What do you think about guitars during mass?

[Sarabande]

My opinion: If women are involved, men tend not to be, on the basis I think that “All’s well here, no problems to solve, oh cripes it’s all getting a bit fluffy and sentimental and Mrs. Goodlady is taking over, right, I think I’ll give it a miss, tonight. To the pub!”

I have to disagree here. All of the TLMs I’ve ever attended had both men and women in the choirs. They were always in the back and if there was no choir loft, they still stayed in the back. The only way something becomes fluffy and sentimental is if the music is that way. If you are singing Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd, etc. (which we have at my OF parish and a few other OF parishes in my city - in those parishes as well, the choir is always in the back up high in the choir loft) you won’t get “sentimental” and “fluffy”, so there is no reason why men wouldn’t want to be involved if that is the real reason for lack of men in choirs. I think there is much more to why less men are involved in the music ministry at mass than just that. I believe part of it has more to do with the attitudes of their peers and even their parents and what kinds of things they encourage their boys to participate in. It is looked at as “sissy”, when it really shouldn’t be. There is a where many dioceses do not have schools for boy-choirs or just a diocesan boy-choir in general. And if they do have a boy-choir, it’s not well-publicized and kept a secret so that the only time you might hear them is for a special Christmas mass, etc. So, there isn’t much exposure to most boys and young men. Along with that, where many parents are willing to take their boy all over for sport events that they are involved with, many of them are also unwilling to take them to rehearsals and practices which would be required in order to have a good choir.

The same problem is with men having the time to participate in a choir when they’ve been working all day long and having to tend to the requirements of their families. My husband used to sing in our parish choir (the one that did polyphony, chant, etc.), but responsibility of being a husband, breadwinner and now a father in just a few weeks is too much for him to handle, even though I encourage him.