I managed to get through it without spontaneously combusting. I can agree with some of the things Haugen said. For example:
"...music in worship should never be an end in itself. Music (and the music minister) must always point beyond themselves to the Word proclaimed, the rite celebrated, and the God who calls us together."
This, on the other hand, is complete crap:
"However, discussions about what we should sing--this chorale or that praise song, a new contemporary song or an ancient hymn--can miss the whole point."
Music began in Catholic liturgy because some of the prayers were believed to be too profound to be spoken. Musically speaking, we have substituted that which is pedestrian with what was profound. That is why I willl drive across three counties to hear a chanted Latin Mass. Haugen mentions this profundity in the article saying, "We sing to express things too deep for the spoken word." If you've ever really read some of the lyrics to Haugen's praise and worship hymns you would know some things are best left unspoken and unsung. Just because it is music doesn't mean it is profound, more joyful, more relevant, more appropriate, or more spirit-filled.
Haugen was a music director in a Catholic Church for 12 years. When he interjected music into what had previously been a Mass devoid of music, he found himself justifying himself to a parishioner.
Quoting Augustine, I said, "The one who sings, prays twice." "Don't give me that," he said, "I prayed just fine until you interrupted my prayer with your music."
Who among us hasn't felt that way before during Mass?
Under the section "Why do we sing?" Haugen writes:
We sing to remember
Frank Mitchell, a Navajo Blessingway singer, says this about singing:
When I began to learn the Blessingway, it changed my whole life. I began really thinking about ceremonies. I had heard singing before that, but now I began to take it more seriously because I began to realize what life was and the kind of hardships we have to go through. Before I started learning Blessingway, the older people used to tell me that I should think about life more seriously. "If you don't know any songs, you have nothing to go by. If a child grows up in a family like that, he doesn't know where he is going or what he is doing? That is what the older people told me, that I should have something to live by.
If you don't know any songs to sing, you have nothing to go by. What kind of responsibility does this place upon those of us who choose the music our congregations will sing? The hard reality is that songs stay in our memory long after sermons and creeds are forgotten. It is the songs that we know from memory that shape our faith.
It seems to me that Haugen is going out of his way to prove the relevance of music in liturgy. An example from Native American spirituality is not helping his case at all. Taking from other theologies, cultures, cosmologies or practices has historically been a very bad in many instances. He's right about songs staying in our memory - I can't get his garbage out of my brain for a few hours after Mass without a strong does of Arvo Pärt or some such that truly expresses those things that are too profound to speak. Putting music above creeds, like say the Apostle's Creed, is absurd. Perhaps I am just a snob, but I hate, hate, hate the warm and fuzzy music that has cropped up since Vatican II. Popular music takes the ritual out of the Mass. I am just speaking of the musical vocabulary and instrumentation. The lyrics in some praise and worship songs is theologically backwards at worst and sketchy at best. Frequently the Eucharist is presented as bread and wine rather than the Body and Blood of Our Lord. The musical offering should reflect as much as possible the offering being made at the altar. Again I say this does not call for hootenanny!
