Category: default || By jt3y

I knew I was in trouble when I pulled into the parking lot at church (not at my regular parish) this weekend and saw someone toting an electric keyboard. Inside, my worst fears were confirmed: It was contemporary music day!

Two people were plugging in electric guitars; the third was setting up the keyboard. It's a pity they didn't have a drummer. I started saying the serenity prayer in my head.

It has now been about 40 years since the Vatican allowed Catholic churches to use contemporary music at Mass. I expect that within another 40 years, someone will write some contemporary hymns that don't set my teeth on edge.

This Almanac is painful to write ("not so painful as it is to read," you're thinking), because I know the people who pick music for their churches are trying to do their best. I'm sure they think they're reaching out to young people by bringing in electric guitars and what they think is "modern" music. But they're really only making themselves look more of out touch.

Now, I realize that I'm an old fuddy-duddy, and I'm not asking that churches use nothing except dirges and chants. I enjoy uplifting hymns as much as the next guy (presuming the next guy happens to be a Christian, I suppose). Nothing gets a Sunday off to a good start like a couple of rousing choruses of "How Great Thou Art" or "Amazing Grace" or any of hundreds of other hymns; and after all, gospel music was one of the strongest influences on early rhythm and blues and rock and roll composers.

However, there's a reason that traditional gospel music and the work of 18th century composers endures: It's good. Much of the contemporary worship music that finds its way into Catholic churches is at best trite, and I'm told by Protestant friends that they're being afflicted by the same composers and publishers.

Many of the "contemporary" hymns being used by churches were written in the 1970s, and they sound like the worst folk and pop of that decade, with pretentious wording and melodies that are difficult to sing for all but professional vocalists. It's as full of phony sentiment as anything that Tony Orlando and Dawn or the Partridge Family ever took onto the Top 40 charts. If you saw the folk music parody A Mighty Wind, any of the songs on the soundtrack, with a few lyrical alterations, would fit the genre.

Worse yet, where sacred music should be designed to encourage the congregation to participate (the idea of singing during church should be that the songs are a form of prayer, after all), the quick key and tempo changes of this stuff discourages participation.

And that's what happened at this Mass. Most of the congregation stood silently as our three-person combo "performed." The keyboard player had programmed the device to sound like a Hammond B-3; they even did a surf-rock version of one hymn. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.

This is not an isolated incident in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, or around the country, at least in my experience. I've lost count of how many Masses I've attended featuring acoustic guitars and tambourines.

The worst offender seems to be a collection of music called Glory & Praise, which comes from Oregon Catholic Press. Oh, Lord, I'm sure these folks mean well, and I know they've tried their best, but this is awful stuff. I work weird hours, and I do a fair amount of traveling, so I regularly visit Catholic churches besides my own parish. If I walk into the vestibule and see a stack of Glory & Praise hymnals, I cringe, despite myself.

I first encountered Glory & Praise in the second grade. I had grown up in a conservative parish with an older priest who was near retirement. When the Catholic school I was attended closed, my folks sent me to the old St. Mary's German on Olive Street. At the time, St. Mary's pastor, Rev. Tom Smith, was leading a troupe of performers in a sort of Catholic cabaret. (He made it onto "Real People" at one point, which is a dubious distinction at best.)

"Father Tom" had recently equipped St. Mary's with a set of Glory & Praise hymnals, and even as a little kid, the music hurt my ears. Pretty soon, other parishes around the Mon-Yough area were buying them, and when our priest retired, we got them, too. We also got a choir director who used to rehearse us before Mass in trying to sing the unsingable.

When the congregation resisted, or sat in stony silence, the choir director only became more strident --- "Come on! You people can do better than that!" --- until the people in the pews, grudgingly, would croak out a few verses for her. And you haven't lived until you've seen a group of white-haired 60-something Catholics try to keep up with the key changes in a Carey Landry arrangement.

Eventually, the congregation got with the times. Or rather, they stopped coming to Mass early to avoid these painful and condescending mandatory choir practices. I'll even bet a few of them stopped going to church there altogether, because attendance suddenly dropped precipitously.

I've never, ever met a Catholic, Lutheran or Episcopalian who liked this stuff, but I'm willing to admit that my sample is self-selected, so I decided to do some quick web research. Apparently, hundreds if not thousands of churchgoers agree. An article in Crisis Magazine from 2002 singles out Glory & Praise for particular scorn and claims it has hijacked the liturgy; the author calls the hymns "musical candy that was already stale about 15 years ago" and says that they're "far more politically than doctrinally correct."

Take a look at the comments on this religious blog (one poster calls a popular contemporary hymn "the liturgical equivalent of dragging fingernails across a blackboard, and stupid to boot") or visit "Confessions of a Recovering Choir Director" or the webpage of composer Brian Page.

And back in 2000, a certain Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke out against this stuff, calling it "banal" and "in opposition to Christian worship." You may know Cardinal Ratzinger better these days as Pope Benedict XVI, so perhaps there's reason for hope.

Anyway, if any pastors or church council members happen to stumble across this web page while looking for information about Glory & Praise, I urge you, on behalf of music-loving Christians everywhere, run far, far away from this contemporary stuff. The members of your church or parish are too polite to tell you that they hate it. They just sit in the pews and grind their teeth whenever the organist says, "Take our your Glory & Praise hymnal and turn to number 49, 'Sing a New Song Unto the Lord.'"

By the way, all through church this weekend, we could hear ominous rumbles of thunder outside. We exited the building just as the skies opened with a tremendous deluge of rain and lightning that knocked out electricity to parts of the neighborhood.

But the power wasn't interrupted, you'll notice, during the service, when a loss of electricity would have meant no keyboards or electric guitars.

Evidently, God has a weird sense of humor.