Cradles. Compare your catholic childhood to now

[bettercallpaul]

I grew up in the sixtees and seventies. I have a nostalgia about my catholic childhood.
Especially the The Sixtees The smell of Benediction incense, ringing the bells at the right time as an altar boy, going to the Confession Box once a week, the feeling of release after Confession, living across the road from Church, going to a Catholic School, fish and chips every Friday, my grandparents insisting on us saying the Rosary when they visited, enthusiastic Marist Brothers passing on their faith, an all boys school. And the absolutely gorgeous organ hymns at Mass. In my spare time now, I try to play fingerstyle guitar versions of beautiful hymns like Seek Oh seek the Lord and In Faith and Hope and Love. Those composers must have had such a profound faith to create such angelic chord runs.
I forgot to mention going down to the Communion Rail to receive Communion in the mouth.
Seventies saw a gradual dissolution of a lot of this. I guess my faith suffered too. I never liked those guitar hymns much. Mass became more boring for me as the seventies came and my teenage years coinciding.
I go to a fairly old fashioned Mass now. Very minimalist. By that I mean, the priest gets to the point in his sermons and the music doesn’t take over. I think now there can be too much interruption with Music. Just 3 or 4 hymns is enough in my view. Luckily we get an old lady approaching 80 who not only plays nice old organ hymns but has a voice to match. She is a one woman show, which is all you need. Too many hangers on in these music ministires Ive seen in other churches.

 

[bettercallpaul]

And I don’t think the priests were up to any sexual abuse in my parish. A lot of us had unscathed lives in regard to sexual abuse. Good decent parents and good decent teachers and priests were the common experience for the majority. It is a shame the whole Catholic Church gets tarred with the same brush. There were many heroic priests and brothers doing God’s work then and even now.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Things are always more polished and perfect in memory than they are in reality.

I love the new hyms that are coming out of modern Catholic artists. Matt Mahr and Audry Assad are amazing lyricists who use scripture well.

 

[TigerLily-1]

I love the new hyms that are coming out of modern Catholic artists. Matt Mahr and Audry Assad are amazing lyricists who use scripture well.

Well, there you go! I don’t care for either, esp. Matt Mahr. That’s the problem with contemporary music. Younger people like it and most older folk tolerate it.

At this point, I’d rather have no music with plain chant instead.

 

[pianistclare]

Well OP, stick around CAF. According to most o the posters here, none of that has changed and is going on in their parishes.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I also grew up in the 60s and early 70s. Maybe I’m a little younger than you or maybe we’re from totally different places, but my memories are a bit different. l liked the organ hymns (still do) but also liked the guitar Masses since the first one I heard (age 5 at an airport with my parents). I remember hanging my arm over the pew pretending to play the guitar, and dancing. My parents joked for years about me dancing at the guitar Mass. I ended up playing guitar and joining an all-girl Mass Guitar Group at my Catholic school when I was a teenager, and we were pretty good. You get 8 girls and women all playing acoustic guitars, the sound fills a room.

As for our priests, they ranged from a couple who were learned and holy, to some who were personable and gregarious, to several who had illnesses or other issues and seemed to have been sent to our parish to recover (this happened often, I guess we were considered an easy assignment), to a few who were way progressive and did things like slow dance with young nuns and eventually quit the priesthood. We were fortunate to have no molesters as 2 or 3 of the neighboring parishes weren’t so lucky.

Overall it was a nice time to look back on, and we certainly had more priests and also more people attending church then, but there are quite a few devout people still going in my old parish, and I like both of the priests we have now better than I liked many of the priests who cycled through during my childhood and didn’t stay long. I feel like both of them are truly committed to the priesthood and not planning to jump ship when they decide they don’t like something. And I feel like the people who attend Masses these days are truly there for love of Jesus and not out of duty or because it’s expected or whatever.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Xanthippe_Voorhees:

I love the new hyms that are coming out of modern Catholic artists. Matt Mahr and Audry Assad are amazing lyricists who use scripture well.

Well, there you go! I don’t care for either, esp. Matt Mahr. That’s the problem with contemporary music. Younger people like it and most older folk tolerate it.

At this point, I’d rather have no music with plain chant instead.

I don’t have all my hearing. I hate chant. It all sounds like an endless droning on and on to me.

 

[bettercallpaul]

I just listened to a Matt Mahr song I like his music already but it just wouldnt sound appropriate at Mass.to my way of thinking that is.

 

[bettercallpaul]

differences Australia and America perhaps?

 

[bettercallpaul]

You get 8 girls and women all playing acoustic guitars, the sound fills a room.

Not my idea of Heaven.

 

[pianistclare]

Nope. Americans in the U.S. mostly.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The hymns back then weren’t like this Matt Mahr stuff. We pretty much rocked. But if you don’t like it, that’s okay. I like many kinds of music and love the plain and Gregorian and polyphonic chant (I’ll admit Taize doesn’t turn me on but I haven’t heart it much), I love pretty much anything anyone does on an organ, and I love the rhythmic and uptempo guitar stuff, and maybe a little bit of the slower guitar stuff but when it’s slow you need a better musician to play it. I was at a guitar Mass the other night that had a very good middle-aged guy playing lead with a lot of tasteful little solos in the appropriate parts on a slow song and it was decent. If he hadn’t been a good player, it would have been boring and draggy.

 

[bettercallpaul]

And I feel like the people who attend Masses these days are truly there for love of Jesus and not out of duty or because it’s expected or whatever.

You are probably right. I wonder if there are a few like me who are too afraid not to believe.
Who go to Mass just in case Jesus really was the Son of God.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

If so, they probably don’t bother going on weekdays. I’ve been trying to develop a daily Mass habit for this prayer program thing I’m doing and I think it’s having some interesting effects on me, but time will tell.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Matt Maher - "Your Grace Is Enough" Acoustic - YouTube
I just listened to a Matt Mahr song I like his music already but it just wouldnt sound appropriate at Mass.to my way of thinking that is.

Fortunatly, not up to you to decide. Music is allwed to reflect the culture even during Mass.

 

[bettercallpaul]

I love pretty much anything anyone does on an organ

I agree. There is something profound about the organ sound. Just haunting. (not like ghosts though

 

[TigerLily-1]

Well . . . Is there a solution? Perhaps the Church should have different Masses for different groups of people?

If contemporary music gives you a headache, go to the Mass with chant or no music.
If chant sounds like droning to you, go to the contemporary Mass.
Incense makes me cough . . . should I demand the Church not use it?
Etc. etc.

Or maybe we older folk should just bow out? I’ve read lots of complaints about too many old people in Church and have even read stuff some young people in non-Catholic Churches wrote bragging that there are no old people in their church. Truly don’t know and have actually thought about this some.

Honestly, I’m not trying to be snarky or argumentative. I just don’t have any answers here.

OP – I wish you luck with this topic. My memories are similar to yours but it’s pointless to write about them here because CAF is not conducive to this type of discussion.

I’m out . . .

 

[on_the_hill]

I grew up in the 70s. Comparing the 70s, 80s, 90s to today, I much prefer the 00s. I remember church in my childhood as being dreary and by rote. My teen years (the 1980s) I remember it as being uninspiring. Two very different parishes, demographically. The childhood parish was blue collar/white collar working middle class. The teenage parish was very large in comparison, and wealthy upwardly mobile suburban.

My adult parish is ethnically mixed (many Latino families), widely mixed in terms of income, and a wide spread in ages with a lot of young families. There’s a strong sense of belonging.
There’s so much more vibrancy and life now. My kids, ages 12, 15, 19 are growing up much more engaged in their faith than I was.

By the way, our music is almost always on an old pipe organ. Sometimes a piano. Sometimes there are musicians on violin and flute. We have a small but mighty choir.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Well . . . Is there a solution? Perhaps the Church should have different Masses for different groups of people?

If contemporary music gives you a headache, go to the Mass with chant or no music.
If chant sounds like droning to you, go to the contemporary Mass.
Incense makes me cough . . . should I demand the Church not use it?
Etc. etc.

Or maybe we older folk should just bow out? I’ve read lots of complaints about too many old people in Church and have even read stuff some young people in non-Catholic Churches wrote bragging that there are no old people in their church. Truly don’t know and have actually thought about this some.

Honestly, I’m not trying to be snarky or argumentative. I just don’t have any answers here.

OP – I wish you luck with this topic. My memories are similar to yours but it’s pointless to write about them here because CAF is not conducive to this type of discussion.

I’m out . . .

Well, the most successful parishes near me does do different types of Mass music.

I’m deathly allergic to incense, so I don’t go to my “legal” parish. To which, atleast I can drive. The old vets with COPD are stuck missing Mass.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Perhaps the Church should have different Masses for different groups of people?

Most of the ones I attend already do. The Guitar Mass is often the Saturday vigil or the Sunday afternoon/ evening Mass. The other Masses tend to have traditional organ or piano music.