God bless you for the hours you put in at your church. I know it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work to pull off a good music program, but if you are personally responsible for all those masses, then the problem is that other poeple in your parish haven’t stepped up to share the load.
Well, I have given up my service because I’m tired of fighting for good music in a place that does not WANT to have good, appropriate music. In my area, it’s probably 95% bad, musically speaking. I know of only a handful of pastors that at least say they want good music, but have no idea what that means. I’ve tried to humbly educate many a pastor over the years to either be fired or become burnt out.
That’s the phenomenon of 10% of the membership doing 90% of the work. Why we are in that situation is a whole other thread, but if a church did it right, they wouldn’t have to pay a person to do anything because there would be enough volunteers to spread the load.
Ideally that would be wonderful, but you still need a person in charge to run things. It’s the same reason we have specifc people in charge of other functions for the church. Music is a talent and a gift that not everyone shares and varies by degree. I certainly have not seen enough widespread talent for this to happen. (That’s a comment on the status of of our culture and cultivation of music…Perhaps also another worthwhile 'nother thread…)
Don’t get me wrong, there are many ways people can get involved, from organizing music, contacting members, paperwork, etc, to keep lots of people busy. There are things that almost anyone can do, but certain things that only certain people can do.
Other churches do it by setting the expectations higher than we do. We set expectations very low.
Well I absolutely agree with that!
That makes me believe that we Catholics have no excuse for being so lazy.
I’m not so sure it’s laziness entirely. The masses of people most often don’t have a clue as to what good or appropriate music is and couldn’t recognize a fantastic musician from a mediocre one except by subjective standards of style preference. (in other words, if they do what I like then they’re good. And that’s irresepective of any musical talent) That’s what we have in many cases. Can you consider that being low expectations? Most certainly.
But who’s responsible for that? The answer is a huge issue, which is why we need really good people at the helms to steer us through the current stormy, murky waters of liturgical music.
Joe B
I read an article recently, last month that 8000 yes thousand people a day yes a day will turn 60 years old solidly for the next 12 years. That includes the homeless, nuns priests workers everywhere disabled, every walk of life. This is the average so the baby boomers are here to stay which I am one. And I think they are going to flock back to the CCssooooo The CC does need to keep some of the quiet contp music and would be nice to incorporaate some latin music into the scene, yeah man! Cool!
