The choir directors at my parish have been informed that the liturgy/music office is getting beaucoup complaints about two things:
1. Songs are not familiar enough.
2. There is “too much” Latin being done.
Here’s the environment:
Sat. Vigil Mass – contemporary group – piano, guitar and mostly recent music
1st Mass on Sunday – Mix of traditional and contemporary, with some classic hymns. Sometimes piano are guitar are used for accompaniment. Some standards in terms of Greek/Latin prayers such as the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.
2nd Mass on Sunday – More traditional, mostly hymns but some songs. Some piano accompaniment but no guitar. Some Greek and Latin prayers such as the Kyrie and Agnus Dei and some Latin motets. This is the Mass I conduct.
3rd Mass on Sunday – Totally contemporary: guitars, tambourines, conga drums, etc. Yes – there ara conga drums used at our Parish.
Now – I am by no means Captain Latin when it comes to the liturgy. I am not one of those people that wishes I was born in 1890 so I could have died before Vatican II and watched the liturgical mayhem of the 1970’s from purgatory.
Use of Latin is well-within the directives of the Vatican II documents on Liturgy. Chant and Latin Polyphony are encouraged directly.
So my frustration is this:
When you have plenty of liturgical choices, why complain when a Kyrie or Agnus Dei isn’t in the same language you use to order pizza? Pick another Mass if you get some kind of rash when you hear a chanted Sanctus. And if you choose to go to the Mass that has a few very typical prayers sung in Latin, then don’t call the liturgy office and get all indignant. Just because some un-glued liturgist told you 25 years ago how evil Latin was doesn’t mean you have the right to ruin it for everyone else. There are way too many choices if you feel the need to go to a liturgy that has been liberated from 1500 years of musical tradition.
As for songs being unfamiliar – I’m sure the contemporary groups do lots of original compositions with odd intervals, rhythms and melodies. We do a few slightly obscure hymns on an annual basis on Sundays like the Baptism of the Lord. I don’t have strong feelings about the unfamiliar music issue, except to say that it’s possible to have that mentality bring you “One Bread, One Body” on 32 Sundays a year.
“Welcome to Purgatory, here’s your abridged OCP hymnal containing the six songs we’ll be singing until you are ready to join in the glory of your Eternal Lord and Creator. Please turn to page 4 and we’ll start with ‘On Eagle’s Wings'”
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I enjoyed your pique and agree. In my parish there is a Community of Tongan Catholics. they are great when singing in their mother tongue with traditional harmonies. they are good when singing Kyrie or Agnus Dei. but when it comes to “You who…” it’s as dull as any native english speaking group.
I’d bet more than one pizza ordered in English that the complainants are Baby boomers. In my experience that’s who typically has a hissy fit over a little Latin here and there. For some reason a lot of Boomers (and more culturally liberal WW2 gen folk) seem to associate the transition from Latin to English with some sort of cultural awakening.
It’s in the same group of “cultural revolution markers” as birth control, a strongly-Darwinist view of evolution, acceptance of fornication, divorce and remarriage, things that “all right-thinking people who are with it” apparently must accept. The Gospel according to Norman Lear, which for some reason is supposed to apply to Catholics.
For the record, I for one prefer English liturgy, with some Latin sprinkled here and there as you described, John. I’ve just never been drawn to the Latin Mass. And I actually enjoy a certain amount of Glory & Praise music along with “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and “Holy God We Praise thy Name.”
But it is neither reverent nor healthy to insist that only music written since 1965 be used, or that something is wrong with the beautiful language of the Church. We’ll all be better off when the reactionary liberal Boomers are at their condos in Florida and younger people can start cleaning up the wreckage.
Well John, it’s a great service you’ve done for those of us who wouldn’t have a clue about the thread of continuity in Catholic tradition and if guys like you weren’t around we’d think ‘Ashes’ etc., were Catholic tradition (which is the aim of the OCP only crowd, I think).
What do the parishioners who attend the Mass with the more traditional music think? It seems only fair to me that there is a choice in ‘types’ of Masses… your parish certainly has a good mix at the moment but if you are going to be sort of silenced, then there isn’t going to be a choice anymore. Drives me nuts that so many liberal and tolerant people are not so liberal and tolerant for what they don’t like or what they don’t think is relevant.
From my vantage point, there is no traditional Catholic music in my parish but on occation when the music director is able to sneak one in (against the wishes of the pastor who does not like Latin and who does not like traditional music and is vocal about both) I see more people singing around me… many more sing the traditional stuff than they do the OCP stuff.
I’m a baby boomer who loves to sing in Latin. Our pastor (recently deceased) said that there would be NO Latin at our parish and this dictat is carrying on through the new administrator. But I can identify with the other complaint you got: the songs are unfamiliar. One problem is that publishers keep changing the words J-U-S-T slightly enough so that you can’t rely on your memory to sing them. Even Christmas carols! I found that irritating as a cantor….and irritating in the pew. It wasn’t so much that people want the modern stuff. Even the people who specifically want the “traditional” music want “Holy God we praise thy name”…..every week…..why not?, they asked me. I love “Holy God” but not every week. No matter WHAT choices are made some people will complain.
I’ve since gone to sing at our Cathedral….where I can happily sing in Latin (at least one motet) every single week.
Couple of points for Ruthann –
I think lots of folks don’t understand that the music should reinforce the scripture readings of the day. They think “I like” means “Appropriate Most of the Time.” I like cake, but it’s on the index of forbidden foods until I lose some weight.
It’s pretty disheartening to hear about the Pastors who have banned Latin. It’s within their right under canon law from my understanding, but it’s pretty misguided and certainly takes a little of the “universal” out of “catholic.”
Peace and happy friday!
I love latin in the liturgy, and there was only one time that I’ve ever complained about too much latin (and that was only to my wife)
At a Good Friday service, some of the one-time-a-year only responses were done in latin (behold the wood of the cross… come, let us worship). I felt it artificial, like they needed to ‘add’ latin wherever they could for some reason.
Yipes, your anti-Latin folks would go ballistic at our parish — and all the Masses are at pretty much the same Latin dosage level.
I’m only a very, very infrequent “too much Latin” complainer. For example, I fought hard to keep the Exsultet in English at the Easter Vigil, out of deference to the non-Catholic relatives of our RCIA folks.
I won that fight this year; I doubt if I will next year.
OCP touts its multicultural commitment, so if you use their hymnals to add several Spanish-language campesino guitar hymns and a smattering of Vietnamese and Tagalog, that would be fine.
But using the universal language of the Church is not.
Ruthann: The impression I have is that there are a couple of reasons that Orwell Correctness Police (OCP) keeps changing hymns. I hope I’m wrong but don’t think so.
First of all, to keep strengthening the political correctness of the hymns. Any reference to sin and hell, or a stray ‘he,’ might be missed one year, and is caught by OCP editors the next year.
Second, it helps sell more books. If you keep changing the words, a parish can’t come back a couple of years later after the suburb and the congregation have grown, and just order another 50 or 100 hymnals. Surprise! You have to buy a whole new set.
I would add a third motivation for hymn-twiddling: you get to keep the copyright.
I wish we had any Latin at our parish. Any at all. As for these people who complain about “unfamiliar hymns”, puh-leeze, even “Be Not Afraid” was new once, in those heady days of the Carter administration…. Just be tolerant and inclusive, and learn the new hymns!
I too am a baby boomer who loves Latin and chant. Based on the comments, I wonder if we just don’t complain the way the anti-Latin folks do.
Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about dropping in various RC churches of a Sunday morning and cheerfully asking the ushers, “This is a ROMAN Catholic Church, isn’t it? Then, what time is the Mass in the language of the Romans?”
It’s too bad Latin is considered to be a “bomb” – that is, be careful about it or someone will get offended. It’s pretty silly that it elicits such anger from people. Especially when there are plenty of other choices if you want your Mass straight up in English.
I often find the best answer is to point out that V2 encouraged the use of Latin. Since the complainer-types are usually the kind who think Vatican 2 authorized every kind of change (but they’ve never read the docs) this is very satisfying.
“I often find the best answer is to point out that V2 encouraged the use of Latin. Since the complainer-types are usually the kind who think Vatican 2 authorized every kind of change (but they’ve never read the docs) this is very satisfying.”
Bingo.
I’m not even trying to intorduce more Latin yet — just more chant and chant based music. When the pastor left the room at one liturgy committee meeting recently, the DRE and the head of the committee suddenly turned to me (the music director,) and wanted to know WHY we were doing so many chanted psalms instead of the loverly Haugen/Haas settings they’d been using.
I’m just trying to follow the directives of Vatican II, and the rubrics in the General Instruction, to give chant “pride of place.”
Much open mouthed gaping and hemming and hawing followed.
When father walked back in they dropped the subject, and started looking around the room with studied nonchalance, so I guess they’d already had the conversation with him, and knew he wasn’t on their side.
Now I notice them sitting, glaring during mass sometimes instead of singing the responses, and it has come back to me that they hate trying to plan things with me, because I “always have some reason for what [I] want to do.”
Well, YEAH.
It seems beyond their comprehension that it’s not just personal choices, or parroting of the opinion of the presenter of the latest diocesan “workshop,” that I’ve actually done my homework and can offer REASONS for my decisions.
“What VCII didn’t ban Latin? Chant wasn’t outlawed? There are actual words of the mass that are specified, we can’t make up our own ritual every week?”
I wish someone like you was the music director at my parish!
P.S. By parish I mean Newman Center. We are college students and thus have neither nostalgia or Baby Boomer baggage. Therefore we are free to recognize the excellence of chant, and even those who aren’t familiar with it are more open-minded. OCP seems to be slowly catching on, since they are now selling books of chant and acknowledging that V II explicitly encouraged it (as if that were this new discovery they just made).
Good work, Mort. Liberal-minded diocese or parish bureaucrats have had lots of success by citing Church documents selectively and out of context.
Many cathedral “renovations”–such as the vandalism jobs designed by Albany diocese desecration expert Fr. Richard Vosko–are justified by saying “Vatican norms require us to put the altar in the nave and hang an X-Files string-bean Christ-thing on sticks over the altar.”
Vatican II, of course, requires no such thing. Same with “contemporary music forms” in the Mass. It is very important to know and cite Vatican II and canon law wherever possible in these situations.
Wow. I’m fortunate to live in a diocese where the cathedral’s music is firmly and finely in the Tradition and where a short distance away one can hear a morning Mass using the Tridentine rite. Wonderful.
However, it seems that all the other parishes are more or less in the grip of OCP Haugen/Haas, Inc. Some more than others. These tend to be the big family parishes in the suburbs, with lots of teenagers, and which are competing (?) with Protestant “mega-churches.”
It’s sad that the very parishes with the most young people are the ones least likely to make serious use of the best music Catholics have made over the centuries.
The youth are cut off, wandering, and bored. Few of them sing.
I live in Germany and the parish where we attend Mass recently had a Mass together with the local Portuguese community during which a statue of Our Lady of Fatima was dedicated. I am comfortable in German, but don’t yet know the hymns and am completely lost in Portuguese. The Latin(+ Kyrie) prayers (including the Credo) really tied what would otherwise have been a very disjointed Mass together (two homilies, two Gospels) and I left overwhelmed by a sense of the Church’s universality. The Latin prayers were truly “common ground”.
Parishioners at our church may choose from a nearly all-Latin N.O., a rhythm-praise-contemporary ensemble (which Mass we have attended only once, by accident, of course), and two cantor-and-organ only Masses. I complain, but only because I am arrogant and can’t conceive why anyone with any sense at all would want one of those insidious Praise Bands in his ear on Sunday morning.
John, my response to anyone who complained about your choir at the 10:00 Mass would be, “Go to OLGC. You will find there all the happy-clappy your heart could possibly desire.”