I really like your blog and read it most every day, but I was having some
kind of posttraumatic syndrome flashback when I read about your inadvertent visit to St. Anthony's 50th anniversary extravaganza. Was it your first visit there? I belonged to the parish for about 10 years. Where do I begin....* the Palm Sunday when the choir processed to "Ride On, King Jesus," with much swaying and clapping, etc. (It might have worked, too, if they had been a gospel choir, instead of a bunch of elderly white women....)
To answer your question, I have been there before for daily Mass. I never noticed the drumset by the piano though.
We do that hymn on Palm Sunday but we don't clap and sway - It's good walking music for the procession. It's fine if you are not trying to give the congregation a cultural experience. If, as eldery white women, you do try to give the congregation a cultural experience it makes them uncomfortable and embarassed for you. Now on Easter we do "My Lord, What a Morning" and a choir of twenty or thirty people can do that without making a spectacle of themselves. All you have to do is relax the vowels a bit and you are being true to the spirit of the composition. It sounds like music that way instead of making in an auditory and visual extravaganza. Note that the composer doesn't write in the score "Sway to the left and right, clap on beats 2 and 4."
* or the Easter when the music director, after playing the preludes, ceremoniously removed his sport coat and replaced it with a sort of ivory brocade smoking jacket...
Yikes. I need a minute to fully grasp the absurdity of that action. What liturgical purpose could that have possibly served?
* or the time Bishop Loverde had to explain to the pastor that, although Bp. Keating had dropped dead, it was somewhat premature of Fr. Tuck to act as if the prohibition on altar girls had died with him. According to the pastor's tirade in the bulletin the next Sunday, the part that really stung was not the cease-and-desist order, but the fact that it was apparently parishioners who turned him in. He actually said something like "I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been some of these mindlessly conservative priests we have in Arlington, but I thought you people would be more progressive..." (Appreciate me, darn it! I'm painfully hip!)
Wow and yikes. Not a good wow - a wow as in "he said mindlessly conservative priests we have in Arlington."
* or the director of religious education, who found out I was a convert from the Episcopal church, and said, "Why in the world would an intelligent woman leave the Episcopal church to become Catholic? The Episcopalians are doing such wonderful things for women!!" (My response: "That's why I left.")*Sigh* All those folks are still in place.
Now that was such an indescribably moronic statement I can't believe a Director of Religious Education said it. Do you want someone in charge of RE to say, "Go worship in whatever Church matches your relativistic values and social agenda!" If I ever have children I would like to belong to a church where the DRE is not a schismatic.
I guess I'm being uncharitable, because St. Anthony really does have some good social programs. And the letter of the liturgical law is usually
obeyed. However, it isn't a bilingual parish. It's more like an English parish and a Hispanic parish sharing the same facilities. Other than the kind of extravaganza you witnessed, there's no interaction between the two.
It's regrettable that they don't interact. As for being uncharitable don't sweat it. I just called the DRE a schismatic and a moron. I began today promising myself and all our gentle readers that I would be more charitable. Well tomorrow is a new day, I suppose.
