"Lord of the Dance" is off the list the diocese says. So is "Let us Break Bread together on our Knees".

Guidelines

Last week a decree from the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri formally aligned its music practices with the US Bishops Conference's 2020 guidelines.

The diocese's goal is to encourage "full, conscious and active participation in the liturgy" through a common musical repertoire, says Jefferson's Bishop W. Shawn McKnight

The decree lists several hymns that should be "absolutely forbidden" says McKnight. Many fail to present the Church's teaching on the Eucharist accurately.

Most were written in the 1980s or 1990s; the oldest dates back to the 1960s.

Father Daniel Merz, who chairs the diocesan liturgical commission, says some hymns over-emphasise elements of the Eucharist, such as its communal and social dimensions, while neglecting other crucial elements such as the sacrifice, the Real Presence and the need for personal conversion.

In addition, any music composed by David Haas, Cesaréo Gabarain and Ed Conlin is banned: all three have credible accusations of abuse against them.

Approved hymns

Merz says besides listing banned hymns and composers, the decree lays out four Mass settings approved for use in the diocese - though parishes are not obliged to use them.

A list of approximately 130 approved hymns is being compiled for parishes to incorporate into Masses, thus ensuring they have a diverse, theologically sound collection for common use.

Concerns raised

The US Bishops' 2020 guidelines - "Catholic Hymnody at the Service of the Church" - lays out criteria for evaluating hymns.

Emphasising music's formative power and its influence on Catholics' understanding and practice of the faith, they warn that hymns with inaccurate or incomplete theology can distort understanding of key doctrines.

Some lyrics used in the liturgy "may be misleading or lacking in substance" the guidelines say. They have no place in a Catholic Mass.

Examples include hymns implying the Eucharist is merely bread and wine rather than the true body and blood of Jesus.

Another key target was hymns that convey an inaccurate view of the Jewish people, particularly hymns that "imply that the Jews as a people are collectively responsible for the death of Christ". "The Lord of the Dance" is particularly problematic in this category.

Music serves Scripture

Liturgical music expert Adam Bartlett sees McKnight's decree as an "invitation to rediscover what music in the Mass is truly meant to be" for parishes in the diocese.

The distinction between Catholic devotional and liturgical music is important he says. Devotional music can cater to individual preferences and contemporary styles. Liturgical music should aim higher.

"I think there's a great opportunity for a real renewal in liturgical music … young people are drawn to beauty" he commented.

"Those who are actually converting and deeply engaged in their faith, I think are here because we want the real thing."

Source

• Catholic News Agency

However, one cannot escape the dread feeling that the reforms have not made the grade.

Did something go awry?

Twenty years ago, and more, we had such great hope.

Everything was going to be bright and new and shining.

Every parish would feel the warmth of the newly risen sun and rejoice and be glad, praising and glorifying the Lord.

We had great hopes in those days for congregational participation that would fill our churches with a gorgeous sound.

It does not seem that the promise has been completely fulfilled.

Fatigue has settled over us. We do not succeed past a certain point. Some people have become frantic and are still carrying out bizarre experiments—called liturgical—to awaken interest.

Religious art is at an all-time low.

The only interest in this area seems to lie in producing banners proclaiming peace and happiness.

However, when we listen to and watch the celebration of the Eucharist, the mood we derive is grey, sombre and lifeless.

The banners shout "Joy," but the healthy man does not talk about health.

We refer to grace as the seed of glory and can find only a cheerless and dismal atmosphere in most of our churches. There is a sameness and repetition and, inevitably, a lack of interest in the celebration of Sunday Mass.

There is one area in our liturgy that has been sadly neglected.

I speak of the music involved in the liturgy.

Music will save the situation.

Surely that is a strong statement, but it cannot be disproven empirically, because good liturgical music has never been given a chance in the United States.

Art reflects life.

Liturgical music reflects religious life.

What we hear at Mass certainly reflects a discouraged and confused church.

One cannot deny the drab, lonely, dull and hopeless atmosphere that liturgical music in American parishes provides.

If this is a prediction of the hope for future glory, I have serious questions about the contemporary American concept of heaven. It seems to be a dreary place.

Lex orandi, lex credendi. Prayer mirrors belief.

One reason for this musical dullness lies in the wordiness that currently burdens the ritual.

Some liturgists now are saying: "Too many words; too many words."

Throughout history, it has been difficult to keep a classic balance between text and music.

Whenever the weight fell too strongly on the words, the music became deadly. As Pope John Paul put it: "Faith not only needs to be confessed and spoken; it also needs to be sung. And music indicates that the matter of faith is also a matter of joy, love, reverence and exuberance."

Since music is vital to the liturgical reforms it shows the Achilles' heel of the liturgists, who forgot to account for one thing here in the United States in reforming the ritual.

They did not count on the fact that American Catholic church music has always been in the hands of amateurs.

And it continues that way. Read more

• David F. Gallagher is a member of the executive committee of the Boston chapter of the American Guild of Organists, is the music director of St Joseph's Parish, Lynn, Mass.
• This article originally appeared in America in 1982.

The more the Church has sought to make its services more "inclusive" and "relevant", the more Christians have converted to other denominations where they think things are done properly (notably Roman Catholicism), and the more those curious about Christianity have avoided the C of E.

Confirmation of this absurd situation arrived yesterday in new guidance for faith schools from the Church, preposterously named a statement of "entitlement and expectation".

No, this does not refer to David Cameron's catastrophic attempts to build a post-Downing Street business career, but what hymns should be chosen for singing in assemblies.

The diktat has it that strongly "confessional" hymns are to be avoided because they may make children and teachers alike feel uncomfortable.

They are said not to be sufficiently "invitational", which seems to equate Anglican worship with a cheese and wine party.

Those of us (and I speak as an atheist) who thought one of the purposes of religion was to make people feel guilty about having done things frowned upon by the Bible, and to expect God to be both unhappy about our behaviour but to forgive us our trespasses, will wonder what is wrong with a little discomfort.

Apparently, the halfwits who run the Church of England (and are running it into the ground) feel it is dangerous because "there should be no assumption of Christian faith in those present."

It is all, of course, about diversity: and the increasingly toxic idea that causing someone the mildest offence (such as assuming that someone in a Christian school might actually subscribe to Christianity) is equivalent in gravity to gratuitously amputating one of their limbs without permission or anaesthetic.

In a Church of England school, it is surely a reasonable assumption that the children are there because their parents subscribe to the basic tenets of the Church of England and the Christian faith; and that the teachers are grown up enough to know what to expect when they sign up for such a job.

The children, like generations before them, can like it or lump it until they reach the age where the law says they are masters of their own destiny.

The teachers, having reached that age, if they feel the institution insufficiently diverse, should go and work somewhere else.

Millions of us who found the Christian story somewhat far-fetched nonetheless went through our educational careers being culturally enhanced by the magnificent tunes that many of our hymns featured.

The doctrine, except for the precociously devout, were neither here nor there.

One obvious casualty of this bonkers pronouncement will be one of the most ravishing hymn tunes ever written, Repton - recognisable immediately from its opening lines:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Forgive our foolish ways!

One can almost hear the squeals of anguish from the Church's imbeciles-in-chief.

Can we really be expected to tolerate being told that some of our ways might be foolish?

And even if they were, why would it be God's place to forgive them?

That magnificent tune comes from Sir Hubert Parry's oratorio Judith.

In these culturally benighted times, when the nearest most children come to being inculcated with an idea of beauty is being force-fed pop music and the inanities of CBeebies, when otherwise would they have a chance not just to hear, but to participate in, the music of a composer so great as Parry?

One must also doubt that they are encouraged to sing another of his majestic tunes, Jerusalem - which although not a hymn appears in most hymn books - given the entirely erroneous associations made for it with English nationalism and, therefore, colonialism, fascism, imperialism, white supremacy and all the rest of the largely imaginary components of our growing litany of cultural self-hatred.

It is suggested, instead, that other favourites such as Kumbaya and Lord of the Dance - neither of which one could pretend has the slightest association with a high aesthetic or cultural enrichment - are perfectly safe, because they do not entail undue grovelling to the Almighty for real or imagined wickedness.

It does not seem to occur to the those advocating this censorship that few take any notice of the words anyway, and that in life we all have to put up with things - including aspects of the Church of England - that we find tedious or that we disagree with; but that in putting up with them we are provoked to think, mature, and eventually form our own conclusions.

The Church of England has done its best to desecrate - and I choose that verb carefully - its cultural heritage.

Worshippers have been driven away by having to endure the Princess Margaret Bible and the Rocky Horror Prayer Book. Organs have been replaced by guitars and tambourines. Continue reading

• Simon Heffer writes a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph

A world-wide lack of organists and pianists is partly to blame for the shift to guitar-backed music, but churches are also changing to appeal to newer tastes.

Retired Nelson church organist and teacher Alan K Gray said churches were struggling to attract younger people with traditional music and many were shifting to more modern songs of worship.

"The hymn book is dying out and getting replaced by a band."

Royal School of Church Music president Paul Ellis said churches were struggling to attract trained organists.

"I think it [band music] is the fashion. People think that by having different music you might attract more people to the church."

Electric keyboards are used widely in churches now as many struggle to find organists.

Ellis said that new worship music was more suited to pianos rather than traditional instruments, like the organ, although older congregations preferred the traditional style.

Auckland Organist Association organist co-ordinator Walter Nicholls said the ageing population of organists was a serious crisis and that a lack of younger musicians to replace them could spell the end for the organ in church music.

"Small suburban churches may have a pipe organ but no one to play it, or if they do they're 70. We have incredibly good organists but they tend to get to a point around finishing school where they decide not to continue."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image:haydenvillechurch.org

Marquette Bishop John Doerfler wrote a letter to priests in his diocese in January spelling out what he wants.

The Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei will be sung and the Communion antiphon will be chanted.

An approved diocesan hymnal will be implemented by 2017, with other hymnals forbidden.

A series of liturgical music workshops and seminars will be offered in the meantime to get parishes on board.

Bishop Doerfler told the National Catholic Reporter that the musical initiative is intended to promote Pope Francis's emphasis on evangelisation.

"Music is a key part of the Sunday liturgy," he said, arguing that if fallen-away or potentially new Catholics experience good music at Mass, they will be more likely to return.

Bishop Doerfler's predecessor in Marquette, Bishop Alexander Sample, had been critical of some contemporary church music.

In a 2013 pastoral letter, Bishop Sample stated: "Some hymns in approved hymnals, music issues and misallettes do not reflect Catholic theology and should not be used."

Bishop Doerfler said his proposed Marquette hymnal will include about 300 pieces, ranging from traditional favourites such as "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name", Gregorian chant-style antiphons, and more contemporary pieces such as "Be Not Afraid."

"We are not banning music," he said. His goal, rather, is "to enhance what parishes are already doing."

The addition of chant will improve liturgical music in the diocese and it is accessible in style for even the smallest of parishes, said Bishop Doerfler.

Benedictine Fr Anthony Ruff, a liturgical music expert, appreciates Gregorian chant, but he questioned whether small parishes will have the resources to do chant well.

He also questioned whether a diocese can gather together copyrights for a hymnal from publishers who have their own products to promote.

Fr Ruff suggested that dioceses look to the US bishops' 2007 document "Sing to the Lord" as the basis for reflection on liturgical music.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Sing to the Lord
• Image: TaylorMarshall.com

John Romeri resigned as head of liturgical music for Philadelphia archdiocese, effective on June 30.

It was a role Dr Romeri held for five years.

It is unclear what role he will have in preparations for an outdoor Mass to be celebrated by Pope Francis in Philadelphia in late September.

The Mass at the Ben Franklin Parkway is expected to draw more than 1 million people.

Concerning his resignation, Dr Romeri said "there are simply irreconcilable differences" with Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput over the role and style of music at Mass generally.

Dr Romeri indicated that he and the archbishop had clashed almost from the time the archbishop was appointed to Philadelphia in 2011.

The music specialist wrote that these "several years of discontent" on Archbishop Chaput's part culminated with the music Dr Romeri arranged this April for Holy Week and Easter.

The approach, he said, "was not well received by the archbishop".

A spokesman for Archbishop Chaput said he could not comment on personnel matters and "there are no additional updates".

But he said that the archdiocese "will be prepared for the visit of the Holy Father on all fronts, including music for the Mass on the Parkway".

Dr Romeri is said to have more of a "high church" sensibility in liturgy than Archbishop Chaput.

In 2010, Archbishop Chaput said he was grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for allowing a wider use of the extraordinary form of the Mass, " . . . because we need access to all of the Church's heritage of prayer and faith".

But Archbishop Chaput stated that he personally found the Novus Ordo form, "properly celebrated, a much richer expression of worship".

Dr Romeri will continue as music director for Philadelphia's Cathedral Basilica of Sts Peter and Paul throughout the US summer.

The resignation has sparked online debate among Catholic liturgists.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• First Things
• Image: Stltoday.com

Mike McMahon was a former director of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

This is the national body for liturgical music leaders in the Catholic Church in the United States.

More and more Catholic institutions in the US are dismissing gay and lesbian staff members.

This is not because of their sexual orientation, but because they are contracting same-sex marriages.

Marriages in these cases are public acts, liable to give scandal and confuse the laity, Church sources say.

Continue reading