I like the things you are talking about here. I think most Catholics long for some reintegration of sorts. Sometimes I have a certain amount of spiritual envy when it comes to the music of other faiths. In particular, I really love southern spirituals and soulful african american “baptist” music. As a person who has participated in Catholic sacred music, some of these things seem attractive to me. On the other hand I have a lot of conflict with the horizontal nature of this musical performance as opposed to the vertical. As well, the reverence and the solimnity of the Catholic mass, as a reinactment of Christ sacrafice for us, seems to exclude naturally a lot of jumping up and down and shouting music. Moreover,I also find little comfort in some of the accomodations the church has made for contemporary mass music, teen mass with electric guitar, polka mass, and a variety of other alterations. To some extent I find that some of this gets away from music that wholeheartedly praises God. Do we need to have a “Dave and the Chipmunks” mass for the Children. The ultimate result would be a highly irreverent production of “Oo-ee-Oo-Ah-Ah-Bing-Bang-Walla Walla-Bing Bang”. I also find a certain amount of people that look down at more traditional approaches to worship simply because they are not jumping around in their pew’s like a jumping bean and waving their arms around and staring up and some vertical horizon point(god is every where always by the way) I think some of these efforts to accomodate those who are bored are misguided and greater study of the mass and its function are more important.
I wonder how many people say to themselve after each mass “Great Joy, Great Joy, I have recieved the Body of Christ” or have been to caught up in how good the music was to simply thank god for this great gift and ritual.
I am admittely a bit of a music critic and sometimes these teen masses and polka accomodations give great material for personal penance for me. In some cases agonizing penance because the vocalist hasn’t sung a right note for over ten years.
My personal penance issues aside, If it is a tired cerimony for you perhaps you should study its majesty.
You are misconstruding my point here clearly. We’ll take the southern Baptist approach and compare it to the Catholic one.
When we sing during mass, we are currently doing it with minimal effort, without our hearts into it, it’s pennence just to participate, there are no award winning recordings that can be made from the typical Catholic mass during this element at all, it’s sad, really sad, to the point, I feel we should just ommit song from service all together, obviously nobody wants to sing or they would put more effort into it. A little nudge towards putting forward effort into it would be helpful, and the SB have taken it to extreem levels, of course I’m not saying, reproduce that element in it’s entirety from them, but I am say, we should take note as to their nature in this regard, in this regard to praise of our Lord with all of our hearts and being, and if this was imparted to be, there would be a great deal of joy, much more so then current, when we sing praises to God.
When I was a teen, I stopped going to mass, I had good reasons for not going I won’t get into on this thread. When I returned a few years later, I picked up where I left off, reciting just as everybody else does, the same ol tired ritual, without thought, without emotion, just doing as the others do, through route and without thinking. It was disturbing that I and the rest were simply going through the motions, this is what the typical Catholic does, they don’t think about what they are saying, they just say and follow blindly. Breaking up the ceremony, where you have to actually think about what you are saying and doing would change things for the better, you would have to put some thought and put some heart into it for things would no longer be done through route. You won’t understand what I mean if you have never stopped going to mass for a period of time, at least if you got a chance to see how the protestants worship, but the church is too rigid and insecure to allow that to happen, so they frown on Catholics that decide to check out the “other” side of the coin and see how these “evil” protestants worship…
I want to be part of a “living” church, and adding into it more life, even if it’s from reintegration of the protestants will do nothing but good things in my book, the new blood will only enhance, not detract from worship. I guess if you are too insecure about your faith, where you can’t stand change, then you are too comfortable with your brand of faith, then something is wrong with it, that you are not into it for God, but for route and route alone. Salvation is not a cookie cutter system, it’s not a coin op, automated process, there are no rituals that are going to save your soul, Christ made that very clear when dealing with the pharisie and hypocrytes.
The Eaucharist is a universe of God’s love to be taken away for the sake of a disagreement. I believe a legitimate disagreement and a rightly executed excommunication done none the less. Today I see a waffling of such clear warnings to political officials who support the culture of death (abortion) and still participate in the Bread of Life. I would think that would be a higher order of excommunication than an arguement over doctrine and makes the earlier issues as a trite arguement that could be negotiated for the sake of unity as compared.
)
