I try to teach the kids from the grade school “Holy God we praise thy name” and other such hymns. They don’t like it. Its taken me about 15 classes to get them to be smooth in singing it because it is so awkward. They cheer when we close the books and open the pw folders. This is fact. They DO like PW more. They sing it well after hearing it only once.
Teenagers and young people in choir is a NIGHTMARE. …
I love teenagers. I’ve spent over 10 years as a youth minister, or heavily involved with them. This is not a matter of giving them enough credit. This is learned experience.
Although many of the teenagers who post on CAF are interested in traditional things, especially music, most teenagers are not. I base this on my personal experience working with teenagers.
Some people say that if we offer it to them, they will come. No, they won’t. The “Renaissance Teen” is an exception rather than the rule.
Yes, of course continue to offer it, whether they are interested or not. I’m not proposing that we abandon attempts to expose teenagers and others to a more classical tradition. But don’t be surprised when the crowds of eager teenagers don’t show up for the Gregorian chant cantoring class.
Frankly, I wish they would show up. One of the priests who cantored one of the Masses that I played piano for last night chanted the Our Father–it was pathetic how few people knew what to sing. Most of us just recited the words along with him and the few people who do know the chant. I do wish that they would put up the music (notes) on the overhead–it is a lot less disruptive to my personal spirit of worship to be able to read music from an overhead than to stand there like a fool and mumble out a prayer because I don’t know the “melody”. But it’s not all about me, is it? If priests continue to chant without teaching people, soon it will be all about a few priests and a few congregants and that’s it.
I was recently commenting to someone that I was glad this hadn’t descended into another thread where we were being told what music teenagers wanted at Mass, but I suppose it was too much to hope that that would last.
Firstly agapewolf, you say you ‘try’ to teach them it, but isn’t it just possible that you aren’t very good at teaching that genre of hymns or are better at teaching P&W? Or maybe the fact that you have a preference, or find it difficult to ‘try’ to teach them one when they can just sing P&W stuff without much effort on your part shows in your approach/attitude and they pick up on that?
Perhaps you’ve forgotten, “We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard”. If you are to be an effective teacher then you should be bridging that gap, encouraging and showing them why it is worth putting in the effort, if you are not doing that or are unable to do that then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching, or trying to teach, them it. We don’t let children only do their favourite subject in school, we don’t let them eat only their favourite food. We don’t let them only practice the skill they are best at, because if we do that they will never discover what else they are good at, enjoy or what they could be best of all at.
If they enjoy something enough they’ll make the time, if they don’t they’ll find ways to avoid it. Maybe they’re not as enamored with the P&W as you think, if they were they’d find the time to get there.
Experience working with teenagers is not the same as being one, thinking you know what they want/think or thinking you know the way in which they think is not the same as knowing. And both of you have made comments which to my mind show that you don’t seem to understand that distinction.
Most teenagers are not Catholic, most have lukewarm interest in their faith if any, most know very little about their faith to the extent where it is very confusing/difficult to see if they even have one. Would we prefer it if all teenagers were like that, or if they were all interested in their Catholic faith and loyal to the Magisterium?
The fact is of those who have bothered themselves with finding out about their faith as Catholics a sizeable proportion find an interest in elements of tradition which have been lost by previous generations and which they would like to see restored. Often it is from finding out about those things which now have been clouded in mystery because of the extent to which they were once common and have now been erased do they find what they have been looking for in their faith. What they might otherwise have thought was absent or wasn’t there at all, when in fact it was there all along, just not in the Homilies they heard or the P&W style hymns they had to sing.
Teenagers want more than superficiality, and far too often that is the only thing which they see at Mass. No one has told them about the Communion of Saints, so they don’t see it. No one has told them about standing at the Foot of the Cross so they don’t see that. No one has told them about the Church Triumphant, Suffering or Militant, so they don’t see that. If they come to Mass and all they see is a scaled down rock band, neutered of the speakers they’d have at a nightclub, playing what are second rate tunes from the genre they might normally listen to then is it any wonder they stop seeing the point in going to Mass?
The life of the Church, living as faithful Catholics, is radically different to the life society offers to teenagers. It’s also a much harder life to lead, it is counter cultural in almost every way, putting the things of the world to comes ahead of those in the present etc. The way we participate in it, particularly at Mass, should also be radically different to the way we’d live our day to day lives, the way we experience it should also transcend the things of this world, not cave in to pressure to pack pews as some seem to think.
