Oh I doubt that they have been twiddling their thumbs.
They’re in charge, right? If they want something to be a priority, they can make it so.
Well in a way they have. Some have openly embraced the FSSP or ICK, to offer the EF Mass, and they have the resources to offer Gregorian chant. They’ve more or less taken the easy way out by abdicating their responsibility to those groups and it’s one reason I deplored Summorum Pontificum. But that’s not everywhere. The archdiocese we chant in does not have a licit EF Mass within easy reach. So we have not encountered any resistance from the archbishop. Parishes are free to invite us (or not).
But then even the FSSP is no guarantee you’ll hear good Gregorian chant. I know of a fellow chorister, who founded and directed his own choir for many years and taught chant at the university level. He attended the FSSP parish in his city, and said that their Gregorian chant was absolutely abysmal.
That said, again, I would point out that “pride of place” does not mean every place at every time. The archdiocese we chant in also is home to an abbey of the Solesmes Congregation (of which I’m an oblate) that uses Gregorian chant daily at Mass and the Divine Office, all in the Ordinary Form. Their chant is superb, and it is a magnet for people from all over. Today, Palm Sunday, with the wonderful procession to the strains of “Gloria Laus” in Latin, the abbey church was jam-packed. So yes in our archdiocese Gregorian chant has “pride of place”, in this particular place. Our schola helps to bring it to other parishes.
It may not be perfect but you can say that in the Archdiocese of Sherbrooke, Québec, Gregorian chant is far from dead, and
entirely in the Ordinary Form. (the one EF Mass in the archdiocese is over 100 km away in a small traditionalist community).
Lastly I would say that if it isn’t the bishops’ priority, perhaps it is because they do not sense a demand. Perhaps if there
was a demand, they’d respond to it. So again I say it is not up to waiting for the bishops, but stepping up to the plate and
creating that demand, by forming your own chant group. If people are willing to put their shoulders to the wheel, the bishops are more likely to see it as genuine, instead of just a bunch of whingeing malcontents. Use positivity, instead of negativity. Yes you may have to go to extraordinary lengths at first, such as finding a priest willing to celebrate such a Mass off the usual Mass grid, say for a special event, with your schola providing the music. It may mean recitals, instead of liturgies, at first. It may mean compromises. It
will mean effort, real, hard, effort. Our first choirmaster, the recently-deceased choirmaster of the abbey, was a stern taskmaster. There were rehearsals that we often left nearly in tears and discouragement. Yes, chant is that hard. We’re not just talking the simplest ordinary chants, but highly melismatic introits, communions, offertories…
