Guitar Music at Mass

[bardegaulois]

9 hours ago, Peace said:

Well I was using the term as shorthand for the living pope and bishops, who exercise authority. I can write the full phrase out each time if that helps ease your mind.

I am not sure where you live but if I saw a priest that I believed was teaching heresy I would report it to my bishop. Have you done that, or is your bishop among those who have preached heresy, in your view of things?

1. Do they speak in a manner non-contradictory to the body of magisterial statements dating back throughout Church history? That's our guide here. And that, to my mind, is why the Cardinals' Dubia are so important.

2. Some say respect is earned, and this is true in many contexts. But respect can be freely given and lost. I freely offered the clergy of my diocese (including the present and past bishops) my respect, and it seems they did everything in their power to lose it. I told my confessor that this is just making me too angry and stressed and that even dealing with these hard-hearted, close-minded people is provoking me to malice and constituting a near occasion of sin. He told me that I should stay far away in that case, and to travel without the diocese to the TLM solely unless otherwise unavoidable. I took his advice and it has made a world of difference. I dropped my cases under advice here, even though it likely didn't matter as I never received a response to my letters. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I had to let go and focus on how best to serve God otherwise. I look at it as leaving Sodom like Lot, not looking back lest I become a pillar of salt. If they want to deal with me, having lost my trust before, they must earn it again.

[CatherineM]

It must be comforting to be a better Catholic than all the clergy and bishops you've had. 

[bardegaulois]

42 minutes ago, CatherineM said:

It must be comforting to be a better Catholic than all the clergy and bishops you've had. 

If I am (and I can make no judgment on that), then it's only by the grace of God, and it's not comforting; it's very troubling. Also by the grace of God, I've been led into the company of wise and holy priests who see the same issues that I do, who battle them manfully, who engage in the stuggle to avoid being overcome by anguish over the situation of the Church and the world, and whom I see not merely as authorities, but as friends. We're in this together, and I know they have my back and they know I have theirs. That's trust. That's brotherhood. That's what we aim for, eh? Perhaps we can only see it truly when we see everything that it is not.

If you think people can't have foul experiences at the hands of certain clergy, then you delude yourself.

[Peace]

2 hours ago, CatherineM said:

It must be comforting to be a better Catholic than all the clergy and bishops you've had. 

"God, I thank thee that I am not like other men . . ."

[bardegaulois]

1 hour ago, Peace said:

"God, I thank thee that I am not like other men . . ."

Yes, I thank God that the stench of modernism makes me nauseous to the point that I desire even to avoid its trappings. Along with grave malfeasance on the part of the clergy, it has destroyed the faith of most of my family and many in my community, and it has ruined souls. Defend these trappings all you want, but I wonder if you're self-aware enough to understand how closely you sound like one of those priests who secularized my area. Now all you have to do is throw the word "rigid" in there somewhere.

Indeed, what you're doing is the very opposite of evangelism.

[Peace]

11 minutes ago, bardegaulois said:

Yes, I thank God that the stench of modernism makes me nauseous to the point that I desire even to avoid its trappings. Along with grave malfeasance on the part of the clergy, it has destroyed the faith of most of my family and many in my community, and it has ruined souls. Defend these trappings all you want, but I wonder if you're self-aware enough to understand how closely you sound like one of those priests who secularized my area. Now all you have to do is throw the word "rigid" in there somewhere.

Indeed, what you're doing is the very opposite of evangelism.

Pray on it. I'll do the same.

[Jack4]

9 hours ago, Peace said:

Pray on it. I'll do the same.

Caught in the act?

[Peace]

56 minutes ago, Jack4 said:

Caught in the act?

No.

[dells_of_bittersweet]

On 2/13/2017 at 2:15 PM, bardegaulois said:

Thank you for saying this. I concur fully with the first statement. Regarding the second, though, you, being a church musician, are in a position to change that. You could focus efforts on teaching both choristers and clergy to read and sing Gregorian chant. But it looks instead like you're more interested in focusing how best to play the historically non-liturgical guitar, as your original question generally indicated. So I'd dare ask you to think long and hard about what your priorities really are.

We've already covered that the liturgical documents allow for the use of other genres, you simply don't agree with the decision that was made. My goal is to help people grow in relationship with God through music within the guidelines the church has laid down. Should the church ever change the allowed genres of music, I will comply. 

Unfortunately I am not a music director but a piano player who volunteers in the Catholic center. At my undergrad university I was in charge of music for adoration, but not mass. Perhaps I will someday have the authority you speak of. If given the opportunity, I would strongly encourage and offer to teach the priests how to sing and would set my music program up to incorporate chant, especially for the psalms (where it REALLY bothers me that English sung pslams paraphrase texts to make them fit the music). What I would not do is insist on exclusively playing chant and polyphony because the document do not call for that. 

Once upon a time people attempted to harmonize the historically non-liturgical organ with the spirit of the liturgy. 

[dells_of_bittersweet]

On 2/12/2017 at 4:52 PM, bardegaulois said:

Consider it sad if you want, but you must consider that your point of view has the burden of proof. You have supporting you a statement by a group of bishops fifty years ago and then massive apostasies and secularization in the Church since your plan was implemented, and that on a very broad scale, I add. It doesn't speak well to it. It sounds like a mistake, or at least like an option that shouldn't really be taken seriously very longer. You can keep on thinking as you do about how we can make pop or pseudofolk or whatever you call the type of music you want to play at Mass better, but to my mind it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Correlation does not imply cause. I think you have an extremely weak argument that bad music caused mass apostasy. I submit that something deeper was wrong if music is the reason someone says they aren't going to church. Furthermore, the following evidence contradicts your thesis:

The church has many growing movements, nearly all of which practice some form of contemporary music. Where I live, the most thriving Catholic community is the Schoenstatt movement, which is a Marian movement from Germany that has come through Latin America to parts of the USA and is theologically conservative but practices lively music. I once played a piano at a mass where a member of the Schoenstatt movement played guitar. 

The Lifeteen youth ministry movement has been phenomenally successful and makes heavy use of contemporary worship music. In the diocese I grew up in, about half our seminarians and recently ordained priests come from the two parishes with Lifeteen. Nationally, 28% of seminarians say that participation in Lifeteen helped their discernment to enter seminary. 

The Awakening retreat program is the largest national retreat program for college students and is common at large campuses such as Purdue, Ohio State, Texas A&M, UT Austin, Vanderbilt, and others. These retreats bring in nearly 100 new students per semester and are the engines driving growing Catholic Campus Ministries at these schools. Likewise, Awakening makes heavy usage of contemporary worship music. At Purdue, after bringing in Awakening, we went from having a static retreat where the same 30 people went on it each semester to getting a new 90 people to come per semester. This growth enabled us to offer two daily masses a day, two hours of confession a day, numerous Bible studies, adoration with praise and worship every Friday night, and numerous other spiritual activities that we had tremendous student involvement in. 

When I have been in growing church communities that had a heavy emphasis and success in evangelization, we used contemporary worship music. I have seen the good fruit and I am fortunate to have been in healthy growing theologically orthodox church communities that did their contemporary music well without making it a rock concert. 

I suspect that you have been in communities that did not do their contemporary music respectfully, were not theologically orthodox, and had a host of problems deeper than the music. 

With regards to associating the music with post-Vatican II apostacy, I submit that the following deeper reasons are the root causes:

1. Cultural secularization removed peer pressure to go to church both the in Catholic Church and in other denominations. Vatican II coincided with this trend. 

2. Vatican II also coincided with the collapse of white-entho-Catholic ghettos with the mass exodus to the suburbs where there was not a culture of Catholicism where people were expected to be in church. 

3. Pre-Vatican II Catholic culture had an unhealthy focus on following the rules and not enough of a focus on why we have the rules and when 1) and 2) above occurred and there was less cultural enforcement of these rules, people fell away. 

4. People hate change and things changed too quickly as a result of bad implementation of Vatican II, as well as flat out disobedience of Vatican II. 

If changing the music was what caused the apostacy, changing the music should bring people back. Pope Benedict XVI appointed many E.F. friendly bishops who made the Latin Mass easily accessible in their diocese. Yet, expanded availability has not led to expanded interest. Monsignor Pope has an article describing the phenomenon of "peak Latin Mass" - that interest has not seemed to have grown past the small group that was already interested in it. It is worth a read: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/msgr-pope/an-urgent-warning-about-the-future-of-the-traditional-latin-mass#ixzz3x2ceLzBc

If going back to Gregorian Chant or the Latin Mass was what was needed, you should be able to give hard numbers (like Lifeteen has) about how many people are getting involved. The previously linked article strikes me as fatal to your position.

[Jack4]

9 hours ago, dells_of_bittersweet said:

3. Pre-Vatican II Catholic culture had an unhealthy focus on following the rules

Source?

[havok579257]

On 2/15/2017 at 0:15 AM, bardegaulois said:

Yes, I thank God that the stench of modernism makes me nauseous to the point that I desire even to avoid its trappings. Along with grave malfeasance on the part of the clergy, it has destroyed the faith of most of my family and many in my community, and it has ruined souls. Defend these trappings all you want, but I wonder if you're self-aware enough to understand how closely you sound like one of those priests who secularized my area. Now all you have to do is throw the word "rigid" in there somewhere.

Indeed, what you're doing is the very opposite of evangelism.

I admit I don't know the fine details about mass music and what's set in stone.  I guess I would question why your against certain types of music if the church allows it?  If I am understanding it right, they allow other forms of music at the mass.  So why be against something the church approves?  I understand not liking all the music but if the church approves something, why go against the church?

[Peace]

6 hours ago, havok579257 said:

I admit I don't know the fine details about mass music and what's set in stone.  I guess I would question why your against certain types of music if the church allows it?  If I am understanding it right, they allow other forms of music at the mass.  So why be against something the church approves?  I understand not liking all the music but if the church approves something, why go against the church?

Because the devil hates Latin.

[Credo in Deum]

10 hours ago, havok579257 said:

I admit I don't know the fine details about mass music and what's set in stone.  I guess I would question why your against certain types of music if the church allows it?  If I am understanding it right, they allow other forms of music at the mass.  So why be against something the church approves?  I understand not liking all the music but if the church approves something, why go against the church?

You're confusing what the Church permits as being what the Church wants! This is a common issues with many is they think permits =/=wants.  The documents of VII say the vernacular is permitted, but they also stress that the Church WANTS Latin to have pride of place in the Liturgy.  This would make sense especially since the same Pope who is responsible for bringing forth the council was also the same Pope who did everything in his authority to ensure the use and preservation of Latin! In fact he did so much if he was to do more the use of Latin would have been dogma!

https://youtu.be/PItj-tf3j1Y

Now how do we know Catholics have taken a mile with the inch the Church provided in VII? Well for one Catholics calling the NO "The Vernacular Mass" should be clear enough proof that Catholics have incorrectly implemented the desires of VII. The same goes with the rest, like the lack of Gregorian Chant, etc. etc. 

The irony is the EF is the only Mass being celebrated according to what VII wanted. 

[Peace]

21 minutes ago, Credo in Deum said:

The irony is the EF is the only Mass being celebrated according to what VII wanted. 

You might want to seek out a so-called "Reform of the Reform" NO parish. At one parish I go to they do a good part of the liturgy in Latin, the priest faces the altar, altar rail & communion kneeling & on the tongue, your so-called "traditional" chant type music, etc.  If this is what you think VII wanted such parishes do actually exist.

But the question is - would that be good enough for you? Or is your objection to the NO at a more fundamental level?