OK, try this one on the Parish Community Liturgical Committee Chairperson. Chant is more inclusive! From a parish that's doing it, via Amy Welborn:
“The Church,” said Father Donnelly, “is very particular when it comes to sacred music. The definitions are clear. It must be music that is holy, i.e. sacred; it must contain goodness of form, i.e. beauty and artistic merit; and it must also possess universality, which is described by the Vatican as having characteristics so that ‘nobody of any nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing it.’”
Universality also means, the pastor added, that the music is recognizable as sacred music by the faithful around the world and therefore encourages inclusivity. Although it [need] not be Palestrina or Gregorian Chant, it must evoke the sacred.
I don't mean to sound tongue-in-cheek. This is indeed a very good point. Liturgical deconstructors of the past 45 years have been trying to make liturgy more "relevant" by adapting it to the "local culture." Local secular culture, that is. The result is a splintered mess that isn't recognizable as sacred to anyone who hasn't had the misfortune of growing up in middle America.
Try this thought experiment: Imagine yourself at Mass at your average suburban parish "with felt fish on the wall," as my old friend Derek used to put it. The choir is doing their best --- sincerely, I sa, for I've been part of these choirs --- with a come-as-you-are hodgepodge of acoustic guitars, a full drum set, electric bass, a saxophone, and the music teacher from the local primary school to provide African drumming. The material they've been given for the "entry song"
(the theater-in-the-round architecture has necessitated the dropping of the term "processional")is not challenging; something like "All Are Welcome."
Now imagine that seated up front is a delegation of Catholics from your sister parish in, oh, Nigeria, or perhaps Guatemala.
Embarrassed yet? OK, how about if your fresh-faced music teacher includes "Mayenziwe" or "Digo Si, Senor" in the set list? The teenager with the electric bass always has a lot of fun with those.
It's not about the local culture. And if you make it all about being relevant to the local culture, you lose the ability to be relevant to visitors, foreigners, to people who wander in looking for something they know not what. Our mission is to speak (not to the world, but) to people all over the world. Not merely to "be relevant," but to bear meaning. The liturgical elements that we choose from all the cultures we encounter are to be those ones that bear a message of sacredness to anyone who experiences it, even someone totally unfamiliar with it. Universal sacredness.
Modern multicultural revisionism, here in the U. S., denies the possibility of universalism. No one is supposed to be able to discern the sacred in someone else's culture. Instead of universality, it prefers mere diversity: a smattering of Spanish lyrics or "African" stylings, poorly executed by people with little or no understanding of the culture that the music supposedly spring from. It's not authentic, and it shows.
Chant holds pride of place in the Catholic liturgy (not that you'd know it around here; I've never in my life actually heard it used at Mass) because, given that it's been used for so long, it is held to be universally recognizable as sacred among Catholics all over the world. One of the reasons it is recognizable as such is that it developed in the Church from within a Church culture. It wasn't appropriated from outside. Is it Eurocentric to insist that chant is preferred, as the church does? OK, so chant developed there, on that continent that was once called "Christendom," but there's nothing particularly European about its form. It doesn't require any instruments at all. Musical scale traditions vary from culture to culture, but chant can be used in any of them.
(Amy pointed out recently that even so-called "traditional hymns" aren't actually preferred in Catholic liturgy; stuff like "For All The Saints" and "Immaculate Mary" is permitted, but not exactly encouraged. Mass isn't supposed to always be the filling in a "four-hymn sandwich." Here's her post, linking to an article about "the treasure that the widespread use of hymns has seemingly buried.")
Anyway, perhaps it's worth suggesting to your multi-culti liturgical coordinator that pop Masses might actually be alienating, rather than welcoming, to outsiders. And anyway, although welcoming is good, the point is not to have everyone there feel welcomed. One welcomes as a means to an end: the barriers must go down in order that God may be worshiped. Welcoming can't be the main focus, because welcoming is about us, not about Him.
Comments