But this response is to remind us all that people don’t have to sing to be actively involved in the congregational singing. Just opening the hymnal and nodding along with the words is fine. Having an “engaged” facial expression is great.
All too often, people don’t even bother to look at the hymn, and the expression of the face seems to communicate that they are receiving a painful medical procedure.
I agree with the first part, but I don’t think we should assume that a person is not being engaged in a positive way due to a person’s facial expression. There are plenty of times when I’ve heard such a gorgeously sublime piece of music that I close my eyes and I know that my face probably doesn’t look like I’m happy. In addition, there have been times when I’ve been in a performance either actually performing it or being an audience member, seeing people’s faces and thinking that they were not enjoying the concert/recital - looking like they were going through a painful, medical procedure, only to discover afterwards that they were completely moved and touched by the performance. So, my point is not to assume anything just by what we see.
And even when children have been taught to sing with enthusiasm, when week after week they see their parents, grandparents, or any adults standing mute and often surly (at least, that’s how it appears to the children) during the Mass, the children eventually begin to imitate their elders, and that’s how this deplorable practice of Catholics not singing becomes entrenched.
I do agree with this. My parents always sang at mass and I followed suit. My sister and brother, didn’t, though.
But we do have to understand that the culture of not singing at mass isn’t a new one. If you’ve read “Why Catholics Can’t Sing”, you see how entrenched this idea of not singing at the mass is within Catholicism - especially in the U.S. - and it has been like this for generations long before Vatican II, even before Vatican I, if you take into account the Irish Catholics who came here during the potato famine. It can be a very difficult habit to break. Older people I know have told me that in the 40s and 50s, boys were never allowed to sing in the choirs. Only the girls. The boys were expected to be altar boys. So think about the generations in which boys and men were basically taught that you don’t sing at mass… that it was only a “girl-thing”. It’s no wonder you hardly see men and boys sing at mass today.
As a cradle Catholic, I can tell you what I thought when I saw hardly anyone singing at mass. I never thought they looked surly. I just thought they didn’t like singing and that was ok since not everyone likes to do the same thing. People not saying anything during the responses always seemed strange to me, but when I learned more about the history of our Church and the mass, it occurred to me that the older generations perhaps did not get into it as much because they grew up with the EF mass where you really didn’t say or sing much. Then you had the generation underneath of them who grew up with the EF and came of age with the OF and some still kept to their old ways and then it got passed down to the generation ahead of me, then mine and subsequent generations. The Church is not fast with things and neither are her people. When you’ve been doing things one way for thousands of years, it’s going to take a while to change. I mean, I still hear the same older people at mass say the old responses and prayers and I suspect I’ll hear them until they die out and these younger ones become adults.
I really hope this article helps people on CAF from both camps (singers vs. non-singers) to realize that singing is not just a “Protestant innovation.” The article was immensely helpful to me personally.
True, but historically-speaking, the Protestants were the ones who have always been known for their singing-congregations. Certain kinds of Catholics (like German Catholics) were known for it as well, but many other cultures within the Catholic faith were not. It was often always left to the choirs to sing… not the congregation… especially when we only had the EF. Again, generations of doing something one way and now trying to change it up. It can be hard to break an extremely old habit.
