WELCOME!!
John's post below about cantors who make large gestures brings to mind what annoys me the most in the behavior of the cantor: the introductory remarks. This happens in my parish, along with every other parish I have visited in the US. Orthodox, heterodox, it makes no difference. There is always a welcome speech. I realize that the pastors have control (one hopes) over what happens during the liturgy, and I am NOT complaining about cantors who are merely following directions. My point is that this formal welcoming should be abolished by every pastor in the country.
Here is a sample welcome address, with my thoughts about what is going on in the cantor's mind in italics:
Welcome to Pope Saint Gregory the Great Catholic Church. I see a lot of stoned people who may not have any idea they're in a Catholic Church. Today we celebrate Mass for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our parishioners are both illiterate and lazy, since they could easily know this if they would look up the readings in the missalette provided in the pew (Heaven forbid they actually own a missal!) or they could have asked someone to help them with this beforehand, if they cared at all, which they probably don't, so I don't know why I'm bothering to say it out loud. Father Sheen is our celebrant for this Mass, so if you expected Father Feelgood, you still have time to leave and come back at 12:30which is being offered for the people of the parish. We especially welcome any visitors or guests today. We're the Friendly Parish! Please join in singing our entrance processional, Hymn? Antiphon? found in the Adoremus hymnal on page 324: All Creatures of Our God and King. Yep, they're illiterate and our public address system is so bad the public can't understand me when I call numbers. What we really need is for someone to come up with a large board with movable numbers we could use for this. That would be quite an invention. Of course, then we'd have to teach our parishioners to read. We will sing stanzas one, three, four, seven, and eight, then repeat stanzas three and then one, followed by stanza nine. Crazy choir director...That's number 324 in the Adoremus hymnal. Illiterate and stupid.
Why is any of this necessary? The Catholics know they're supposed to be there on Sundays (no matter what the state of their souls). They know that they're welcome in any Catholic church anywhere. There is no need for this to be said aloud. Most people who are unfamiliar with the liturgy will not be made to feel better because someone "officially" welcomes them to the parish. Protestants aren't wandering in off of the streets (unless they're escorted by Catholics, usually), so there's no reason to make the beginning of Mass sound like the generic Protestant service. Yes, I hope they ALL convert, and soon, and I want all prospective converts to be comfortable in a Catholic church, but those interested in conversion will not attend a worship service of another congregation without doing some kind of research first, but this is a topic for another post.
And what about hymn-boards? If the churches were built according to a pleasing model and were not big barns with arena seating (Today, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; tomorrow, the FFA livestock show), hymn-boards could be used. Also, why not sing all of the verses? 10:30 Mass on Sunday takes us about 70 minutes, including all of the ordinary and the Eucharistic Prayer sung in Latin. Two more verses in the hymns would increase that to 73 minutes. What's the rush?
This, in short, is a noisy, noisome, inauspicious way to begin communal worship. These long introductions stress the COMMUNAL aspect; I think we'd do better to stress the WORSHIP. This is easier to do in a quiet and calm church.
My own vision for the beginning of Mass (since it's all about doing things as we want them):
A bell signaling the congregants to rise. The organist playing the introduction to the hymn, the corresponding number of which is posted on the board for all to see (and maybe read through beforehand!). In parishes with multiple hymnals and/or missalettes, abbreviations being used to indicate which hymnal is being used. Calm. Worshipful.
Can someone tell me why this won't work? Didn't this very process work for hundreds and hundreds of years?
Cantores taceant in ecclesium!
