tried our very best and made it our prayer.

When I wrote my first two posts last week, some commenters asked me to please follow-up with specifics. So that’s what I’m going to try to do — talk about places where maybe we — and I mean all of us, not just a select few — can do a better job of making liturgy meaningful.

Thanks for your comment.
Peace.

I think you know very well that most parish musicians/choir members are volunteers, and if they are paid, its all peanuts. And, because most parishes can’t afford to hire a true professional music conductor and/or have a “The Voice” auditions for its choir, they have what they can get.

If anything, we should all be praying for all the ministers in our liturgy–priests, deacons, ushers, greeters, choir, musicians, etc. before mass so that in and through them we’ll be able to encounter the holistic presence of God or better yet, hear his message!

I feel that as we all enter into the sacred liturgy, we are all called to participate and respond with our whole being. And if we can’t hit the note of a song or even carry a tune, so be it! I’ve never ever experienced a whole church chanting or singing all together like its the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at any liturgy I’ve attended. Never ever! Because some just choose not to sing, which is fine.

So ease up a bit in your critical assessment of what is the liturgy. If anything, I encourage you to be more supportive, cooperative and leading in your parish to make the whole liturgical process an encountering of Christ’s presence, celebrating in joy, hope, peace, and love.

There’s already too many in the gallery throwing their “two cents” of complaints/criticism at the pastor and whole parish. But yet, not enough of the same are doing anything to be encouraging, building, leading, etc.

May you truly experience His peace and love.

Thank you for this thoughtful response. I can appreciate how difficult it must be to select music that will appeal to the masses at Mass. Sometimes I think music ministers forget that people in the pews just want something they can attempt to sing — even if it’s not familiar at least fairly easy to grasp — or something they can meditate on that lifts them up even without their participation — chant or some other choir hymn. But no doubt that beautiful music can transport us and give us that deep prayer we crave.

Pastoral means the music should be something the sheep in the pews can sing even though they did not go to Wednesday evening rehearsal or major in music at college. Many of the golden oldies are what they are because they march along in predictable fashion. One may or may not like the Eucharistic song, “I am the bread of life,” but one cannot deny that irregular hymn is difficult to sing when 700 folks are supposed to sing it together. Pastoral also means songs that resonate with the sheep in the pews, so some of the golden oldies are not so golden for the not-so-oldies. (Bread was an objectively inferior music group from the early 1970s, but even a Bread song is still an old friend to someone coming of age then. Perhaps Haugen’s “Gather us In” is an analog for Catholics of a certain age.)

Reverence is a combination of words and tune and rhythm. I noticed at a Presbyterian wedding that their hymnal included “On Eagles’ Wings” but chose to change the words from “I will raise you up” to “God will raise you up” because of the traditional reluctance to sing as though you are God. Tune and rhythm work together, with the challenge being that a song that reminds everyone of something they heard on the radio (e.g., the Cat Stevens hymn) or on Broadway may pull them away from the liturgy rather than into it. Part of the appeal of Latin and chant, I believe, is that you will never hear it on SiriusXM and that “other-ness” helps you meet our entirely “other” God in the Mass.

Othodoxy sometimes runs into poetic license, the most common instance that comes to mind is the objection to the “when we eat this bread and drink this cup” response to the mysterium fide. We, of course, will not eat bread but the body of Christ. Perhaps the writer wanted only one syllable; not every deviation from orthodoxy is fully intentional.