Is cheese part of a balanced diet?

Here’s your cheese hat trick for the week. In fact, we’ve mentioned cheese so much this week it wouldn’t surprise me if we start getting hits from Google searches like “cheese+balanced+diet.”
RC got me thinking earlier this week. He said even at his indult Mass they have a little cheese. And if you can have Spaghetti commercial music at the indult Mass, what’s wrong with a little English Nationalist music at your suburban High Mass? What’s wrong with foot-stomping Irish favorites like “Canticle of the Turning?”
Are sentimental or “worldly” musical styles like eating a Big Mac once a month – enjoyed sparingly they can be good for the body and soul?
Leave thoughts below…

5 comments

  1. A Big Mac is okay if you have it in moderations. As for “world music” in church, it’s appropriate to hear it during one’s spare time, not during mass.

  2. I second Andrew. I read all the letters of 20th-century popes on music and they all stand pretty much together, though some were more explicit. Pope Pius XII in particular talked about how there needed to be *sacred* music for Mass and religious music in a popular style (with doctrinally correct words) for other times. The latter would serve a good purpose – virtuous entertainment and a sort of effortlessly memorized catechism – but sacred music (style as well as lyrical content) is proper to the sacred liturgy (they define, but you know, and I’m trying to make this short). Instead of following this plan – sacred at Mass and pop religious at home, private devotion, and public life – we typically impose (pseudo-) pop on the Mass and have nothing or all profane music the other hundred-sixty-some hours of the week. So in short, I laud doctrinally accurate popular religious music and even tolerate the sentimental or cheesy so long as the sacredness of the liturgy is respected musically, and that means sacred plainchant or other types of music that share in its spirit and power.

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