Liturgical music?

I am amazed that with the Church’s nearly 2000 year treasury of liturgical music, the standard for liturgical music, at least in some parishes, took only around 40 years to reach its current low state.

I am not a cradle Catholic, and to the best of my knowledge, I never attended a Catholic mass before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. My earliest spiritual development was in Methodism in the 1960’s, and more recently in a continuing Anglican (conservative Anglocatholic) church. Both had a rich English hymnody. I am not a musician, and I realize that my preferences have been shaped by experience and familiarity; but I believe that beyond mere preferences there are objective standards for music, and that I can, to some extent, differentiate between the good and the bad. When I came to the Anglican church, I discovered hymns that were unfamiliar, but that were musically moving and which had reverent lyrics. When I determined that I was being called to enter the Catholic Church, I thought I was prepared for what I knew would be a change in the liturgical music, but my experience last Sunday proved that to be wrong.

At the Mass for the second Sunday in ordinary time, the processional was “Sing a New Church.” When I heard the opening strains of Nettleton, I hoped for the best. I got through the first stanza , but when we got to the line “Sing a new church into being” in the refrain I was somewhat taken aback. As I listened to the remaining lyrics, my perception grew that we were not singing a hymn to our Creator, but rather an ode to ourselves. For the remainder of the introductory rites I was more occupied with trying to figure out what it means to “sing a new church into being” than to attending to the liturgy. Is not this the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church? Can we “sing a new church into being?” If we could, should we?

A few weeks ago the responsorial psalm was Bobby Fisher’s All the Ends of the Earth. I don’t have a real problem with this as a song, and I wouldn’t mind hearing it on the local contemporary Christian radio station, or at a Gaither gospel concert, but it does not seem to fit within the context of the Mass. The combination of the jarring piano accompaniment and the sight of the cantor’s swaying to the rhythm managed to jolt me out of an attitude of reverence into an attitude of annoyance that persisted until we candidates were dismissed.

I know that the Mass is not about me, and I pray that I am not assisting at the Mass for my entertainment, but we are offering our worship and praise to our Creator, and I cannot believe that these hymns are the best that we have to offer.

I am convinced that the fullness of truth is found in the Catholic Church, and this will not deter me from being received into the Church, but I will need God’s grace to keep me from being distracted by some of the music. In fairness to the parish musical director, I have not heard anything else as bad as these two examples. And I know that it could be worse.

Warning: you may find this video painful to watch.



Just in case you think that the video is faked, this Mass took place at the 2008 West Coast Regional Call To Action Conference in San Jose April 25-27, 2008