Did anyone read what the Holy Father said? It is accepting of both traditional and new music. Using the word “banality” does not make him traditional, especially since he only used it as a problem that sometimes occurs, not something inherent in Catholic music today.
The one thing that is consistent is the need for participation over performance, and that the music reach people in a way that they can understand. Thus, when considering the music, the question should not be what the choir is capable of singing, but what is singable, and to what will the people most readily respond in singing.
I made a post briefly, but realized I hadn’t completely understood what was being said.
The merits of the “inculturated” point are unclear to me. As I see it, the accessible beauty of sacred music has little to do with when it was written and what country it was from. Since we are finite, material beings, we will always bring something of our time and place to our music; it’s impossible not to. But, if we believe that the Mass is a union of heaven and earth, then composers of sacred music ought to try to have some timeless quality to it, as the more anchored music becomes in a particular time and place, the less universal and transcendent it is.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m only for old music, or Latin, or whatever. 21st Century music can be just as transcendent, as anything that’s come before it. The thing that I’m not understanding is why we would want to is focus on the spatio-temporal elements of music. Familiarity may dispose one to a
kind of participation, however I don’t see it as particularly disposing people to higher, spiritual participation. I grew up in the 80’s, and will probably love 80’s music until I die, but I remember being more stirred by
Suo Gân from Steven Spielberg’s
Empire of the Sun than any other song in a popular movie. It wasn’t because I have any proclivity toward Welsh or because I have any connection to its 19th Century period, it was because the song expresses a beautiful emotion in a timeless way. I am passive to its beauty, and cannot help but be drawn into the reality of the parental love expressed in it. As much as I enjoy
The Power of Love from
Back to the Future, when I sing along to it, I’m more caught up in the catchy music itself than I am connected to the wonderful reality of being in love, which is what that song is supposed to express. So I experience catchy, inculturated sacred music similarly.
Then, I’d bring up St. John Paul’s reminder to U.S. bishops that that “active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active.”
I’d love to see more singing in the pews. But singing does not necessarily = full/conscious/active participation, and one can certainly sing without a spiritual internalization of it.
:twocents:
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(Personally I don’t think he’s bad at all! 
And he’s doing some wonderful things for our church today! 
)