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Sunday, January 20, 2019

OKAY, IT'S GREAT SEEING YOUNG PEOPLE SING THEIR HEARTS OUT AND WITH ENTHUSIASM BUT IN THE LITURGICAL SENSE WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH THIS FOLK SONG SUNG MARVELOUSLY BY THE NOTRE DAME FOLK GROUP, AND THANKS BE TO GOD IN THE CHOIR LOFT AND NOT CONFRONTATIONAL WITH THE CONGREGATION AS IN AN ENTERTAINMENT VENUE

For starters, and let me begin, (redundancy alert) most of these songs are about "we" just listen to how many "we's" there are, especially in the second ditty.

Secondly, the enthusiasm is meant to get an emotional response without any real theology behind it besides the non-vertical or as some prefer, horizontal wonderfulness of we.

Then we might think of post-Vatican II vapid triumphalism in t style of song without any theology to back it up except for the vapid feelings it creates. It makes pre-Vatican II triumphalism blush! Wasn't Vatican II suppose to make the Church less triumphant?

What are you observations?


5 comments:

John Nolan said...

For a start, it isn't folk music, although it might be based on a folk tune I am not familiar with. It's a modern 'worship song', over-arranged to compensate for the vapidity of its musical content.

Do young people actually like this sort of thing? Guitar Masses were around when I was young, and I couldn't stand them even then.

rcg said...

Sounds like Monty Python’s ‘Lumberjack Song”.

TJM said...

I attended Mass at this Basilica in the 1950s when the Moreau Seminary Choir sang exquisite Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony which is probably why I appreciate the references in Sacrosanctum Concilium to the "treasury of sacred music" unlike many who post here. I was a soloist at the Basilica in the late 1960s and early 1970s when I sang from this choirloft solely in Latin. When my daughter was married here in 2008 the choir sang Vidiana's Missa L'Hora Passa. This little tune is not representative of the great music sung at the Basilica. FYI, it will depress the fake catholics who post here, but there is a weekly EF on the Notre Dame Campus.

John Nolan said...

When widespread vernacularization of the liturgy happened (1964-1967), and I was there (albeit a teenager), the first casualty was music. The first half of the 20th century saw a remarkable revival of Gregorian chant, not least in congregational parish use. 'Plainsong for Schools', in two cheap volumes, was a best-seller.

This abruptly came to an end. Whatever SC might have said, the general idea was that 'we need new (vernacular) music for a new (vernacular) liturgy' and the use of popular idioms towards this end was enshrined in Musicam Sacram (1967). This, like SC, was a Janus-like document which paid lip-service to the musical heritage of western Christendom while at the same time undermining it.

After a lifetime of this nonsense I shall lay my cards on the table. I will not attend any Mass with bad music, quite apart from any other abuses which may occur within. If none is available within reasonable driving distance, I will stay at home. To those clerics who say effectively 'We can serve you up with whatever crap we like, since you are obliged to attend' I have a simple answer: 'Bollocks, I'll see you in hell first.' And I have every confidence I shall.

Fortunately my expertise in Gregorian chant means that my services are sought after, and I don't have to endure the crap.

TJM said...

John Nolan,

Bravo.

It would be like a restaurant saying: we can serve you crap and you must like it. These loons seem to forget we have feet and can walk away. They simply don't care because many of them are dullards and sluggards