Guitar Masses and Faith Formation

America magazine has published a first-person account by religious educator Lisa Middendorf Woodall, describing how the guitar Masses of her childhood provided a spiritual touchstone for her life. In “Confessions of a Guitar-Mass Catholic” she writes:

I pondered and prayed over what I would do if I actually had a hammer, what the sounds of silence were and what it was that I could teach my parents. It would be many years before I no longer looked forward to going to Mass, because what I experienced each week in that old church was a solid sense of peace and wholeness.

She also describes some powerful memories of the old church of her childhood, which was later torn down after a new one was built. The older Classical-Acoustic-Guitar-vector28445church and the guitar Masses do not stand in tension with one another in her memory. They are both part of the one gift and enchantment; they are both claimed as her own:

I loved being in that old church. I loved its creakiness, its heaviness. I loved the vestiges of the personal histories that lived in there. The familiar family names glazed into the stained-glass windows, the sturdy spring clips on the backs of the pews that had held a thousand hats and purses, and the little frames that had at one time reserved certain pews for a certain few contributors. Mostly, I loved the memories of voices singing together, thoughtfully and joyfully, to the warm and inviting music of the guitar Masses, everyone holding hands and people actually smiling during Mass.

I didn’t simply feel as if I belonged to that church, I felt that the church belonged to me.

You can read the whole thing here.

I think her account speaks for an experience that is sadly drowned out by the contentious arguments of the so-called “liturgy wars.” Does her story resonate with your own experience? Why or why not?

 

Rita Ferrone

Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker on issues of liturgy and church renewal in the Roman Catholic tradition. She is currently a contributing writer and columnist for Commonweal magazine and an independent scholar. The author of several books about liturgy, she is most widely known for her commentary on Sacrosanctum Concilium (Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Paulist Press). Her most recent book, Pastoral Guide to Pope Francis's Desiderio Desideravi, was published by Liturgical Press.

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Comments

52 responses to “Guitar Masses and Faith Formation”

  1. Terri Miyamoto

    I read that article yesterday, as I was preparing for this weekend – a trip back to my undergraduate university where I am celebrating a 40+ year reunion with companions from our Newman Club. The reason this article struck me so vividly is that I was selecting music for our informal liturgy together from the songs we shared at that time and thinking how important they were to our faith. We sang a lot from Godspell. We, too, thought about wielding that hammer. Was it John Denver that gave us “Friends, I will remember you”? These songs pulled us together into a community of faith that we can re-enter 40 years later. We have become theologians, liturgists, lay ministers, parents and spouses, professionals of all sorts…people living our faith. I am proud of who we are and we all admit the importance of our Newman experience, centered around liturgy, in our lives.

    As I was working on music, I thought how negatively I would feel about choosing this music for a parish Mass today. I suppose our music choices are better now, but there was a special power in the feelings that “inappropriate” music evoked in young people of the time.

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  2. Peter Kwasniewski

    I’m glad it worked for her. It doesn’t seem to have worked for thousands if not millions of other kids who, in the same or similar circumstances, wandered away from the Church in high school or college. Perhaps they will return by the grace of God, but it’s not clear that the guitar Masses worked their magic on them.

    If we are simply swapping experiences, I can say that the only time the music at church ever impressed me as a child is when the organ played with all the stops out and the choir sang in four parts. The rest of the music seemed wishy-washy and trite. If I had never discovered a more traditional way of worship, I would certainly have apostatized long ago, for lack of spiritual nourishment.

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    1. Maureen O'Brien

      @Peter Kwasniewski:

      I agree with you. The first “guitar mass” I heard – I walked out of and did not return to the Catholic Church for decades. The first real Mass I truly heard was on line — an SSPX Missa Cantata (it is still on line, by the way) From the beginning chant of the Aspergis to the conclusion, I knew I found the way for me — apparently, I was not alone because that church was packed (in Paris, where churches are usually empty). One of the nearby parish churches offers a Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form and I gratefully attend — it brought me home. For the life of me (and probably,a lot of other people too) I cannot understand why so many of our clergy are so committed to guitars, tambourines and ugly music! It has emptied more churches than the devil himself.

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  3. william dehaas

    It doesn’t seem to have worked for thousands if not millions of other kids who, in the same or similar circumstances, wandered away from the Church in high school or college. Perhaps they will return by the grace of God, but it’s not clear that the guitar Masses worked their magic on them. Per Peter

    Perfect example of a *non sequitur*. It is a logical fallacy to attribute that *thousands if not millions of kids* wandered away from the Church because of guitar masses.

    As a Professor at a so called college, one would think that you could marshal a better statement, analysis, and, at minimum, avoid logical fallacies.

    It goes right along with your swapping of personal experiences – as if your experience is superior over all others. Sorry, if the core of your faith is based upon a *traditional way of worship* or you would have apostatized long ago, it doesn’t say much for the core of your faith. Suggest that most find the core of their faith in their relationship to God/Christ; the principles by which they live; and a common goal of building up the kingdom of God with their community.

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  4. Todd Flowerday

    When I became Catholic at age 11, my parish had a musically-oriented and much-loved pastor. For his 25th anniversary in 1969, the organ choir and folk group combined to do an album of traditional and contemporary music. While there wasn’t much mixing between the two, there seemed to be a certain harmony, which, to my pre-teen eyes, confirmed the “rightness” of my becoming Catholic. Like Peter, I preferred the organ, especially when played well. We had a living room mini-organ at home. My dad played the guitar.

    When I went away to college, I was exposed to a new level of liturgical music, mainly the SLJ’s. The Mass I usually attended was accompanied on guitars and a wind quartet. The student director arranged many 70’s tunes for clarinets, flute, recorder, and the occasional bassoon appearance of his girlfriend. Perhaps most impressive was that I began to notice the settings of Scripture: Psalm 139, Genesis 12-15, Psalm 91, Isaiah 54, Matthew 11:28ff, the Beatitudes, the Canticle of Mary, among others. I was perhaps more attuned to Scripture (having a Baptist mother who owned Bibles) than my Catholic peers. While I had an attachment to “At That First Eucharist” as an 11-year-old, I found my tastes in liturgical music were both broadened and deepened as the years went on.

    I don’t begrudge “Sons of God” or “To Be Alive” or others for inspiring faith in people of all ages. My godparents were rather attached to the parish folk Mass as I recall, and they were in their 40s. When the school newspaper did a survey of favorite songs in 1971, I listed “Largo” from Dvorak’s New World Symphony.

    Today, I think the true standard is quality presented with love. If one can’t love the music, then one can certainly love the people. If Mozart can write twelve variations on “Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman,” then we lesser lights can certainly muster our very best for whatever songs stick in our craw. And if the song is truly bad, give thanks we live in an age where it is possible to arrange it well, and even compose something entirely new based on the same text. It’s about making bridges, not blowing them up.

    As for Peter’s thousands to millions who left, perhaps he would like to lobby for the disavowal of Humanae Vitae, which, in the US, was the cause of the bloodiest hemorrhage of church membership.

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    1. John Kohanski

      @Todd Flowerday: As for Peter’s thousands to millions who left, perhaps he would like to lobby for the disavowal of Humanae Vitae, which, in the US, was the cause of the bloodiest hemorrhage of church membership.

      Not to mention the clerical sexual abuse scandal. I know many more people, especially from my two sons generation, who refused to continue on in the church once they went through confirmation because of that. Folk/Guitar groups and praise bands (their 21st century equivalent) are the least of the problems of why people leave the church.

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  5. Jim Pauwels

    My impression is that the “guitar mass” was sort of a time-and-place-bound thing. It was a mashup of a popular culture in which acoustic guitar was enjoying a spurt of popularity; and the influence of college life on the boomer generation, as a good deal of the repertoire found its way to parishes via Newman Centers; and, frankly, the market economy at work, inasmuch as guitar-based repertoire went from publisher to parish without waiting for a bishop’s say-so. It was kind of like the Beatles – huge, enormous, life-changing if you happened to be the right age.

    I’m using past tense but the guitar is still very much a present-tense instrument when it comes to liturgical music. But the guitar mass, by and large, isn’t. Like the boomers, music has matured since then and newer, hipper things have come along.

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  6. Paul Schlachter

    For me the post-conciliar years were a time of much trial and error as we scrambled on the way to achieving active participation, in the many assembly settings in which I was involved. We borrowed from the Protestants, we adopted spirituals and occasionally we invented. We sang to accompaniment of organ and piano as well as guitar strumming, or none of the above. Insofar as the singing brought me in touch with scripture and other Christian traditions it helped to broaden my faith. Insofar as substandard goods were loosed on the hymn market I was embarrassed.

    But the energy that the Council, and the liturgical reform that it inspired, unleashed in so many of us impressed me much more than whatever musical instruments and arrangements were made available and/or foisted on us during those years. In other words, what made the difference for me was that we took ownership of our public prayer. Those of us who comment here care seriously about this, and that is a fruit of the Council.

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  7. Jack Wayne

    I found her story about the old church perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article, as I think it pertains very much to the current trend towards more old-fashioned “churchy-looking” churches being built today, and the fact that such a preference – at least in the American church – isn’t really tied to liturgical preference or theological leanings. Old pre-Vatican II churches have a home-like warmth to them that resonates with a lot of people. The statues, clutter, names on windows, and such that I think remind people of their own homes, or their parents and grandparents homes that likely have/had pictures, heirlooms, and special objects. Such churches are, ironically, more human than the plain, carpeted, churches that were built after the council with an emphasis on making the people the main decoration.

    I remember my first experience in an old church. My childhood church was built in the 70s, but once we went to a cousin’s wedding at an old Victorian gothic church. The building itself was very moving, with it’s paintings, stained glass, and statues. It felt like home even though I had never been there before. Perhaps the biggest thing I remember is the Madonna and Child painting laid into the old High Altar reredos. Judging from the walls around it, it had been severely water damaged, and so much of it was re-painted in a folksy Mexican style since the church had become mostly Hispanic. You had the sentimental Victorian faces of Jesus and Mary combined with painterly colorful clothes.

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  8. Linda Daily

    My first experience of liturgy was our parish folk Mass. Our First Communion hymns were Sons of God, They’ll Know We Are Christians, and Hear Oh Lord, and I’ve never forgotten them. Others can cringe but I loved the use of popular music at Mass and the way it embedded God in daily living. Hearing these songs on the car radio, at a family picnic, in the grocery store created for me as a child a world imbued with Christ. My collection of 45s was a sort of hymnal and each song a memory of God.

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  9. Shaughn Casey

    There’s a certain amount of “De Gustibus” in a discussion like this one. Having said that, guitar masses mostly made me want to go listen to James Taylor, much like the praise bands of today make me want to go listen to rock music. Don’t laugh!

    Consider “Fire and Rain.”

    “Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus?
    You gotta help me make a stand.
    Just gotta see me through another day.
    My body’s aching, and my time is at hand.
    I won’t make it any other way.”

    Consider, even, Metallica’s “Until It Sleeps.”

    “And the dirt still stains me,
    So wash me until I’m clean.”

    The music of the guitar mass and the praise band send me out to find what seems to me (maybe not others) a more authentic expression of emotion in secular songs with spiritual nuances.

    Organ music (singularly praised by Vatican II!) and chant causes me to listen to the English Hymnal on Spotify. Consider “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”

    At his feet the six-winged seraph,
    cherubim with sleepless eye
    veil their faces to his presence,
    as with ceaseless voice they cry:
    “Alleluia, alleluia!
    Alleluia, Lord Most High!”

    A compromise solution is to play those old heves with “modern” instruments. It can be done effectively, but at its core is still a foundation that’s otherworldly. Let’s not be afraid to get deep with our lyrics, or to transport ourselves to new heights. “Peace is flowing like a River,” with apologies to those who look forward to that hymn, doesn’t do it for me.

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  10. Ed Nash

    No…people did not leave in droves because of guitar music…they left because the Church was not making sense. If millions of people couldn’t stand guitar music, then concert arenas, stadiums and festivals would not fill up when guitar music tickets went on sale. I agree the original new music of the 60’s was a little cheesey, even for me but the later music has been scriptural, reflective, and moving. If music is done right, it can move people to tears and to action. If it’s done poorly it will move people to the door. The organ playing at Mass this morning in a small resort town was hard to hear for me.

    If Guitar music was the reason for the millions leaving, then sexual morality, conservative politics, requests for financial support that come from nowhere, covering up abuse of minors and mind numbing preaching have nothing to do with the exodus.

    Yes Peter, there has been an exodus, but let’s get off the guitar music as a reason.

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  11. Kevin Vogt

    Yes, the author’s experience does resonate with me, except that the church that “belonged to me” as a child was the weekly singing of four hymns or songs from the Paluch Missalette (“Praise to the Lord,” “Whatsoever You Do,” “O Sacrament, Most Holy,” and “Now Thank We All Our God”), all accompanied by a Hammond organ with tremolos going full tilt. The organist, who had by that time played every Mass, 7 days a week, for 40 years, played the same two Postludes in alternation: the Campra “Rigaudon” and that Purcell piece featured in Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” To this day, those songs and sounds evoke the odor of incense used at daily funerals, the fear of having my throat slit by a paten thrust at my neck, and the pungent taste of the Precious Blood under the form of what I imagined to be the vinegar dripping from the sponge in one of the painted Stations of the Cross nearest my family’s regular pew.

    I once heard some music at a neighboring parish led by an ecstatic woman with a guitar playing songs out of some strange book called “Glory and Praise.” It would be several years before I would actually know some of those songs. At the time, however, such effusive emoting made my prepubescent cheeks blush in the same way they did when my underwear fell onto the sidewalk out of my rolled-up towel on the way to swimming lessons – in the presence of a girl named Rachel, whom I had hoped to impress. (I did.)

    All this to say that I have great reverence for the memories and experiences to which piety is anchored.

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  12. Alan Johnson

    John Kohanski : @Todd Flowerday: As for Peter’s thousands to millions who left, perhaps he would like to lobby for the disavowal of Humanae Vitae, which, in the US, was the cause of the bloodiest hemorrhage of church membership. Not to mention the clerical sexual abuse scandal. I know many more people, especially from my two sons generation, who refused to continue on in the church once they went through confirmation because of that. Folk/Guitar groups and praise bands (their 21st century equivalent) are the least of the problems of why people leave the church.

    +1.
    Would add that my kids generation see equality and fairness as fundamental human rights, so no women priests and lack of marriage equality for gays is a major isdue …… think slavery.

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  13. Scott Pluff

    The parish where I grew up sang from JS Paluch’s We Celebrate hymnal and Glory and Praise v 1, 2, 3 bound in a blue vinyl binder. Both of those resources formed my experience of worship, but the music of the St. Louis Jesuits was closest to my heart. Today when I hear many scripture passages I automatically think of their settings by the SLJs.

    Today a few of their songs sound dated, but many have stood the test of time and will surely remain part of our Catholic repertoire for generations to come.

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  14. Charles Culbreth

    “De gustibus” is always a factor in these sorts of musings, even if there’s a so-deemed objective exhortation for one style/genre over another for fit and right service.
    However, I believe the thread commentary has proven that nostalgia is the more apt factor at play here. (And there’s nothing really wrong with nostalgia per se, barring one living one’s past in the present.) My experience upon entering the Church in 1970 was likely more fortunate than others’ stories. I became a staff bassist at Oakland’s famed St. Francis de Sales Cathedral (under Rv. Don Osuna.) There was NO Guitar Mass, as it were. The music program thrived as a true eclectic ensemble effort. SRO congregations were likely to encounter the Brahm’s “How lovely (Ps.84)” folded among Dixieland (When the saints), Beatles (When I’m 64), Herbie Hancock-esque instrumental interludes and chant/polyphony. It was a Francis Mannion nightmare. What was absent? Ann Arbor charismatic tunes, most of Ray Repp et al from WLP (leaflet collections) and most of FEL (Scholtes et al.) Our “band” and choir offered top notch Bay Area talent and “fusion” before the emergence a few years later with the SLJ.
    As Ken Canedo and Osuna have chronicled, it was a wild ride, but not bereft of true sanctity and spirituality. It worked for me like for Todd, entry into the liturgical mystery and frameworks that eventuate as true liturgy. Sure there’s a fair amount of 1Cor13 adolescence about that era, but the nostalgia of the author and many here prove that this sort of indoctrination likely attracted as much as Peter claims was repelled. Of course, St. Normal’s corner parish likely featured one too-many “ecstatic” guitar slinger/singers who totally ignored John Foley’s ardent guitar pedagogy, and finagled 6 chord versions of those often modal tunes. I recall hearing a few of those in my youth, yes it wasn’t fun for a serious and motivated professional musician. But I, for one, never ever pedaled a so-called “Guitar Mass” even then. I’m sure we all owe gratitude to others besides the SLJ: Deiss/Norbert/Hurd etc. who laid the foundation for the rest as a new modem of composition inexorably evolved.

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    1. Scott Pluff

      @Charles Culbreth:
      Yes, with a dose of YMMV. But I am certain that many, even a majority, of parishioners in my middle-class suburban parish are engaged by contemporary liturgical music while more traditional forms of music leave them flat. Whenever music comes up in various committee or advisory meetings, most of our parishioners state a clear preference for contemporary music.

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      1. John Kohanski

        @Scott Pluff:
        And a middle-class white suburbanite would chose the same way if given the choice between only two available secular radio stations: “Easy Listening” or “Classical.” They would take the Easy Listening without a doubt. It’s not a matter of engagement or being left flat, it’s a symptom of the level of musical education and understanding in our society.

      2. Scott Pluff

        @John Kohanski:
        Agreed, so if I someday find myself in a society where everyone regularly listens to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms on their iPods I will abandon the contemporary music elements of our liturgies and give them a steady diet of classical and neoclassical music at church on Sunday.

      3. John Kohanski

        @Scott Pluff:
        Why do you have to wait?
        I raised my children primarily on classical music from early music on up through the 20th century–(with a dose of The Beatles, Queen, Billy Joel, and ABBA on the side). And that carried over into church as well. Trust me, they noticed the disconnect between the music that they heard at home and even sang and played in school, and in what was used at the local parish when they visited it.

  15. Norman Borelli

    If “thousands if not millions” left the church because of guitar music then the “elevated language” of the recent translation, the use of more Latin, and the return of the tridentine mass haven’t brought them back.

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  16. John Swanson

    Yesterday, before mass as I reflected on the readings, I listened to U2’s “40” which is a song based on Psalm 40–yesterday’s psalm. Playing that at mass would have been better and a lot more “relevant” than the slow rendition we actually had. It would have touched many more people–of all ages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XzHlySYR_Y

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  17. Nick Wagner

    I was in grade school in the 1960s, when Sr. Martha, wearing her woolen habit, would line up our third-grade class along the hallway wall. All eight grades of the school then walked silently through the hall and up the stairway to the church, filling half the pews, front to back, in grade order. I remember there were always some elderly ladies were already kneeling in the parishioner-pews praying the rosary.

    If this were a movie, you might expect Bing Crosby to enter through the sacristy door to begin chanting a Latin high Mass. What happened instead was a few students began strumming guitars that were almost as big as they were and leading us in Ray Repp’s “Here We Are.”

    And it wasn’t just that day. From third through eighth grade, every school day started with a “folk Mass.”

    Like Lisa Middendorf Woodall, no one thought of my little grade school as being at the vanguard of the Catholic culture wars. While some dioceses banned “folk tunes” at Mass, most parishes in the St. Louis archdiocese embraced the new music of the time.

    Lately, some discussions about the use of “praise and worship” music remind me of the critiques of guitar Masses: It’s too Protestant. It’s not reverent enough for eucharistic worship. It’s too influenced by secular music.

    Proponents of “praise and worship” music also remind me of the champions of guitar Masses. Young people show up for it, sing it, embrace it as their own, and encounter Christ through the music.

    People sometimes forget that folk Masses were rooted in the social justice movement of the sixties. Even with their now-dated and sexist phrasings, songs like “Sons of God” had grade-school children singing “Make the world a unity, / Make all men one family.”

    Then, as now, music that gets people to Mass and gets them singing is certainly valuable. I don’t think it is the genre or the instruments that makes music appropriate for Mass. The central question is, what are we singing about? And how is what we sing making us more like Christ?

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  18. Ed Nash

    We had two hymnals…the red one and the white one…which was called in big letter’s People’s Mass Book… “Good morning please stand for our opening song, number 45, in the white People’s Mass Book.”

    Growing up in rural Minnesota…Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.

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  19. Charles Culbreth

    Nick, there’s going to be some cognitive dissonance with certain points of yours, but the sentiment is noble. Knowing of the subset identifications, the primary encounter with Christ culminates in HC, all roads lead there. And without subtraction, I would re-ask your last two questions: are we not to sing unabashedly to Christ while knowing he is present personally and in our neighbor? and: aren’t we to aspire through beauty (abundant life) to be of Christ while we may not be like/as Christ?
    All that aside, I’m encouraged that we’ve gone from Repp’s “Here we are” to Sullivan-Whitaker’s “In every age.”

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  20. Jim Pauwels

    “Whenever music comes up in various committee or advisory meetings, most of our parishioners state a clear preference for contemporary music.”

    I would say that this is where the liturgical art comes in: the musicians have to find a way to make the song the doorway to authentic praise and gratitude for the assembly, regardless of when it was written, its style, and so on.

    I’m with Charles C: there is fine, even great, music from all the different eras. And good musicians can take a song in virtually any style, from any era, find the music in it, and unlock it for the assemblies.

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  21. Jim Pauwels

    I will say this for the old guitar masses: they fostered participation and volunteers. Sometimes they almost fostered too many volunteers – one of the excesses of that era was the specter of five acoustic guitars accompanying the music, all doing exactly the same strum patterns. People sang the songs, though. Heck, some of us still sing them, if only in the car or the shower these days :-).

    By contrast, the LifeTeen model, at least as I’ve seen it implemented, seems to require a quasi- or fully-professional praise band. And frankly, those Contemporary-Christian-style power anthems tend not to be as singable. Possibly it sells more downloads and concert tickets. To me, anyway, it seems a good deal more consumer-oriented than the old folkie stuff.

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    1. Scott Knitter

      @Jim Pauwels:
      I wonder whether the New Christie Minstrels and other “folk” bands of the “Mighty Wind” sort influenced the church guitar groups. I suppose the fact that everyone in such a group was strumming meant the younger, less-confident members could participate and gain confidence and skill.

      In 1975 my family lived for one year in a small town in Ohio in which the Catholic parish had a music director who was highly accomplished as a folk and pop singer and specialized in rewriting the late Jim Croce’s songs for use at Mass: “I’ve looked around enough to know / that God’s the one I want to go through time with.” I think it’s that thoughtlessness that turned me off to guitar Masses. Also (at college, in the university parish) the no-problem belting-out of the ineffable Name of God when our Jewish friends would substitute Adonai or Hashem (“the Name”) out of reverence.

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      1. Jim Pauwels

        @Scott Knitter:

        “I wonder whether the New Christie Minstrels and other “folk” bands of the “Mighty Wind” sort influenced the church guitar groups. I suppose the fact that everyone in such a group was strumming meant the younger, less-confident members could participate and gain confidence and skill.”

        Scott – I’m sure you’re right that there was some mentoring going on. Regarding influences, I was a little young to be a musician during the “first wave” when the guitar group masses sprang into being, but my impression was that it was more like Peter Paul and Mary or the Kingston Trio. By the time I was in high school in the mid-late ’70’s, it was definitely John Denver and James Taylor 🙂

        Regarding the accomplished folk/pop singer rewriting Jim Croce songs – as someone mentioned earlier in the discussion, there was a lot of experimentation going on in those days. Not every experiment succeeded! I happen to think we’re in a better place these days, thanks to the church authorities providing some prudent guidance, as well as the efforts of organizations like NPM and the major hymnal publishers to professionalize and educate.

      2. Ron Jones

        @Scott Knitter:
        Oh… the floodgates of memories have opened. I started leading the music for liturgy when I was 16. Back then it was Ray Repp, Joe Wise, Lou Fortunate, James Theim, and Sister Miriam Therese Winter (no one has mentioned her huge contribution to music that spoke to social issues and Catholic moral teaching). It was music written for liturgy back then. It had not yet become mixed with popular hits. That happened when I got into college. Then, all of a sudden, we were singing Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, Today (I never did understand why this one made it’s way into mass), Teach Your Children, Live For Today, Try A Little Kindness, and Both Sides Now just to name a few. That was followed by the St. Louis Jesuits and the Dameans, both of whom made scripture the main source of lyrics once again. I am constantly amazed at how much growth we have experienced liturgically and musically in a relatively short span of time. I never cringe at what we once did, but I do chuckle out loud.

  22. Jack Wayne

    I’m posting this more to play devil’s advocate, but what of the churches that have embraced a more modern view of sexuality, marriage equality, female clergy, etc? I’m think of the mainline Protestants mostly, such as the Episcopalians, most Lutherans (ELCA), Methodists, etc. These groups have even largely adopted most elements of the post Vatican II liturgical reform and continue to use the ICET texts for their principal liturgies. One would think, according to the responses to Peter, that these churches would not only have not seen a decline in recent decades, but would be overflowing with new members. Yet everything I’ve heard is that they are losing people at a rate similar to the Catholic Church despite having what is supposedly the biggest recipe for success (though, unlike the Catholic Church, they didn’t go out of their way to stigmatize and drive out anyone with traditional liturgical leanings, perhaps that was what caused them to fail?).

    As for the Latin Mass and new translation not reversing the problem – one could argue that it is far too little far too late. It really should have happened at least a generation sooner, if not more, if the intended desire was to “fix” anything. Most people in my generation have to have it explained to them that the Latin Mass isn’t about Mariachi music, and likely began drifting away years before the new translation went into effect.

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    1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
      Anthony Ruff, OSB

      @Jack Wayne:
      Dear Jack,

      There is something to what you say, and it is true that more progressive church’s are losing lots of members. But it’s also true that the turn to the right in the Catholic episcopate under the previous two popes did not lessen Catholic losses, and some data in the US suggests we are losing young people more than any other tradition – and this is with our clear teachings and rather conservative leadership. I hasten to add, though, that causality is exceedingly complex and I’m not putting it at the feet of the last two popes, or the more conservative bishops. There are many, many other things going on.

      One important thing that too often does not get noted is this: the more progressive churches tend to have more educated and economically ‘successful’ members – and those are the people likely to have much smaller families. That simple fact – fewer young people being born into the tradition – accounts for much (but not all) of their decline in membership.

      awr

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      1. Ron Jones

        @Anthony Ruff, OSB:
        I think, if one were to be honest, we need to acknowledge that before the sex scandal, families were leaving because the evangelical churches down the street had very engaging children’s ministries and exciting youth ministries that made the kids want to go to church. Once the kids were hooked, then the parents became involved in bible studies, vacation bible school, adult Sunday School (before or after they went to services), and men’s/women’s fellowship. We had already missed the boat in the area of “feeding” our people. I have also been told, at each new parish I worked, how we must compete with the local mega-church and their “praise band”.

      2. Scott Pluff

        @Ron Jones:
        Yes! And if the Catholic church could offer these engaging ministries plus our rich history and tradition of sacramental worship, we would be unstoppable. But too many parishes are stuck in a 19th century model of get-it-over-with Masses, private sacraments, a K-8 school, and nothing else to offer. Many of the old sodalities have died out and have not been replaced with the modern equivalent of small faith communities.

      3. Ron Jones

        @Scott Pluff:
        Yes, Scott, that is exactly what I find dumbfounding. We have not communicated the breadth and the depth of our faith very well. We rely on the eucharistic liturgy as the be all of our faith experience. People want to be fed spiritually, intellectually, physically, and (dare I say) emotionally.

      4. Jack Wayne

        @Anthony Ruff, OSB:
        I very much agree with you, that it is a complex issue that doesn’t have an easy answer. I’ve also heard that, if one excludes Mexican immigration, that our declines might be even worse than some of the mainline Protestant churches. Personally, I think liturgy plays a larger role than polls might indicate, not so much in that it served as a principal cause for people to leave, but rather that it failed to act as a lifeline for whose who might have been having doubts or disagreements with the Church – for many I know, walking away from the Blessed Sacrament and not attending Mass is a bonus of leaving the Church rather than a difficult heart-breaking decision.

        As for myself, I’d be lying if I didn’t say the Episcopal Church sometimes seems appealing. A socially progressive atmosphere where I can worship in Elizabethan English and receive communion kneeling has strong appeal to someone who is both socially liberal and liturgically conservative. I’m even within driving distance of an English Solemn High Mass complete with deacon and subdeacon and gregorian propers. But I don’t think I could ever really let go of the Catholic Church.

  23. Jack Feehily

    Ah, if only we had come to our liturgical senses a generation ago, all would be well. Apart from the occasional authoritarian bishop or priest who seeks to dictate the music parishes may use, there is no place on earth to stand and say: this is the best, truest, most reverent, most authentic music with which to worship God in spirit and truth. At its root, music is a matter of taste and it is in vain that we argue much about such matters. I love “let all mortal flesh keep silence” and “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus” and “All Are Welcome” and “How Great Thou Art”. But I must affirm the choosing of songs and musical settings that people seeking to be ardent disciples will sing with gusto. “Spirit and Song” and “Gather Comprehensive” provide us with lots of great choices.

    Reply
  24. Scott Pluff

    To further complicate matters, many theologically-progressive denominations have retained traditional elements of worship (traditional architecture, vested clergy, formal ritual texts, organ/choir music) while many churches with conservative theology have their services in a high school gymnasium, their pastors in a t-shirt with blue jeans, a “let’s all raise our hands and praise God” ritual, and music that rivals a rock concert. These tend to be the fastest-growing churches, at least in my area.

    Reply
  25. Jerry Galipeau

    Our parish’s 9:00 A.M. Mass was listed in the bulletin (in the late 1960’s) as the “Hootenanny Mass.” 12 seventh grade girls, all playing guitars that were badly out of tune, supported the singing, which was surprisingly strong. 1972, at my 8th grade graduation Mass, our entire class surrounded poor Monsignor O’Neill (RIP) in the sanctuary and we sang selections from Godspell (our 8th grade field trip that year was to see the musical in Boston) during the “Offertory” and at Communion. I look on it all as part of the revolution of the evolution of music at Mass.

    Reply
  26. Ron Jones

    I really need to add that all music of the reformed vernacular liturgy in the ’60s was not folk/pop inspired. Do not forget the major contributions of composers such as: Noel Goemanne and C. Alexander Peloquin. How many of you can name others who deserve to be mentioned here?

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      @Ron Jones:
      Dr Theodore Marier, for one. His was a model for careful, considered development of an entire program of music for the reformed Catholic liturgy.

      Reply
    2. Charles Culbreth

      @Ron Jones:
      Jan Vermulst, Jean Greif, prots. Kurt Kaiser/Jimmy Owens/Andre Crouch, Jack Miffleton, Ron Griffen, Paul Quinlan, Ralph Verdi, Tim Schoenbachler, Erich Sylvester, David Kraehenbuhl, Charles Frischmann, Omer Westendorf, Willard Jabusch and the great Lucien Deiss, among others.

      Reply
      1. Ron Jones

        @Charles Culbreth:
        Here is a question for you. Why have we shelved most all of Lucien Deiss’ compositions. They certainly don’t feel aged in any way. His style of composition is almost timeless. The theology in his lyrics is clear and nothing feels trite. His Marian hymns are superior.

  27. Brian Culley

    @Charles Culbreth
    One of the great blessings at SFDS Cathedral was that the readings were proclaimed extraordinaryly well. Fr. Bill Cieslak,OFM,Cap, from the Franciscan School of Theology practiced with all the Lectors each week. If they didn’t come to the practice they didn’t read. I believe some of the SLJ taught Bishop Cummings to sing the Eucharistic Prayer. All the worship pieces came together.

    Reply
  28. Katherine Christensen

    Ron Jones : @Charles Culbreth: Here is a question for you. Why have we shelved most all of Lucien Deiss’ compositions. They certainly don’t feel aged in any way. His style of composition is almost timeless. The theology in his lyrics is clear and nothing feels trite. His Marian hymns are superior.

    Good question. I learned some in grammar school, and even once had the opportunity to take a workshop with him. I use what I can now, but my impression is that very little of his work is included in commonly available hymnals. OCP has only a handful of items in Breaking Bread, ditto for Gather, nothing in Worship 3. Does anyone know of a resource that does better?

    Reply
  29. Ron Jones

    Question for Alan Hommerding:
    What has happened to all of Lucien Deiss’ music? I know WLP carries the copyright on them. Is there any way to get more of his selections?

    Reply
  30. Jim Pauwels

    Re: Lucien Deiss: personally, I speculate “Glory and Praise”, and in particular the St. Louis Jesuits, crowded Deiss’ pieces out of the “market”.

    The genius of the St. Louis Jesuit pieces is that they married biblical lyrics to popular-sounding instrumentation, chord changes, modes, melodies and vocal arrangements. The lyrics and melodies themselves aren’t exactly metrically regular but they were laid over regularly-metered chord changes. That’s my amateur analysis anyway.

    This style brought people into music ministry that otherwise may not have joined the church choir. It opened up music ministry to acoustic guitarists and people who wanted to sing popular styles. Such folks may not have found Deiss’s compositions as interesting or approachable.

    As I say, this is just one person’s observations. I know some of y’all were actually there and lived through all this from in the loft or behind the microphone.

    Reply
    1. Todd Flowerday

      @Jim Pauwels:
      +1. My sense is that Lucien Deiss wrote for voice accompanied by piano. Early SLJ’s for voice accompanied on guitar. Even when their later music was composed on piano (or more for it) their songs had a certain seamless quality. Deiss songs often struck me as chunky. I remember NALR tried a Deiss release around 1980, and there’s a good amount of his work in G&P 3–maybe 20 songs. Nothing more came of that, I think. I know he was born in France. Where did the man live?

      Reply
      1. Karl Liam Saur

        @Todd Flowerday:
        http://dsjliturgy.blogspot.com/2007/10/keep-in-mind-rev-lucien-deiss-cssp-1921.html

  31. Mike Attebery

    ILP Music has a ‘soft spot’ for some of the older WLP titles (Peoples Mass Book) and has included quite a few from Deiss, Westendorf, and Melvin Farrell in the CREDO Hymnal and 2nd edition Saint Augustine Hymnal.

    Reply
  32. Jim Pauwels

    One other thought on Deiss: It’s been mentioned above that St. Louis Jesuit compositions were notable for their scriptural (and liturgical) lyrics. It is no disrespect to them to note that Deiss’s lyrics that I’m familiar with are *really scriptural*. He could delve into the imagery of the psalms and prophetic literature and come up with some truly striking images and allusions. Again, just my take.

    Reply
  33. Mike Burns

    I remember one day Sr. Roseanne was in habit, the next day she was in a pant suit playing the guitar. I was in elementary school. The earliest liturgical music I remember was from the Young People’s Hymnal. Songs like Shout from the Highest Mountain, Hear O Lord, and Sons of God.Ray Repp was popular. Some of the music like Lemon Tree never made any sense to me. Texts like Lemon Tree very pretty and its blossoms very sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon, is impossible to eat. The tune to Coke is the real thing, replacing Coke with God was popular.

    As a musician I don’t think “guitar masses” had any particular effect on me.

    The early days of liturgical music in the vernacular were stepping stones to the treasury of music we have today. Fortunately, we have come a long way in developing music in the vernacular. Now if only the same was true of the translation of the Roman Missal.

    Reply

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