Congregational singing is always a living proof of the Faith

Recently I recently came upon an article from a Catholic priest and pastoral worker, writing in a magazine with a less liturgical focus.

There's one bit I disagree with:

Make sure you have the best musicians you can find (paid or volunteer) and use them; do the difficult things and ask people who are holding your program down or even making it worse to step aside.

"Best" is a subjective term - and often the best of musicians want to make great music, rather than to model God's love for their colleagues and parishioners.     I'd rather have a teachable musician with a heart to serve God's people, than a virtuoso any day.

But one of their key points is

It’s not exactly clear to us why that is so, but congregational singing seems to be a reliable bellwether for church health.

Like them, I believe this is true, even though I have no evidence, and no real explanation about why it's the case.

Then, today, I was totally stunned to find this gem in a Catholic hymn book published in Australia in 1952 - long before Vatican II was called.   I've included a picture of the key bit here - just because it's so stunningly different from what many traditionalist musicians would have us believe about church music pre VII, and the expectations about who (people vs choir) should be singing.

You can read the whole thing here:    http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn2152603-s4

A short history of sacred music

Ref:  http://blog.adw.org/2013/12/what-is-sacred-music-historically-its-a-bit-more-complex-than-you-may-think/

However, it focuses on the style of the music, rather than the content of the words, and I think this is a mistake: There is "gospel" style music today which is not Godly - and plenty of secular tunes which have been well-baptised.

The latter are even more interesting when the people who are using them for liturgy / worship / prayer don't have any idea about their origins:  not many Irish people realize that the tune they sing A Mhuire Mhaithar to started its life as a love song, and has been used for many things including the New Zealand theme tune for the Volvo Ocean race back in the day!

Music is NOT a universal language

In interesting article from a more evangelical perspective.   The key phrase that someone picked up on:

"Music is the universal language." How often have we heard the phrase? It's amazing-the power of an oft-repeated, unexamined aphorism. This one in particular, it sounds so, romantic-convincing."

Anyone who's ever listed to traditional music from Asian cultures will know that the line isn't true: somehow what sounds right to their composers sounds totally wrong to ears formed in Western patterns - even if we don't have the training or vocabulary to recognize and describe what's wrong.

So what does this mean in a liturgical / catholic / Catholic context?   In short, Gregorian chant is no more the universal musical language than any other. Jesus didn't use it the way we know it - any more than he prescribed sing the Psalms the way the Jewish people did as the only way to worship God.


Personally, I found this part interesting too:

"We Went, We Sang, We Conquered…
During the 19th and 20th centuries, as Western and European Christians went out around the world, ... some even tried to “help” the local music-makers by teaching them to sing in unisonand by encouraging the translation of Western Christian songs into local languages. Current
practice [does not] always demonstrate a value for the God-given musical and artistic resources of the host cultures.
... it never occurred to most Christian workers that just as they were learning new, complex, and “strange-sounding” languages in order to communicate with local people, they also needed to learn to understand the local music systems. Instead, they brought their Bible in one hand and a hymnbook in the other. Often the Bible was translated into the vernacular, but when it came to the hymnbooks, only the words changed (in translation), not the basic musical language of the songs."

I think it's even worse than that:

As well as margnalising the indigenous musical expressions, many of the missionaries weren't actually the best of musicians. So I've met people who were taught to sing Latin hymns that many Catholics regard as treasures of the faith to tunes that Western culture considers trite and disrespectful (eg Kumbayah). I've also met people who think that certain hymns are "traditional African hymns" because those (18th century and out of favour) hymns aren't widely used in European countries any more.

Hymns we might like to learn

This post lists hymns which I've come across, which the parish might like to learn "sometime" - if the right time arises:

Center of My Life - Paul Inwood:    http://www.spiritandsong.com/compositions/1493


In Perfect Charity - 
http://www.sixmaddens.org/?p=1577
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOqcyxVFZOU

The Lord is my Life
Michael Joncas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfwPJCvbsGY

We Have been Told
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI-CwQs5dTo

Jesus Christ, You are my Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkjtm4ImVw
By MARCOS FRISINA

Jesus Christ, you are my life,
alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus Christ, you are my life 
You are my life, alleluia.

He calls us to the waters of life

He pours out his love into our heart

Jesus comes to us in our hearts

Glory to God forever.

1.  Be our Way, our Truth, and our Life 
Form us anew in how you died 
We embrace the cross that you bore
and will arise in glory.

2.  Holy fire, come dwell in each heart
 Grant us the gifts your love imparts 
Free our tongues to boldly proclaim 
"Jesus is Lord forever!"
 
3.  Break the yoke of violence and war 
Open the hearts of rich to poor 
Nations bound by terror and fear 
long to embrace your freedom.

4.  Senseless walls of hatred divide, 
vengeance destroys and fear misguides.
Teach us mercy: hope for new life 
for you alone are holy! 

No sign of peace means the priest is afraid of what we might do?

An interesting read about the recent letter about the Sign of Peace.  In short, a “circular letter” on “the ritual expression of the gift of peace at Mass” - released late July 2014.   Some key quotes:

When it is used, it must be done with dignity and awareness that it is not a liturgical form of “good morning,” but a witness to the Christian belief that true peace is a gift of Christ’s death and resurrection.
“if it is foreseen that it will not take place properly,” it can be omitted.
Bishops should do everything possible to end “abuses” such as:

• “The introduction of a ‘song for peace,’ which is nonexistent in the Roman rite.”
• “The movement of the faithful from their places to exchange the sign of peace amongst themselves.”
• “The departure of the priest from the altar in order to give the sign of peace to some of the faithful.”
• People using the sign of peace at Christmas, Easter, baptisms, weddings, ordinations and funerals to offer holiday greetings, congratulations or condolences. 

“Christ is our peace, the divine peace, announced by the prophets and by the angels, and which he brought to the world by means of his paschal mystery,” the letter said. “This peace of the risen Lord is invoked, preached and spread in the celebration (of Mass), even by means of a human gesture lifted up to the realm of the sacred.”

So basically if a priest isn't including it, then said priest must be scared that something will go wrong.    Pretty sad that any priest would have that little regard for peoples' good sense.

What is the job of a Liturgy Committee?

Part of the deal for me being involved with parish musics being on the liturgy committee.

An interesting quote from this blog:

"The real work of a liturgy committee is to study and reflect upon the Church's liturgical documents in the hope of bringing the Church's wisdom into creative conversations to help shape the liturgical life of the Catholic parish."

On reflection, I think I agree with him: if you're on the liturgy committee, it's actually your job to know what the wider Church does when it prays together. It's not just the priest's job - it's everyone's, because we all bring a different lens into play when we study the church documents.

I might twitch it slightly: leave out the word "creative" (it's laden with other meanings), and put the focus onto this particular parish. Also, people here think that church = Catholic ... so I was going to leave the word out. but on reflection, I think that's an even more important reason to leave it in. And while this study is probably the most important work, the week-by-week and season-by-season co-ordination is pretty necessary too. So I'd end up with

"The first job of our liturgy committee is to study and reflect upon the Church's liturgical documents in the hope of bringing the Church's wisdom into the conversations that shape the liturgical life of our Catholic parish."

All that said - suggesting that we study documents isn't necessarily going to be popular! I've seen glazed looks when I suggested that we could all read a two-page summary of the role of music in liturgy.  Not sure what reaction a whole book would get.

But I know there's been a programme on the catechism which the pastoral council have been doing. Maybe we should start asking for a similar one on the liturgical documents.

Pentecost Sunday, Year A

What we sang 

• Entrance:   City of God - Schutte
• Psalm:       Send Forth your Spirit of Lord - Aniceto Nazareth
• Offertory:  Spirit of God - Miriam Therese Winter (this one)
• Communion:   O Breathe on Me O Breath of God
• Sending:     Freely Freely - Owens

What I'd like to have sung

We did pretty well overall:  the psalm was sung, there were some good links between the hymns and the sermon, and a good focus on the Holy Spirit.

Would have been a good day for Be Still for the Presence of the Lord - not an old favourite, but a growing new one.