Why don't people sing?

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Joannm said:
Do you really think people are that ignorant? Besides, we are the Body of Christ…haven’t you ever read the letters of Paul? I don’t know anyone who thinks that when they sing “I am the Bread of Life,” that they think they are singing about themselves. It is scripture they are singing. They are singing the words of Jesus.
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I can’t speak for the young poster, but,she might very well be thinking of I, Myself am the Bread of Life, which is a rather dubious hymn. There was a thread that thoroughly discussed the song. I just don’t know how to quite post the shortcut to it.

As I’ve said in my earlier posts on the subject, I will not, in good conscience, sing a hymn that goes contrary to Catholic dogma, doctrine and liturgical theology, and, is pop-folksy in nature. Be Not Afraid has nothing on Attende Domine. Ashes certainly does not hold a candle to O Sun of Justice. Lord of the Mountains pales in comparison to Alleluia, Sing to Jesus.

The older hymns, especially those that date back several centuries, really bring home the solemnity and dignity of the Mass. The lyrics cued you in that something beyond this world was happening. Songs like Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence explain the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

I can’t say the same for the stuff that OCP puts out in front of us.
 
I can’t imagine the angels and saints present at the Sacrifice of the Mass singing with us most of the hymns we are supposed to sing at Mass.
 
benedictgal said:
I can’t speak for the young poster, but,she might very well be thinking of I, Myself am the Bread of Life, which is a rather dubious hymn. There was a thread that thoroughly discussed the song. I just don’t know how to quite post the shortcut to it.
As I’ve said in my earlier posts on the subject, I will not, in good conscience, sing a hymn that goes contrary to Catholic dogma, doctrine and liturgical theology, and, is pop-folksy in nature. Be Not Afraid has nothing on Attende Domine. Ashes certainly does not hold a candle to O Sun of Justice. Lord of the Mountains pales in comparison to Alleluia, Sing to Jesus.

The older hymns, especially those that date back several centuries, really bring home the solemnity and dignity of the Mass. The lyrics cued you in that something beyond this world was happening. Songs like Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence explain the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

I can’t say the same for the stuff that OCP puts out in front of us.
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If the songs don’t follow Catholic dogma, doctrine and liturgical theology, why are they allowed to be sung? You are also free to go to a more traditional parish. I know we have very traditional parishes and we even have a couple that celebrate Mass in Latin. YIM
 
benedictgal said:
I can’t speak for the young poster, but,she might very well be thinking of I, Myself am the Bread of Life, which is a rather dubious hymn. There was a thread that thoroughly discussed the song. I just don’t know how to quite post the shortcut to it.

As I’ve said in my earlier posts on the subject, I will not, in good conscience, sing a hymn that goes contrary to Catholic dogma, doctrine and liturgical theology, and, is pop-folksy in nature. Be Not Afraid has nothing on Attende Domine. Ashes certainly does not hold a candle to O Sun of Justice. Lord of the Mountains pales in comparison to Alleluia, Sing to Jesus.

The older hymns, especially those that date back several centuries, really bring home the solemnity and dignity of the Mass. The lyrics cued you in that something beyond this world was happening. Songs like Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence explain the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

I can’t say the same for the stuff that OCP puts out in front of us.
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Since I’m the only Junior Member here, I am assuming you are refering to me, No I don’t think I am the Bread of Life … I don’t know anyone that does even the kids that attend Mass at our parish. When we sing this song at communion time, it really brings home that Jesus is the Bread of Life and we are about to receive Him … The Bread of Life. Blessings, YIM
 
I have noted at my parish that people usually sing when it’s a traditional song, more authentic for mass. When it’s a very new song, with too fast a beat, or one where the tempo is too modern, people tend to refrain. 🤷
 
MustangBoop,

First off I am glad that I do not go to your church.😃 Secondly I go to the most conservative parish in Las Vegas.😦 Thirdly, yes, I do know a couple people who think they are talking about themselves during the " I am the Bread of Life" song. I love to sing, so does most of my family, but we cannot read music, so we can only sing the songs we know and we will only sing the songs we know that are traditional and not what we consider heretical.🤷
 
We have 6 services, 1 on Saturday and 5 on Sunday. There is a service for everyone’s ‘taste’. There are quiet subdued services and a more contemporary service with everything in between. The thing is, the musicians play the same songs at all services but at different tempos. Which is a great blessing for our community:yup: .
:blessyou: YIM
 
Congregational singing was never a big part of the TLM, so most Latin Catholics didn’t sing much.

Why the Novus Ordo mandated so much singing is something I don’t understand. There really should not be a hymn during Communion, anyway.

I like the TLM Low Mass. No singing, just quiet reverence.

There is a lack of good hymns in the English language that is suited for Catholic worship. The parish my mother attends has a female cantor who belted out “O Flowing River” during an Easter Vigil Mass. I was fuming mad and turning purple.

Anything from Marty Haugen and the St. Louis Jesuits
should be trashed, as well as OCP and Glory and Praise.

We in the Latin Church should stick to the classics. They were written over a period of hundreds of years, not cranked out one after another following show tunes. There is nothing wrong with using hymns from the Byzantine Catholic Church or the Maronite Catholic Church, either.

O Salutaris Hostia, sung in Latin, is one of the easiest sung and most beautiful hymns ever written.
Last April, my wife and I went to a Divine Mercy service celebrated by one of the priests in residence at St. Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh. We all sang O Salutaris Hostia in Latin, young and old alike. Nobody missed a beat.
 
MustangBoop said:
We have 6 services, 1 on Saturday and 5 on Sunday. There is a service for everyone’s ‘taste’. There are quiet subdued services and a more contemporary service with everything in between. The thing is, the musicians play the same songs at all services but at different tempos. Which is a great blessing for our community .\ YIM
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I must say again that I will thank God tonight when I say my nightly thanksgivings, that I do not belong to your parish. Every Sunday your priest would receive a letter from my father, every Sunday my entire family would come out :mad: and purple with rage.

You say there is a mass to suit every taste, well I don’t know about you all, but we can’t make the same mass every Sunday. I would hate to have to go to a Country Western or Youth mass simply because the priest wanted to suite every taste.
I am not simply stating my taste, I am stating the taste of centuries of Catholics from all over the world. Suddenly people decided that hundreds of years of the smartest people were wrong and they were right with their modern mumbo-jumbo.:mad:

At the one parish in Vegas with a half Latin half English mass (that is at 9:30am and half an hour away, which means we have to get up at 7:30 – not something we can do every Sunday) there are no songs until Holy Communion when they play a tape of monks singing chant. Then at the very end the priest choses a Latin hymn to sing. He is trying to teach the congregation slowly. It is beautiful. It is so prayerful and conducive to contemplation of the sacrament we have just received. I like music during the distribution of Holy Communion because it helps me to ignore all the other sounds in the church. If there is a modern hymn playing I use the tune (it is too loud to ignore) and put my own words to it. I just pray what I want to pray, but I pray it to the beat of the music so I can ignore the horrid words. This of course, only happens at our parish without the conservative mass.

If anyone goes to Denver Holy Ghost 10:00am mass or any morning Cathedral mass is beautiful.👍
 
Your service sounds beautiful. I would love to go to a Mass like that once in a while. You made me chuckle when you said country Mass. LOL No, no country service. You realize Catholics like me need Catholics like you to keep us from going too far. I know, you think we’ve gone to far already. Maybe so, but there are 5,000 families at our Masses on any given weekend, You see, the Lord works the way He needs to work to bring us to Him. You need to praise Him in a quiet, respectful, spirit filled Mass. I, on the other hand, need to praise Him with my hands raised up to Jesus, singing my heart in a spirtfilled fille Mass, in thanks of all He has done for me and brought me out of, and you know what? We’re both right and Jesus died for each of us … may the Lord continue to bless us both and all of his children.
Blessings, YIM
 
My voice is terribly or seems that way. Other than the responses I don’t sing much at all. I’ve tried and- nope. No singing gift in me… yet.
 
Margarite said:
I “He will raise me up on eagle’s wings…” Where on earth did this come from! I mean this is not true!
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I suspect it came from Isaiah 40:31 31
“They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.” and Exodus 19:4
"tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. "
 
Margarite said:
I must say again that I will thank God tonight when I say my nightly thanksgivings, that I do not belong to your parish. Every Sunday your priest would receive a letter from my father, every Sunday my entire family would come out :mad: and purple with rage.
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Maybe that priest is equally thankful.

Off topic - I had a father like that. Well, it wasn’t quite every week, but similar. Unfortunately it wasn’t the most effective tactic, even though he was mostly right. Priests (and others, like me, who help keep the cogs turning) see many parishioners who are purple with rage over many things, some justified and some not - in my experience, mostly not. Rightly or wrongly, this situation ends up training busy priests to sidestep purple people. “Oh, here comes Mr/Ms Apoplexy again, right on time.” I have a dear Anglican friend who writes to the Church Times every week - everyone that knows him and quite a few who don’t grab the paper eagerly each week to see what Blot’s Rant Du Jour is about this edition. His opinions end up widely read, but as entertainment, sadly - whether it’s right or wrong, fact is that few take him seriously any longer. As another poster pointed out recently, a calmly-presented case with documented evidence and reasoning, has the best chance of success. People that present that kind of case tend to be normal flesh tone. 😛 I’m not suggesting that priests shouldn’t be pulled up (or saying that you personally or your family are in any way unreasonable) but it’s best done in a way that gives the best chance of success. Especially in an area like music where no matter what the parish is like, the PP is probably beset on all sides with conflicting demands and opinions and agendas.
 
Margarite said:
I must say again that I will thank God tonight when I say my nightly thanksgivings, that I do not belong to your parish. Every Sunday your priest would receive a letter from my father, every Sunday my entire family would come out :mad: and purple with rage.
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You know, there are ways to say that you disagree with something without being outright rude.
 
JW10631 said:
Congregational singing was never a big part of the TLM, so most Latin Catholics didn’t sing much.
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My parents both went to Catholic school in the 1940’s. They were required to sing in the choir when they were in school. They knew all the Latin hymns. My mom can still sing them.
 
lak611 said:
My parents both went to Catholic school in the 1940’s. They were required to sing in the choir when they were in school. They knew all the Latin hymns. My mom can still sing them.
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But that was choir. I recall a girl only a few years older than me singing all the responses at daily Mass, but nobody else would have been expected to do that.

There are still parishes today where it’s expected that nobody but the choir will sing. I know that the one where I grew up has no hymnals, hymns don’t seem to be repeated often enough for people to learn them (plus the acoustics makes distinguishing the words difficult) and if by some fluke they are singing something that you do know and you start singing people make it clear that your contribution is not appreciated – unless you have a particularly spectacular voice.
 
Phemie said:
But that was choir. I recall a girl only a few years older than me singing all the responses at daily Mass, but nobody else would have been expected to do that.

There are still parishes today where it’s expected that nobody but the choir will sing. I know that the one where I grew up has no hymnals, hymns don’t seem to be repeated often enough for people to learn them (plus the acoustics makes distinguishing the words difficult) and if by some fluke they are singing something that you do know and you start singing people make it clear that your contribution is not appreciated – unless you have a particularly spectacular voice.
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Although, if everyone was required to sing in the choir at one point, if they were told to sing when they were not in the choir, they probably still would, if it was a hymn they knew.
 
A few biblical reasons for singing:

Zephaniah prophesied that God would sing in the midst of his people (Zeph 3:17-18)
“The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, He will sing joyfully because of you,as one sings at festivals.”
God’s presence in the midst of his people is a reason for singing:
Zechariah 2: 14
“Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD.”
Tobit called on all men to sing praises to the Lord (Tobit 13:7-8)
“As for me, I exalt my God, and my spirit rejoices in the King of heaven. Let all men speak of his majesty, and sing his praises in Jerusalem.”

Singing is a good thing to do, as is an instrumental accompaniment (Ps. 92 1:4). God’s greatness is a reason for song (Ps. 95:1-5), as is His glory (Ps. 96:1-3) and his marvelous deeds (Ps. 98:1, 4,5,6). In Psalm 100 God’s people are commanded to come before him in song (Ps. 100:1)

The Israelites sang after they left Egypt, King David wrote and sang psalms, Mary sang the Magnifcat, Jesus sang a hymn with his disciples the night before he was crucified, Paul and Silas sang hymns while imprisoned, and in Revelation the elders in heaven sang a new hymn to the Lamb.

So, why not at least sing the psalm responses, the Gloria, Sanctus, the Alleluia, etc? These are not heretical, and in most cases the cantor sings the congregational part first so that you will know the words and melody, etc.
 
Guitar & SeekerJen,

I never said that we are rude nor did I say we just blast the priest. 😛 No. My dad goes home and looks up the official documents that support his case. He then rights a strong, but cordial letter to the priest. (My father is a lawyer, so he knows how to present a case.)🙂 He does not do this every week in our parish because there is no cause to, but if we went to MustangBoop’s parish, the priest would receive a letter every week. And the Choir director would get one every week also. Church is God’s house. If you really believed that God was there would you play rock-n-roll? Maybe you would.🤷
Think of it this way, if the President, or the Queen of England was there, would you play the music you do? If so then I don’t know how to argue with you, but if not then are not the president and the queen much less important than God?:confused:

There is such a thing as right and wrong even when it comes to music I think (and my opinon is backed by thousands of years of saints) that most music today is bad.😦
 
I didn’t say you personally or your family were rude, Margarite (I thought I took care not to) and bear in mind when you say , “if you really believed” etc that if your “you” means “me” personally, which you might not have meant at all, then you don’t know what I play other than the general information I gave you on your music poll thread. But I will say that if I got a letter every week, no matter who it was from, the fourth and subsequent ones wouldn’t, umm, be read in great detail, shall we say. I’m a great believer in recycling. 😉

I personally agree that much music today is indeed bad. I also believe that one should be careful how one goes about expressing ones’s views if the goal really is to improve the situation rather than just get yourself ignored, or even written off as “the parish pest”. The latter tends not to be very efficient.
 
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