Last Sunday in my weekly Sunday Gospel post Rufus, The College Widow (TCW) and Stephanie had a brief colloquy on the relative merits — or lack thereof of “the guitar mass” as compared to Mass being played with organ, piano, etc. Here is an especially “good” example of TCW’s complaint:
Oh my Catholic brothers and sisters take heart. You are merely witnessing the tip of the spirit-killing iceberg known as “contemporary church music”. Besides the theological differences, one thing I really like about Catholicism is the sense of order, ritual and tradition and the usual observance of those things as part of the liturgy. Well — Catholics ain’t got nothin’ on evangelicals in the craptastic music department. I sent this to Tracy a few weeks ago and I literally didn’t want to post it here because it’s too embarrassing — though I’d immediately leave any so-called church that allowed this to be on the stage. Some things however need to be exposed and ridiculed mercilessly. But I’ll post this so that my Catholic friends and fellow believers can feel better about their musical dilemma:
And dude — if you happen across this post… you should repent and never do church music ever again.
*** and for the uninitiated… worship is not meant to be mindless devotion or irrational chatterings — hence the stupidity of this song — but a willful, rational expression of love, devotion and adoration.
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Hey give him a break, Santa has to do something to stay busy during the off-season
The point is the second video… that is tame.
The church I was brought up in, doesn’t even use musical instruments – it’s all acappella, baby.
Were you Church of Christ?
I was raised CoC and musical instruments were of the devil. I’m kidding of course, but they were NOT allowed in church. Sometimes I kinda miss it though, man, could those people could sing! Now I’m Baptist and the instruments really cover a multitude of sins, vocally speaking.
My grandmother was very disturbed that I was marrying not only a Methodist, but a CHURCH MUSICIAN! I asked her to tell me where it said we weren’t supposed to have instruments in church and she came back with “Well, I can’t recall, but I wouldn’t want a little thing like that to keep me out of Heaven”….I alternated between laughing and feeling really sad at her view of salvation.
So there ya go, some more random facts about me.
I think there’s something in Leviticus about bass guitars but pipe organs are kosher.
What about the zither?
Zithers are right out! (It’s in the Book of Armaments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk)
I don’t care what anyone says, theremins are straight from the devil.
Don’t tell Rich, he gets mad when I say it, but bagpipes are evil.
You nailed it. I guess you’d say I’m more of a Baptist, too. Haven’t been to church, much. Guess you could say I’m trying to avoid the above abomination. My mom’s still avid CoC.
woops – supposed to reply to Tracy a few posts up. Do-oh!
I completely agree that Evangelical Christianity has been responsible for some spectacularly bad music and downright blasphemous worship (believe me, I have seen worse than what is above). But due to being in the university system for the past 8 years and having to deal with scores of perpetual adolescents who scoff at the idea of God not out of sincere philosophical and moral beliefs but because He might disapprove of their weekly sex-and-cocaine fueled benders I like seeing young people get excited about worship, even bad worship.
I have played bass and guitar in a few worship bands and it is easy to tell the difference between worthless noise (see above) and legitimate contemporary worship (Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman are particularly good examples). I have found that contemporary worship works not because of the music itself, but because of the sincerity and legitimate desire to seek God on the part of the musicians and the participants.
I hate it when churches go contemporary just for the sake of being contemporary in a disingenuous effort to appear cool and worldly. God is God, he can work through traditional or contemporary modes of worship, but the effort has to be sincere.
Very good blackhawk… I wasn’t meaning to slam all contemporary music…. and Redman and Tomlin are a lot better than their forbears to be sure (and good in their own rights).
No, it’s not all bad. But a good portion of it makes my ears bleed. We do own a bunch of a few artists, and the church we currently attend has a whole darn rock band up there. The leader is really into though and you couldn’t put “my boy/girlfriend” for God in most of the songs, so it doesn’t bother me too much. Our previous church went the other way. It was bad musical march meets church music. As white and boring as it could be. My poor husband would have to show up late to avoid it. You add in my hatred of the greeting minute they make us do, and we often didn’t walk into service until the preaching started.
By “forebears”, I can only presume you mean Marty Haugen, Dan Schutte and Michael Haas (or whatever the !@#$% his name is).
It wasn’t until after I’d actually lost my faith that I realized the extent to which horrible church music had eroded it.
When you tell an priest (who also happens to be a hell of a Marine Corps Chaplin) that you don’t like guitar Mass and he starts boogying down to Take and Eat….you know you have a problem.
And I repeat, Floyd, you are evil and must be destroyed
Floyd, thanks, I think. Wow…I do feel much better about the guitar at Mass. A Blues Mass? Hey, if Santa wants to do that kind of thing outside of Mass and outside of the liturgy, that’s fine. But it has no place as part of the Mass. When I feel up to it I’ll check out the other videos from the same Blues Mass. The Lamb of God should be interesting.
As for the other video I am fixated on the singer’s hair.
Blackhawk made some good points, as usual. I agree that sincerity is key. Just throwing in some pop music and adding Jesus to it seems pretty lame to me. He’s right…it is good to see young people excited about faith. I just wonder if there’s some substance to go along with it? It’s easy to be all happy when you’re hopping around with your friends but what about when you’re really tempted and life gets hard? That’s not a shot at Evangelical Christianity because praise without sound theological roots is epidemic among all faiths and denominations.
Mea culpa. I supported the pastor in my former church in making “praise music” a larger part of the service. But after a few years of it, I found myself staying home Sundays because I could not bear the prospect of standing twenty minutes during those interminable, repetitious, low-content song sets. Finally I switched to a different church, where the music is (frankly) far inferior, but at least they offer a traditional service.
These performances are epic in their awfulness but I’m having a hard time turning my nose up at them. I don’t have a dog in this fight. However someone wants to worship is fine with me, as long as they’re not asking me to fund it. I wouldn’t attend a service like this; it doesn’t work for me, but if it does for someone, more power to them. I am also not a fan of guitar masses, but I know some folks who really enjoy them.
we had been lapsed Catholics when we lived in Alabama, decided to go back to the Church and started attending Sunday Mass. I grew up in the 50s, in the church before the catastrophe known as Vatican II. Well…things had changed. One, they seemed to change the image of Christ with the seasons, not always showing the crucified Christ and going to the kinder gentler image at times. And the music…it was a fricking hootenanny. Some goof standing in front with a guitar and a plastered smile on his face strumming away and singing away with some back up. I grew up knowing the Gregorian music of aold, all the old Latin music, in fact was in the choir in the 5th grade. No sense of mystery, no sense of a power far greater than myself, we were just left with an image of a bad Sunday variety show from the early 60s.
We’re lapsed again.
No sense of mystery, no sense of a power far greater than myself, we were just left with an image of a bad Sunday variety show from the early 60s.
That music literally turned me into an atheist for about twelve years.
By which I mean that it took a Mass in Latin with no music to convince me that there really was a God.
this is a mockery of worship.
Dr Cutter, my old music history professor at Texas Tech, used to glow when he played Gregorian chant in class. It really got his juices going, man. This has always stuck with me: he said that chant and plainsong was the single most reverential music ever…that it was meant to and does create a worshipful atmosphere — one of devotion, one to get you into the mood to worship.
no musical hooks, no drumkits, no amps, no words on a screen…just listening to the chant and focusing on what the texts mean.
videos like that just turn people off.
I love Gregorian chants.Here is something to do. WHen the moon is full or wanning during Advent, get the Christmas ones and turn off all the lights but the tree etc. Sit and look at the moon and play that cd….chills down your spin. I did that once on Christmas Eve night….never felt closer to Him in my life.
Kevin..you can find churches that don’t follow that wierdness. There are more and more priests that are edging back to Latin Mass etc. Trust me. Shouldn’t give up just because of a church or two. Find a hot headed firebrand priest. They exist.
Stephanie, so I’ve heard, but the parish priest in Bama was an old line Irish priest. Seems like Alabama is considered a mission position. So they go with the local flow. And you need a special dispensation to follow the Trinitarian Mass. Usually outside a cathedral and Bishop, you won’t find it.
I’m just saying…I’m a little cynical, but even after all these years and disappointments, I remain a Catholic at heart (no matter how much I may lean toward pessimism).
Just go and look around. I can’t believe tehre isn’t some young Hotspur running around telling people if you voted for Obama you committed a sin. I love that priest taht said that.
though…that Bama was considered a mission position in the Church is rather humorous…I remember how people reacted when I told them we were Catholics…they sorta leaned away and I swear I think they started making the sign of the cross in front of me to ward me off.
Catholics were hated more than Jews and Muslims…I have no idea why.
Steph…I’m now in Oregon…an entirely different place…sorta…it’s the Alabama of the west coast…an equal mixture of tree huggers and tree choppers.
I couldn’t deal with the humidity and heat in Bama, no matter how much I liked the people.
The heat and humidity is what keeps us from considering Texas when we retire from teh Corps. But if we can find a fire and brimstone young hot head for a priest in Valrico Florida I know they exist elsehwhere.
Steph… go to the Hill Country… you will acclimate and it’s less humid than Houston or the Valley. And no income tax magically lowers the heat index by 10 degrees — except in Houston.
[Groaning]
So [translated in to American], what you’re saying, Floyd, is that if people don’t get the same thing you do out of the same kind of worship service that you go to, they should just give it up and consign themselves to hell? Good idea! Who needs all these different flavors of soft drinks to quench our thirsts, we only need Club Soda, after all! Anything else is sinful and wasteful! Five networks? What the hell? What’s all this choice and personal taste crap about? Why, a person couldn’t watch all those shows on all those networks if they wanted to! Clearly we should eliminate four of them at once, I don’t care which one…
@ Kevin: several factors involved here: 1- Alabama is overwhelmingly protestent, and not nealry so urbane as yankee states, so there’s a lot more hegemony than you’re probably used to. Outsiders always make people nervous. 2- Alabama is overwhelmingly protestant, and your spiritual forebearers used to brutally murder their spiritual forebearers. That’s the kind of thing that’ll stick with ‘em no matter how many times you tell ‘em to get over it. I’m not Catholic-Bashing here, there’s simply a lot of bad blood in the past, and it makes people uncomfortable, sort of like if you were the only white person at an NAACP rally. 3- They don’t meet nearly as many Jews and Muslims as they do Catholics. Jews and Muslims come in numbers small enough to be considered a curiosity, a novelty. Catholics come in numbers just large enough to be considered unsettling and potentially threatening.
@ R-3… I didn’t say he was going to Hell. We’ll probably be neighbors in Heaven. But I will forever ridicule his suck-tastic song. Maybe he can turn Relax Don’t Do It into a worship song. I believe that there are such things as objectively bad or incompetent art. Beauty is somewhat in the eye of the beholder obviously, but there is higher art, lower art and then that crap that passes for whatever that was.
I feel no guilt for that. I’m unable to judge eternal things, but I’m more than able to judge those things where I have knowledge and competence. If someone gets something out of that (and God being God He can use whatever He pleases) then my first job would be to get them graduated to something substantive — and there are 4-piece rock combo pieces that are substantive. I’m about the words mostly (though I think delivery is important too) and chanting “You spin me ’round” … ad nauseum is babyish at best and violates Paul’s admonish to avoid vain utterances like the heathen at worst.
Floyd,
I guess my standard is, “Does it do any harm?” Maybe. I don’t know. I grew up in a crowded, urban area. Basketball was a big game because all you need is a patch of concrete, a net and a ball. You can play in very limited space with any number of kids. My neighborhood had enough crime that they had installed street lights so bright you could easily play ball all night long.
A young pastor at a nearby Baptist church got the idea to put an indoor court in some space his house of worship had and incorporate basketball into his weekly youth service. Word spread like wildfire. “Indoor basketball on a real court? We can play when it’s raining, snowing or below 20 degrees?” Within a few weeks us Catholic kids outnumbered the Baptists and plenty of my friends who were going were not regular attendees of any denomination. Did any kids stick with the faith and find God? I don’t know. The odds are good, though. I was just using the nights for the basketball practice, and I was honest with the minister about my intentions. When he’d stop for moments of prayer I’d get on one knee and be respectful, but I never pretended to be following his faith.
Did Mozart write any basketball plays for Jesus? No, but he wrote a lot of music for Mass. If James Naismith or Frankie Goes to Hollywood can get a couple of folks in to hear the message, who does that hurt? I imagine that minister took some heat for putting in that court. “You’ve got all kinds of kids coming here, disrespecting our faith, swearing, spitting… You’ve got kids who have no intention of being Baptist…” But I’ll bet it stuck with some kids, and some of those kids probably really needed the faith; “I will make you fishers of men.”
Again… starting points…. the New Testament is pretty clear about moving beyond baby’s milk to meat vis a vis the Word and how we approach God. In a very real way the Church is for believers and as such the worship is very shallow and childish for a body of those who are believers. It’s like a first grade class for those who are beyond 12 years old. The baskeball thing is to draw people in… I believe worship is for believers. How can one truly worship God who does not belong to Him already? It’s vain and empty at that point and dangerously misleading. Again the Bible is pretty clear on that.
Floyd, we would stop for prayers between games. I would use the down time to catch my breath, and I was probably checking out some of the cute, Baptist girls who would come out to watch the boys play. However, I imagine some of the guys did start paying attention. Can you come to God through basketball? I think so. Is it baby’s milk? Shallow? Childish? If you want to fish for babies, shallow and childish people you’ve got to use the right kind of bait. I assume you’d agree God wants those people saved too.
I agree it’s an immature service, but we all have to start somewhere.
I agree with that Rufus… I’m sure I’m coming off harsher than I intend to be. Everybody starts at 0 or close to zero knowledge (except for the few C.S. Lewis’ out there who have all head and no heart knowledge when they begin the journey).
As a person whose brother performs the guitar in a praise band in his Baptist Church (I’m still Methodist), I must defend them, though I cannot stand that style of worship.
Kit my sister used to sing in the folk choir for Church. ICK!
R3 I think Kevin and I already discussed that.
The thing is this: The music that we used to get and still get from Mass and other church services isn’t giving people what they want. R3 why do people cheer when a Priest says during the offatory that the Freedom of Choise Act should be damned to hell where it came from? Because A: its what is right and the priest is saying what he should say. And B: People want fire and brimstone. We want discipline. And your um bringing up anti catholicism from way way back? Good job. Ask Catholics in England when Elizabeth 1 was Queen how they felt? Give me a break. And funny enough R3 its not going on anymore is it? Please keep your issues with us Papists off the boards.
By some fate of god, MTV (I know, MTV) aired the “christian rock” episode tonight. Faith Plus 1 anyone?
@ Floyd: I took you slightly wrong. My bad. Thing is, we’re 400 years past the concept of a “One size fits all” version of Christianity. I go around and around on this with R2 all the time (To our mutual frustration). My view is that since no two people think or feel exactly the same way, it makes sense people would naturally gravitate to the kind of worship service that is most meaningful for them. If they’re avoiding a high Catholic Mass with the liturgy in Latin (Or for that matter, a high Orthodox service with the liturgy in Greek), with midieval music it’s probably because the antiquated forms mean nothing to them.
There’s a tendency among religious folk to ascribe moral dimentions to things that are simply aesthetic choices. That’s what it looked to me like you were doing. I apologize for misinterpreting you.
@ Stephanie: I don’t really understand why you (repeatedly) insist I’ve got “Issues with you papists.” I specifically said that I was NOT catholic bashing (And I said that specifically for your own personal benefit), I was pointing out what the bias in Alabama. Didn’t say they were right, just explaining it to someone, same as I might point out “You know, people in Afghanistan don’t really like Jews much” or “It’s not safe to be a Baha’I in Iran.” I’m describing the lay of the religious land. I don’t see how this is supposed to be some kind of an affront. Please explain.
OK why say anything then? Kevin and I were discussing it. Trust me after having a Christian Coalition Roommate I know perfectly well how Catholics are viewed by many. I took affront because of your wording. Sometimes its better to let people who are together in the conversation because of shared experience have their say than to say anything.
R3… I agree there’s no one-size fits all, but God has a way that He wants to be approached and all the way back to Cain and Abel. Abel approached God His way. Cain approached God selfishly — one was rejected and one was accepted. Again… like most things it’s a matter of the heart. I would counsel that guy that his gifts (he’s obviously able to play music and he led the crowd so he’s gifted there too) should be used in a more edifying way. Instrumentation, etc. matter little — David used a lyre after all — “guitar mass” indeed!
I love Michael W. Smith and a few songs out there by people like Carrie Underwood but gimme Ode to Joy or something…..
My favorite Easter Morning song is Jesus Christ Has Risen Today……
Fav. Christmas song? Oh Holy Night
Advent? Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel and Lo How a Rose…..
I took you slightly wrong. My bad. Thing is, we’re 400 years past the concept of a “One size fits all” version of Christianity.
It’s a bit of a misnomer to say that Catholicism was ever “one size fits all.” While there are/were certain constants, there were also variables of culture and style that were never suppressed. In fact, under the common culture of Christendom, individual nations were able to exist with distinct identities, never completely melding into one empire, which runs counter to most of history.
I go around and around on this with R2 all the time (To our mutual frustration). My view is that since no two people think or feel exactly the same way, it makes sense people would naturally gravitate to the kind of worship service that is most meaningful for them.
There is something to be said for that, but isn’t there also something to be said for expanding one’s horizons and putting away childish things.
Worship is a profound thing. It is not about me. It is about approaching God in the holy place and growing closer to him. There is a danger in meddling with forms of worship lightly to suit one’s preferences. Sometimes instruction is stifled or worship dulled by capricious grasps at relevance.
If they’re avoiding a high Catholic Mass with the liturgy in Latin (Or for that matter, a high Orthodox service with the liturgy in Greek), with medieval music it’s probably because the antiquated forms mean nothing to them.
And sometimes they’re to immature to find the meaning in it. In a Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis talked about how the ancients attitude toward ceremony was inverted to ours. Where our attitudes tend toward comfort and casualness, they did not see the uncomfortableness of getting dressed up or the inconvenience in ceremony. They wanted the experience to stand apart from normal life and wanted to intensify it, along with conveying depths of symbolism and mystery in the ornateness of ritual. To invoke Lewis again and quote from him in Till We Have Daces, “Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”
The elaborateness of ritual in the ancient world should humble us. For all our scientific prowess, our minds have become blunted in so many respects. There are words and images of moving beauty that most disregard because they are “old fashion.” We find ourselves uncomfortable and awkward in atmospheres our fathers would have stridden through with confidence.
There’s a tendency among religious folk to ascribe moral dimensions to things that are simply aesthetic choices. That’s what it looked to me like you were doing.
There’s also a tendency to disregard the moral aspect of aesthetics. Art has moral contours and aesthetics and form convey those contours. Chesterton wrote thus in The Everlasting Man:
Here’s the problem, guys and gals, following this path to its ultimate conclusion leads to Jehovah’s Witnesses, or one of the strict, Protestant sects. The Pilgrims were great at keeping things simple.
Fact is, I love Christmas trees and Rudolph and Boris Karloff narrating the “Grinch,” and those things bring me closer to God. Are there Christians who would enter my house, and see my trimmed tannenbaum and tut-tut, saying, “He’s raising his kids to follow a pagan custom of adorning a tree?” Yes. And more power to them. Let them celebrate how they want to celebrate. Except for the Last Supper, Jesus never attended Mass so we’re all guessing here.
Dancing and religion are very easy to ridicule. I love to dance and I love to go to Mass, but I know that anyone watching a video tape of me doing either would find plenty to laugh at. If you’re enjoying it, and you’re a part of it, it feels good. If you’re sitting in a chair watching it alone on a computer monitor it’s going to look stupid.
I wouldn’t attend either of the services in the videos Floyd posted, and my reasons are in-line with most of what’s been said here, but how do I know what the Apostles would think of the “Ode to Joy?” As Floyd wrote, the psalms were meant to be recited by one person with a lyre accompaniment. Maybe David would consider it blasphemy to work in some oboes and cellos. How do I know? I know it sounds great so I choose to listen to it. If somebody thinks Mr. Mohawk and the Jesus Spins Me 5 sound awesome and set the right tone for worship who am I to disagree? I’m not joining that church, but I wish them well.
I’ll disagree somewhat Rufus if that is their end point. The Bible is replete with examples of proper worship — from which we can draw general principles of worship — not templates for exact imitation. Obviously there is wide latitude for culture, etc. I wouldn’t sing or dance in Zulu custom, but many of our brothers and sisters in South Africa do — making a joyful noise to the Lord. Scripture is pretty clear that God doesn’t want mindless babbling. It’s also pretty clear that worship is about God and not not what gets us “in the mood”. Worship music is not some Barry White mood setter so believers can “get busy”.
Floyd,
From what you have written my tastes seem to closely align with yours, but there are plenty of Christians who think dancing is the devil’s work. I understand their logic. I disagree. Watching Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse or Rita Hayworth is as enlightening for me as listening to “Ode to Joy.” I went to my first ballet kicking and screaming. I had no desire to go and assumed I would hate it. It was the most perfect human performance I have ever witnessed. Otherworldly. Dance can be good, dance can be bad, dance can be evil. Music can be good, music can be bad, music can be evil.
I love Blues and roots music. Sometimes I’ll play some of that stuff in the house when the kids are about and I start paying attention to the lyrics. My goodness! Every song is a euphemism for sex, “Everybody do the Mess Around,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Wang, Dang, Doodle,” and on, and on, ad infinitum. When I got into that music as a teen I never even thought about the lyrics. I honestly don’t think they corrupted me, but I’m sure some folks could walk into my house and think, “This guy’s playing Little Richard in front of his children and he claims to be Christian?!” It does work for my family. If it doesn’t work for someone else’s fine.
Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Aretha Franklin, The Pointer Sisters… All of them are/were Christians and all of them have performed some serious Christian music and some lewd, sex-infused blues and rock anthems. Would you be disgusted if you walked into your service this weekend and saw Aretha Franklin at the piano?
+JMJ+
I’m late to the discussion, I know (as what happens when one lives about twelve time zones away), but I have something to add anyway. =)
I started taking up the guitar this year and have really grown to love it. A few weeks ago, I was standing in line for a taxi, my guitar case strapped to my back, when some guy tried to chat me up by saying:
“So you play guitar! . . . Are you Evangelical?”
(Whatever happened to “What’s your sign?” =P)
I’m not sure how guitars stopped being emblems of rock and punk and found new life as symbols of contemporary Christian worship music. The latter kind of music is probably superior, no matter how mediocre it sounds, but we can’t deny where the guitar finds a better fit.
My husband, who is a damn fine pianist and led music for our Sunday School group for years, was informed by the “new” pastor that piano was kinda of old-fashioned and that worship was more meaningful in guitar. We now refer to the guitar in our house as “God’s instrument”.
One of our friends used to say all a youth pastor needs is a guitar and a Bible, in that order.
Oh boy.
@ Stephanie: I really follow what you’re saying there. Are you saying that I can only discuss things that are happy and sweet and wonderful w/r/t religion? Or that I shouldn’t discuss Catholicism at all, because that’s taboo? Either way, I kind of bristle at that.
@ Floyd: I don’t claim to know what God wants. I do know, however, that innovations to the musical aspects of church services in the west began with the reformation, because an ongoing sourse of complaint was that Church music was too stolid, too boring, too old-fashioned to really move people. This was an opinion that was actually shared by many in the Catholic church itself, and they immediately acted on this in the counter-reformation, when your church was attempting to modernize itself to lure people back from Protestantism. One of the major changes of the Counter-Reformation was a modernization of the music used in worship, with many new tunes and styles being incorperated, and many older ones being completely reworked to be more ‘crowd pleasing.’
@ David: Worship is what it is. If I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury and need a huge ceremony to get across the grandure or God, that’s swell. If I’m a hog farmer from Podunk who is moved to tears by being taken to the river and dropped in the water while someone strums a song on a banjo, who is the Archbishop to turn his nose up at me? The connection between God and myself was forged, a soul was saved, the mission is accomplished. I’ve never understood this insistence on the absolute letter of the law, specifically when the Bible itself never actually defines these laws.
Back during the Viking days, the Norse had managed to capture all of England excepting Cornwal. King Alfred wrote to the Pope pleading for help, again and again, articulately pointing out that this was a war between Paganism and Christianity, and the Christians were losing. The Vatican ignored him for a ridiculously long time, then finally sent back a note saying “It’s come to our attention that your monks’ tonsures are cut in the wrong way, and this is probably why God is punishing you. If you take pains to return to the official manner of haircuts, we are sure God will reward you.” Alfred took this to mean that no help was coming, he resigned himself to the state of things, and of course he eventually won.
But who would do that? And why? Why insist on something trivial like a haircut when people are dying and the fate of an entire nation lies in the balance? Particularly when there is no mention of tonsures in the bible whatsoever? How is that in any way relevant? As Paul himself says – The Law kills and Grace giveth life.
@ Enbrethiliel: Thank you.
By the way, I don’t want to give the impression that this is a Protestant vs. Catholics sort of thing, because I honestly don’t believe there is only “One True Denomination.” I’m not a ‘my way or the highway’ type. The “One True Church” is God’s elect, and I don’t believe that whether one is a Baptist or a Catholic or a Lutheran is the kind of thing that’s either a dealbreaker or an absolute lock on salvation.
I don’t have anything against Catholicism, and even when I was a fundamentalist, my dad (Who was raised Catholic) had only the best things to say about them, and would frequently stand up for their defence if anyone misrepresented them in our church.
I *will* admit that in the time and place I grew up, seemingly every Catholic I met was a screaming kneejerk liberals, all obnoxious Boston Kennedy types. None of them seemed to take their religious beliefs seriously, excepting a strange xenophobia for any other denomination. Obnoxious Chicago types. There’s something weird about an Italian Catholic from New Jersey who never goes to church, and hires prostitutes twice a week recoiling in horror when someone mentions their preacher’s wife. “Whoa, you guy’s priests can mary? That’s just sick!” And your peers of the faith never ceased to rag on us derisively in the manner of the famous Siskel and Ebert clip here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5-DSIDVsnA (the pertinent stuff starts at six minutes. There’s a lot of bad language in there) Obviously, obviously, obviously, that’s not true of all Catholics, and I’m not saying it is, I’m just pointing out that in my own life, these were the people I met, and the concept of Catholics who weren’t Democrats was…well…to be honest, I don’t think I met a ‘Conservative’ Catholic – or even conceived that such a thing existed – until pretty late in college. I’m not sure I ever met any Catholics who actually seemed to take their denomination seriously (In the protestant fashion of taking things seriously) until I started hanging out with some Philipinos in the mid-90s.
The concept of “Politically Conservative Catholics Who Take Their Faith Seriously” is still something of a novelty for me, and I do apologize if that causes tension on here. I’m not trying to bash your faith, I’m not trying to upset anyone. I don’t want to argue or make anyone cry, or persuade anyone to change their faith, nor feel bad about themselves or anything. The experiences of more than half a lifetime are not easily unlearned.
I cannot speak for the others, but personally, I am crying.
I can certainly understand that only knowing liberal Catholics can shape your opinion. I guess it’s sort of relative to my experiences growing up in a mostly Baptist area. That doesn’t make me a martyr but I understand where you’re coming from. I know what I thought of as prejudice then I now think of as people with good intentions who were really trying to help me. They really thought (and might still think) that I was going to hell because I took communion.
I shudder when the Kennedys are held up as some sort of National Catholic Shrine. Same with John Kerry and (ugh) Nancy Pelosi. Liberalism has infected and ruined some areas of the church – I always get a little nervous when someone starts speaking about social justice. I heard more about social justice issues in Catechism than the traditional things I should have been learning. There are many who are looking with great hope at the newer bishops that are being installed in the US. Pope Benedict is greatly concerned about restoring our Catholic identity and with it faithfulness to the things one ought to believe if one is to be a member of the Church. Did you notice that when Ted Kennedy died there were no official messages of condolences from the Vatican to the family as there were with the death of Eunice Kennedy?
So, this Papist isn’t offended. I liked reading your perspective on these matters. But Floyd is right…the music is bad!
+JMJ+
Republibot: You’re welcome? =) The question mark is there because I’m not sure what you’re thanking me for–and now I’m wondering if the last sentence of my post can be taken to mean the opposite of what I intended. =P
I don’t think that anyone is questioning the sincerity of worshipers who find guitar music more meaningful than Gregorian chant. I also think that it’s helpful to note that Floyd is approaching this (as I am) from a Catholic perspective, which has a definite hierarchy of values when it comes to the arts and an aesthetic benchmark dating from the Renaissance.
If guitar-driven Contemporary Christian music doesn’t meet the Catholic standard, that’s not because it’s intrinsically bad or that people who prefer it will go to hell; but because the whole “democracy of (Catholic) dead” knows that something can top it.
In fairness, you’ll find lots of great artists and composers who lived less than saintly lives even as they were creating great religious treasures for the Catholic Church. (I once heard a joke that the only composer you’ll ever meet in Heaven is Elgar . . . or one of the other minor ones.) In that sense, Contemporary Christian musicians are head and shoulders above most of them. I guess what I’m saying–as counter-intuitive as it seems–is that a discussion of music shouldn’t be about the heart, but about the art.
Enbrethiliel,
Floyd is not Catholic.
Very well put, Enbrethiliel. I don’t question anyone’s sincerity with the two given examples of contemporary music. I think it’s a matter of taste and one’s preference for a traditional service (in our case traditional liturgy) or something more recent. The Blues Mass would not appeal to me because it doesn’t seem appropriate to have that in Mass. I love blues, when done well, but in Mass the focus should be on worship of God not a band.
It’s not so much the instrument I bemoaned in the comments on the Sunday post it’s just my disappointment that our parish doesn’t have enough talented people to play that pipe organ. I was just hoping in light of All Saints Day that I might be treated to something a little less ordinary.
I guess it all ties in with the recent word of the day: sublime! We do need more of the sublime in every sphere of life because life is too often tedious and just plain hard.
+JMJ+
Thanks, CW. =)
I agree about ordinary music: we can get it anywhere because, well, it’s ordinary. =P
Sublime music is something else entirely, and the most appropriate time to have it is during worship.
When I lived in New Zealand, I was lucky enough to be in a parish with one of the most talented organists in the country (who also happened to be the son of a Kiwi composer of religious music!). Sublime music every Sunday morning at 10:00 am =D . . . and folk guitar every Sunday evening at 6:00 pm. =S Again, I don’t question anyone’s sincerity or love of God, but I know at which Mass you’d be more likely to hear Let It Be and Turn, Turn, Turn.
You said >> no matter how mediocre it sounds, but we can’t deny where the guitar finds a better fit.<< I took that to mean that the Guitar has a place in religious music. You can take it back if you like.
I’ve not actually mentioned my own personal tastes: I actually prefer a somewhat smaller, quainter service myself, but I’m from a different era, and having gone to a church with a modern service for a couple years now, it’s grown on me. I never oppsosed it for theological or aesthetic reasons, I just grew up in a time with a slightly more stolid view on what “Churchy” meant. But, of course, what “Churchey” meant when I was a kid was wildly different from what it meant when my Grandfather was a kid. These things change and always have. As you pointed out, your church has >>> values when it comes to the arts and an aesthetic benchmark dating from the Renaissance <<< which, as I pointed out, are obviously quite a bit different than they would have been before then. And of course none of us can claim to be following the ACTUAL service exactly as Jesus set it down, if He ever even prescribed one specifically.
The point being that the artistic angle is in a state of constant evolution, and 400 years from now, both our faiths will have some completely different prefered form of devotional song, and a different organization of the service, so why get all angered up over it? It's a matter of culture, not of salvation.
+JMJ+
My bad! =(
Thanks, Rufus. I misread the post.
(I just wanted to give you a heads up so you don’t spill the beans about the secret handshake or the location of all that Illuminati treasure…)
Rufus! What did we tell you about dropping this hints? It’s the comfy chair for you!
+JMJ+
And there goes my thesis . . . =P
@ Rufus – why are you crying.
@ Whomever does these things, I posted a reply to Enbrethiliel’s reply that seems to have vanished in to the aether. If you could make it re-appear here, I’d appreciate it.
Also @ Rufus: >>Did Mozart write any basketball plays for Jesus? No, but he wrote a lot of music for Mass. If James Naismith or Frankie Goes to Hollywood can get a couple of folks in to hear the message, who does that hurt? I imagine that minister took some heat for putting in that court. “You’ve got all kinds of kids coming here, disrespecting our faith, swearing, spitting… You’ve got kids who have no intention of being Baptist…” But I’ll bet it stuck with some kids, and some of those kids probably really needed the faith; “I will make you fishers of men.”<<
I totally agree with you.
It's funny how Evangelism is kind of like making a martini, isn't it? Even if you're lost in the woods, a thousand miles from civilization, and start to make yourself a martini, no matter how you do it, SOMEONE will turn up from SOMEWHERE to tell you you're doing it wrong.
Ok, it’s been several hours since my response to Enbrethiliel got disappeared, and it hasn’t popped up again, so I’ll just retype it from memory:
Firstly, Enbrethiliel, I was thanking you because the last line of your post made it seem like such things as guitars had a place in church. I then mentioned that I myself prefer a smaller, somewhat more prim service, however the services that I liked as a kid are way different from the ones my granddad liked when he was a kid, and presumably different from the ones that my grandkids will enjoy. Then I pointed out that since you said that your own Churche’s stance on the artistic merits of these things goes back to the renaisance, and NOT all the way back to Christ Himself, it’s all culturally based and in slow flux anyway, so why get all upset when traditions change, if they’re in no way related to the fundamental message of salvation.
Then I complimented someone – Floyd? Rufus? I can’t remember, and I can’t find the comment above anymore in a cursory look – who said that thier thinking was that modern music “Does no harm” so what’s the big deal, and talked about basketball a bit. I said that I agreed with him, and then jokingly I compared Evangelism to the old joke about making a martini when you’re lost in the woods: No matter if you’re a thousand miles from anywhere, as soon as you start to make it, no matter how you make it, someone will show up to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
I’m relying on memory here, so some of my comments may not be exactly as I first wrote them out.
Rufus here: whenever you’re having trouble remembering which Threedonian said something laudable, “Rufus” is always a safe guess.
@ Rufus: Why are you crying?
@ The College Widow: THANK YOU! I really appreciate that olive branch. BTW, protestants take communion too, most of us do it every sunday.
I don’t remember any more, but it was an attempt at humor based on something you wrote about crying.
Hey, no thank you needed, but you’re welcome. I make no assumptions that everyone is a believer: after all, we’re given free will to make that choice. I believe that people of all faiths are under attack by the rise of the snarky atheist such as Richard Dawkins. Hey, if someone doesn’t want to believe that’s their choice but why tear down and denigrate others who do have faith? I have seen a lot of debate locally on the so-called separation of church and state. To the new style of atheist this is practically an evangelical crusade!
We have much to gain by sticking together.
Ah. I figured you were moved by the sad company I was forced to keep as a wee bairn. Ah well. Anyway, now that I re-typed my comments, the original has resurfaced.
wow…now that’s a thread!
R3.0…we lived in Alabama for 10 years, so I believe I know how they think in Alabama. We loved the people in Alabama, hated the weather, moved back to the Left Coast because we missed the mountains and the sky. We went to Bama from California…now that was interesting, how they treated us as novelties, utterly amused by some the outlandish things we might do (like expect to buy liquor on a Sunday)…now people from New York or Massachusetts…let’s just say the War of Northern Aggression has not quite settled out yet.
+JMJ+
Republibot:
Then I pointed out that since you said that your own Churche’s stance on the artistic merits of these things goes back to the renaisance, and NOT all the way back to Christ Himself, it’s all culturally based and in slow flux anyway, so why get all upset when traditions change, if they’re in no way related to the fundamental message of salvation.
The violent reaction to electric guitars at a worship service is not because they oppose the Gospel, but because they oppose an artistic standard.
I’m reminded of the time Mel Gibson (or someone) put an ad for The Passion of the Christ on the roof of a Nascar vehicle. Some blogs reacted by saying, “Eeeww! Tacky!” That reaction was taken as a judgment of Christians who happen to like Nascar, when it was just a judgment of the medium used. One can have the tackiest taste in the world and still be a good Christian (which I personally take as good news for myself!).
Then there’s the Catholic saying Lex orandi, lex credendi; literally, the law of praying is the law of believing; in regular English, the way you pray comes from the way you believe. The reaction to modern worship music didn’t come out of the blue. There’s a whole culture behind it–a culture which wasn’t just incidental, but which was seeded by Christianity for 1500 years.
@ Kevin: Fair enough. Dunno that I actually said anything to contradict any of that, but fair enough.
@ Enbrethiliel: To be perfectly honest, I can’t following your reasoning here. MY point is that there Is. No. Artistic. Standard. in the Bible. If someone wants an artistic standard, swell. If someone wants to say that only Mozart’s Requiem is artistically valid, and ‘Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life’ is somehow artistically invalid, swell. It’s a bit too pretentious for my liking, but whatever. It is, however, just a matter of taste and not worth fighting about.
If, on the other hand, someones artistic standard condemns other people’s form of worship (To the same God, yet!) as somehow wrong, then said standard runs the risk of alienating people from the Christian God altogether, and that standard should be abolished.
Put another way: If your church standard makes you feel closer to God, great, no qualms from me, but if your church standard makes other people feel further from God, then it’s a bad thing.
Also, there’s an old Roman (And early Catholic) belief that ALL art is inherently civilizing, and can be used to bring people up to a higher standard. What I’m getting off of this thread – and I don’t neccisarily believe it’s Catholic, by the way, I think it’s just an isolated bias – is that some of you guys are just using your standard to put people down.
(I’m no longer really talking to Enbrethiliel here, just talking in general)
Which might be acceptable, I suppose, if we’re talking about south seas canibals or something, but you’re talking about your brother and sister Christians, who worship the same God as you. What’s next? Making fun of their accents? (“How dare people worship God with a southern twang! Clearly, God can only be worshiped with a stenetorian English accent!”) Imposing levels of education? (“Clearly you can’t grasp the subtleties involved in scripture, so don’t bother.”) Body type? (“The body is a temple, and you’re simply to ugly to be in our church. Loose a few hundred pounds, and then we’ll talk.”) Once you start imposing these kinds of arbitrary standards, there’s no end to them.
My own take – which is not an intherently Protestant one – is that we should look at Jesus’ own example. He didn’t discriminate between the beautiful people and the ugg-ohs. He didn’t discriminate between the learned and the ignorant. He didn’t discriminate between the highbrow or lowbrow, between the meek and the violent (Though obviously He prefered the meek) and thank God for that. Jesus was profoundly, universally egalitarian when it came to people. I don’t believe from my close reading of scripture that their tastes ever came in to it. He wanted people to come to Him as they were – classy or tacky – He didn’t care.
I don’t care whether a tradition has lasted 1500 years, or 15 minutes: It’s something we humans have made up, and hence it’s basically irrelevant. Using it as a weapon to bludgeon people with restrictions and disdain that Jesus Himself would have opposed strikes me as disgraceful.
+JMJ+
Republibot: I’m not sure what I said that was hard to follow. I think everyone here agrees that artistic taste has nothing to do with sincerity, morals or virtue.
What I’m getting off of this thread . . . is that some of you guys are just using your standard to put people down.
And I think this is where we lose each other, because I don’t get anything like that off this thread at all.
What you’re saying sounds like this to me: “I’m not saying that it’s wrong for people to have contemporary music in church, but it’s wrong for them to have contemporary music in church. Furthermore, while there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s clearly entirely wrong.”
I’m not saying that YOU’RE saying that if you listen to music with a backbeat you’ll go to hell, but what I am saying is what Rufus or whomever said, that if it does no harm, and it gets people interested in going to church, why is it a bad thing? If you’ve got 1500 years of tradition to the contrary, that’s swell – as I’ve repeatedly said – but if your 1500 years of tradition isn’t doing it for people who maybe just dont’ like that kind of music, then obviously they’re right to go after something else.
As to putting down people who’s tastes – and all we’re really talking about here is taste – differ, here’s some quotes:
>>>You are merely witnessing the tip of the spirit-killing iceberg known as “contemporary church music”. …— Catholics ain’t got nothin’ on evangelicals in the craptastic music department. …I’d immediately leave any so-called church that allowed this to be on the stage. Some things however need to be exposed and ridiculed mercilessly. But I’ll post this so that my Catholic friends and fellow believers can feel better about their musical dilemma:<<>Some things however need to be exposed and ridiculed mercilessly<>>repent and never do church music ever again.<<>>When you tell an priest that you don’t like guitar Mass and he starts boogying down to Take and Eat….you know you have a problem.
<<>>this is a mockery of worship.<<<
and a zillion other examples in this thread. I'll point out that the Pharisees were very big on following the 'proper' form of things, and for this Jesus rebuked them (Among other things) And let's not forget God's Own words on showy, empty, formal worship:
Listen to the Lord’s word,
you leaders of Sodom! 29
Pay attention to our God’s rebuke, 30
people of Gomorrah!
1:11 “Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?” 31
says the Lord.
“I am stuffed with 32 burnt sacrifices
of rams and the fat from steers.
The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats
I do not want. 33
1:12 When you enter my presence,
do you actually think I want this –
animals trampling on my courtyards? 34
1:13 Do not bring any more meaningless 35 offerings;
I consider your incense detestable! 36
You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations,
but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations! 37
1:14 I hate your new moon festivals and assemblies;
they are a burden
that I am tired of carrying.
1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I look the other way; 38
when you offer your many prayers,
I do not listen,
because your hands are covered with blood. 39
1:16 40 Wash! Cleanse yourselves!
Remove your sinful deeds 41
from my sight.
Stop sinning!
1:17 Learn to do what is right!
Promote justice!
Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! 42
Take up the cause of the orphan!
Defend the rights of the widow! 43
DAMMIT!
Look, I just spent ten minutes writing out a reply, and again it’s gone. I’m not normally a paranoid person, but why is this ONLY happening REPEATEDLY on this thread? Could whomever is in charge of this kind of thing please find my comment and post it?
Irritating.
Rufus here; I’m not sure why this is happening, Republibot 3.0. It was flagged as spam.
Thank you, Rufus.
Rufus here; No sweat. But keep an eye-ay out for oydFlay.
Sigh. Never fails: Quote the bible and end the conversation.
+JMJ+
Oh, is that why you quoted the Bible? =P
Actually, it was your quoting Rufus that kept me away and terrified to come back.
(Ha! Seriously now, I was just busy elsewhere in cyberspace. I really did want to read your reply, and I’m glad that Rufus was able to dig it up.)
What you’re saying sounds like this to me: “I’m not saying that it’s wrong for people to have contemporary music in church, but it’s wrong for them to have contemporary music in church. Furthermore, while there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s clearly entirely wrong.”
I guess my point is that I think that all music, whether used for worship or recreation or whatever, is open to critique. At the same time, what is said about certain music shouldn’t be taken as blanket approval or condemnation of the people who play it. While I can see why this would be a touchy subject, I don’t see why it should be beyond reasoned critique just because it hits a sensitive emotional chord.
I find it interesting that you quote Rufus and Floyd together, first Rufus’ view that if the music does no harm, then there’s nothing wrong with it, and then Floyd’s (admittedly hyperbolic) opinion that music like that would make him leave a church immediately. Well, if music actually did make someone stop going to church, wouldn’t it have done some harm?
Worship is what it is.
Yes, it is. I believe I gave some outline of what it is.
If I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury and need a huge ceremony to get across the grandure or God, that’s swell. If I’m a hog farmer from Podunk who is moved to tears by being taken to the river and dropped in the water while someone strums a song on a banjo, who is the Archbishop to turn his nose up at me?
1. Both of those examples are worship traditions that developed over generations. Both have their subtleties and richness.
2. What I said had nothing to do with variety of form or change specifically. It had to do with the modern attitude of immature “Jesus is my homeboy” attitude in worship. It has to do with the constant drive to water-down, strain out and make worship more “approachable” and more banal.
The connection between God and myself was forged, a soul was saved, the mission is accomplished. I’ve never understood this insistence on the absolute letter of the law, specifically when the Bible itself never actually defines these laws.
A person’s ability to communicate diminishes with a contraction in their understanding of language. Their ability to think diminishes with a lack of discipline and clear thought. An artist without technical skill is limited in what they can convey. A filmmaker lacking technique, lacks the tools to tell his story. Shakespeare’s sonnets could make men weep and the sonnet is a strict form. Bach wrote music that brought men closer to God, but it contained complex mathematical patterns with allusions to theology. Mozart was perhaps the most brilliant composer to ever live, but he worked almost exclusively in a single form.
That worship is profoundly personal, does not mean it is without form, as even the most stirring and profound works of art have exacting forms. Form can change and vary, with the richness of re-expression of the First Form, but whereas some changes and variations seek to make the image richer and sharper, some are also done to make it more “comfortable.” What that means is that, as selfish creatures, we don’t like putting in the effort to approach God, especially when it means doing uncomfortable things. So, we defang it and make it safe.
So, what I’m saying has has nothing to do with style preferences specifically. It has to do with an attitude.
On the last point, the Bible does define the Law, but as a drawing, not a diagram. The Bible is quite blunt in many places and in so being is quite sharp on many of its points, but the Truth the Law proceeds from is the impenetrable mystery of God. The Bible’s truths are mountains we are climbing into the clouds. They most certainly have definition, but that doesn’t prevent us from getting lost.
@ Enbritheliel: I never said anything about being beyond critique. Stryper was a terrible, terrible, terrible band. I’m not crazy about Petra either. I’m not saying ‘all music is equally good’, nor have I implied that. (Re-reading old comments….Nope. I didn’t imply it even remotely.) What I’ve been saying is that you guys are saying “This kind of music is inappropriate for worship, because we’ve got a 1500 year tradition that says otherwise” and I’m saying that I don’t understand why people would be so hard-nosed about something that is utterly tangential to the mission of The Church. I mean, is Christianity supposed to be about saving souls, or are we a record store? I can totally get why you’d prefer one type of music over another, but I don’t get where you can say “God doesn’t want to be worshiped by someone playing a guitar, and if Rock puts butts in the pews on Sunday, that’s utterly vapid and useless, and God doesn’t want that either.” Because that’s the feel I’ve gotten repeatedly on this thread. TO BE CONTINUED…
R3: The point is not ““God doesn’t want to be worshiped by someone playing a guitar, and if Rock puts butts in the pews on Sunday, that’s utterly vapid and useless, and God doesn’t want that either.” Because that’s the feel I’ve gotten repeatedly on this thread”.
The point is the music used in Mass is part of the Liturgy, a sacred and holy rite. It is expected that this music will be appropriate. This doesn’t make Catholicism any better or worse when stacked up to other faiths but it is my faith and I will defend it as best I can. I think you’re missing the point that those of us who are Catholic expect that the Liturgy be proper. The video of the man playing a harmonica as part of the liturgical music is an example of liturgical abuse. That’s just my opinion. Other Catholics may disagree.
Maybe this quote from the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops will help. “The ritual dimension of sacred music refers to those ways in which it is “connected with the liturgical action” so that it accords with the structure of the Liturgy and expresses the shape of the rite. The musical setting must allow the rite to unfold with the proper participation of the assembly and its ministers, without overshadowing the words and actions of the Liturgy.”
“From Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship” published by the USCCB November 2007
If your church has a worship service that finds blues music or whatever arrangements appropriate then by all means, go for it! I don’t think anyone here is condemning you. You’re assuming way too much in these comments. Don’t assume that making a stand in defense of faith means that I think you’re wrong.
CONTINUED
>>>I find it interesting that you quote Rufus and Floyd together, first Rufus’ view that if the music does no harm, then there’s nothing wrong with it, and then Floyd’s (admittedly hyperbolic) opinion that music like that would make him leave a church immediately. Well, if music actually did make someone stop going to church, wouldn’t it have done some harm?<<<
Typo. I have trouble keeping Floyd and Rufus separate, and didn't check before I posted. I go along with Rufus' view that it does no harm, and therefore there's nothing wrong with it. I mis-ascribed it to Floyd, apparently.
Grrr. This thing’s eating my posts again. I just put the same thing in twice, and it ate it both times.
Seriously, guys, what the frack?
Don’t know about the spam thing. It kept catching Fritz awhile back….
Just because I would leave a church servive doesn’t necessarily carry a moral condemnation.
I will say that I do ascribe a moral value to aesthetics. God loves beauty and harmony and balance. God has never used a “by any means necessary” approach to putting “butts in pews”. “Butts in pews” is a man-centered goal and not a God-thing I would argue. He wants meaningful relationship not vapid and shallow and “vain repetitions. How do I know? As the old song says “the Bible tells me so”.
I also think there are carnal aspects to music. There’s a definite beat to some music that is meant to elicit a carnal sensual or sexual response — that is inappropriate to worship God while it might be appropriate elsewhere.
Cheers, Floyd. Very well stated.
By the way, no guitars at Mass this morning. Just a piano and what I suspect was a drum machine. Groan! I think I’d better stick to the early morning Mass that is a cappella. We could start another thread on that maybe?
I’m just impressed that we are creeping up on a 100 comments on a religious music post. I love Threedonia.
Me too, Hail Threedonia!
No matter what instrumentation you put behind us there is no getting beyond the reality that Catholics cannot sing.
We know it, too. Everyone tries to sing just a little bit softer than the next guy.
Very funny, Mike, and very true! I sing. I’m not a wonderful singer, but I can sing in tune. Mrs. Firefly sings out also, and she is a good singer. I can actually sense many of the men in front of me fighting the urge to turn around to see where that noise is coming from. It’s almost like, “Who’s the newbie? Doesn’t he know he’s just supposed to move his lips and look frightened?”
+JMJ+
I’m actually a pretty good singer myself (natch!) and I have the same effect on anyone (un)lucky enough to sit in front of me.
“move his lips and look frightened?” Ha! That’s me if I’m hearing a new melody. I have problems because I’m an alto…much more comfortable in the lower end of the staff. I’m in trouble if those nearby are sopranos or women who feel the need to pretend they are sopranos.
TCW: “I’m in trouble if those nearby are sopranos or women who feel the need to pretend they are sopranos.”
That is so funny! (And I sing alto, too, tho my speaking voice sounds higher.)
My dad had several brothers and they sang together in the choir, as did my cousins in later years. They sounded great.
And the little country church where I grew up used to raise the roof on some days.
Hey, we altos gotta stick together. Love your avatar too…how sweet!
Oh, for crap’s sake. This is my fourth or fifth comment today that’s gotten eaten by your spambots. I’ve been taking pains to keep my comments short and link-free today, and you’re still nabbing me nearly every time.
>God loves beauty and harmony and balance. God has never used a “by any means necessary” approach to putting “butts in pews”. “Butts in pews” is a man-centered goal and not a God-thing I would argue. He wants meaningful relationship not vapid and shallow and “vain repetitions. How do I know? As the old song says “the Bible tells me so”.<<<
Whoa, whoa, whoa, tread carefully here, my friend: you're putting words in God's mouth. That is never, never, never a thing to do lightly. You're saying – definitively – what God wants, and you have no way to do that. What you're stating is your opinion about what you want, and then attributing it to God.
I’m not putting words in His mouth… I’m using my reason and his words to draw reasonable conclusions. God hates chaos — speaking without love is like clanging cymbals — (1 Cor. 13)… vain repetitions and order is all over the Pauline epistles as he commands order in worship. Harmony is order…. Ecclesiastes 7 tells us to be neither excessively wicked not excessively righteous — sort of the Godly version of the Doctrine of the Mean. Look around at nature… there’s order, harmony and balance everywhere — that’s hardly a controversial statement — much less unorthodox.
I’m only saying what God has either said or clearly shown in Scripture and nature. Show me one place in Scripture where one phrase is repeated for minutes on end… I can show you places where such things are explicitly mocked or said not to be done. Show me where chaos and disorder are celebrated (they are in fact often judgments or consequences of sin). I’m not saying God is not the author of such things because what we see as disorder He sees the macro of course, but I think Scripture is pretty clear that we are to approach God in purity of spirit, order, and with joy. Even David’s nekkid dance before the Ark of the Covenant is a one-off — an exceedingly joyful occasion.
The sensual music thing is also common sense…. and is contextual to some degree too of course. I can take a celebratory drinking song change the words and the song is redeemed (if you will). You take a stanky sexy Barry White groove… I don’t care what words you put to it it’s written to get the hips grooving. Can you extract melodies and change arrangements etc.? Of course you can, but the delivery has been changed.
OT: I will look at the spam filter again. I don’t know what it is. You’re not using links or any of the trigger words…. Sorry ’bout that — I’ll take a look.
I’m by no means done with this discussion, but seeing as 8 comments in a row have disappeared without posting, I don’t see how I can be expected to continue it.
If you post too fast, it might swallow you up. That’s my only guess.
1 Corinthinas 13 isn’t talking about Chaos in any sense of the word. It’s talking about doing things without love. At no point in the bible does it actually say “God loves Harmony” or “God loves Gregorian Chants, but Doesn’t Love Bluegrass.” Nor, for that matter, does the bible give ANY kind of directions for music whatsoever, aside from “Selah” in Psalms, which doesn’t count since no one really knows what it means anyway.
I once went to a Rastifarian service. Ignoring all the ganja – which I didn’t smoke – it was one of the most overwhelmingly awsome religious moments in my life. I don’t share their religious belief, and I don’t even like Reggae all that much (I’m more of a ska man), but it was deeply reverent, moving, worshipful and beautiful. From what’s essentially dance music.
Which brings us back to 1 Cor. 13, I think: If it’s done with Love of God, it’s a good form of expression. If it’s done without it, it’s not, regardless of what style it’s in, or what instruments it uses.
I really like ska. I really don’t like reggae.
+JMJ+
To Republibot:
What I’ve been saying is that you guys are saying “This kind of music is inappropriate for worship, because we’ve got a 1500 year tradition that says otherwise” and I’m saying that I don’t understand why people would be so hard-nosed about something that is utterly tangential to the mission of The Church.
Well, I don’t see how we could make a critique like “This kind of music is inappropriate for worship” without a reasonable basis for saying so–and the basis happens to be the 1500 years of Tradition. Someone unfamiliar with musical forms over the centuries would possibly have a different opinion of the two examples given in the original post, but that’s not the context the people in this thread seem to have.
As for why we’re “hard-nosed” about it . . . Speaking for myself, I know I’d want to keep this kind of music out of my church; though I agree with College Widow that if other Christians with a different tradition want it in their church, that wouldn’t be a concern of mine.
On the other hand, I don’t think that music is utterly tangential, and I’ll tell you why . . .
I have trouble keeping Floyd and Rufus separate, and didn’t check before I posted. I go along with Rufus’ view that it does no harm, and therefore there’s nothing wrong with it. I mis-ascribed it to Floyd, apparently.
Actually, you were right about Floyd and Rufus and which of them said what. =)
What I meant by quoting them again was that we don’t just have a case of rock music getting people to come to church, but a possible case of rock music scaring people out of church. In the latter scenario, I’d say it would hardly have “done no harm” or been merely tangential when it comes to saving souls.
In fairness, one can say that perhaps Gregorian chant has turned its own share of people away from church, because it was meaningless to them and made them think Christianity would be meaningless to them, too. Yet this also proves that music can be both a means of saving some souls and a stumbling block to other souls: in both cases, very close to the heart of Christianity.
And yet, 1100 years ago, when your church split from the Greek church, one of the first things they did was modernize the music to make it more relevant to Italians. And when my church split from your church 400 or so years ago, one of the first things we did was modernize the music to make it more relevant to Northern and Western Europeans. This was decried by your church at the time, but a generation later, your church modified its own music by copying OUR music, and catholicising it a bit. The Counterreformation was all about making Catholicism seem less old-fashioned to people who’d already left the church for Protestantism, and trying to win some of ‘em back.
The point being: As time passes, musical tastes change, and your own Church has modified its stance on this radically from time to time.
Again… I’m fine with cultural differences. I would expect a pipe organ in a Zulu Christian service of course… I don’t think God necessarily favors one instrument over another or one type over another (He might — I just hope its not Montalvani or polka).
Look at the differences of the Sunday Gospel posts I do — everything from hard rock (P.O.D. and Switchfoot to Ambrosian a capella chant). About the only thing you won’t hear there is rap (because I loathe it — not because I think it’s evil) and any slow-burn sex jam rhythm — that would be both wrong and creepy.
+JMJ+
I didn’t mean to make this a huge Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant thing. When I said “my church,” I was referring to the building where I go every Sunday, not to the Catholic Church.
In fact, I think the reason we’ve had so many commenters weighing in on this, regardless of their religion, is that we all implicitly recognise that a discussion of Christian music is relevant to OUR Church. All of us. All of Christendom.
If I comment on Evangelical music, I’m not saying something about “the neighbours” from a safe distance. It really does hit close to home.
I think the primary reason for all the comments is that Floyd got it so terribly wrong in his post.
+JMJ+
That’s another theory . . .
Elvis Costello:
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice ’cause they think that it’s treason
So you had better do as you are told
and
Some of my friends sit around every evening
And they worry about the times ahead
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
And the promise of an early bed
You either shut up or get cut up, they don’t wanna hear about it
It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
Tryin’ to anaesthetise the way that you feel
It just seemed appropos
and you didn’t get spammed!!!
+JMJ+
ONE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I’m sorry. I just had to write that.)
+JMJ+
Republibot: And when you talk about modernisation, who do you mean by “they”? That, I think, is the key.
In those three historical instances you cite, the changing of music used for worship was a top-down phenomenon, with the upper classes (or at least the more educated classes) in charge of composing what everyone else would hear. That is, tastes didn’t just change; they were also directed–conducted, if you will–by people who happened to have control of the music. Whether it was Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, it had the same “elitist” root.
That’s actually still going on these days. The new upper class in music are the executives of recording companies, and no matter how much they say that they’re just catering to changing tastes, they can’t deny that they contribute a great deal to making sure that those tastes change in ways that are good for them.
So there’s a difference between music influenced by the upper class within a worship tradition and music influenced by the upper class outside a worship tradition. As I’ve said, worship music used to be a top-down phenomenon. Today, because of the way it enters the worship, it’s a bottom-up phenomenon.
It’s just the music I think is sub-standard, not the worshipers themselves, not their love for God, not their sincerity or character or whatever. Bad music. Good people. Why is this a big deal?
(Before we go another round, I’d like to ask you what you’re looking for. Is it for me to admit that the music featured in the original post is any good, just because it was used for worship? I don’t think I could do that without lying.)
R3, I guess I’m with Ebrethiliel with wonder what you’re expecting at this point? I’d love to see this thread go to 200 comments if there are any new points to be made.
“And when my church split from your church 400 or so years ago, one of the first things we did was modernize the music to make it more relevant to Northern and Western Europeans. This was decried by your church at the time, but a generation later, your church modified its own music by copying OUR music, and catholicising it a bit.”
What do you want? Royalties?
How many times do you need the same point to be made?
@ Enbrethiliel: So you’re saying that change is ok, as long as little people like me have nothing to do with it, as long as we rely entirely on the judgement of our social betters? As long as we resign ourselves to a hierarchical system composed entirely of humans who may be better educated than me, but are no less prone to error? With all due respect, I find this attitude inconsistent with the values of conservatism, which is egalitarian at it’s root. I don’t believe in legalism. I never have. Neither did the Apostle Paul, who was very clear on the matter when he said that the Spirit Saves, and the law kills.
I don’t have a lot of faith in my social betters. Many of them lie, cheat, steal, screw around, kill, you name it. They’re no better than me. One of the central precepts of Christianity is that ALL have sinned, we’re all equal, which happens to be a central concept of our republic as well. Now, I’m willing to accept the judgement of people who have more education than I do, because that’s hard fought and hard won and education is always worthy of regard, but I do not accept the idea that just because someone said something 300 or 1100 years ago, it’s automatically true. And neither should you.
In many cases, the difference between a church and a cult is simply the “because we say so” aspects of it are accepted without question. I know, I know, we’re talking about a trivial matter like music in worship, and yet they kill people for listening to western music in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Little issues can become big. Tiny intolerances end up becoming strangling things which lead to schism, as we’ve seen over and over and over again.
Therefore, your argument, as I understand it comes down to “only the people who count get to make the decisions” and I’m wrong because I’m not one of the people who count. And this on a trivial aesthetic matter that you’ve attached supernatural value to! God Forbid I’d actually tried to make a point with some value.
@ The College Widdow: the angry sarcasm isn’t really called for.
I’m trying to learn. You think differently than I do, and that’s always worth exploring. We got to like 90 comments with Enbrethiliel thinking I was somehow saying that crappy guitar songs should be above criticism, which was never my point. Clearly there’s been some miscommunication here.
I think it’s a case of fundamentally different perspectives not being able to really understand each other. The reasoning I’m getting here is circular: The Church says it matters therefore it matters, regardless of what the Bible and history say. I’m sure this is logical to you, and I intend no disrespect, but no one has been able to explain to me how this makes logical sense. Obviously, it’s a matter of your traditions. I pointed out that the history of those traditions is not nearly so monolithic as some people on here would seem to think. I’m told that doesn’t matter, but of course it does matter, since it’s a lynch pin of an earlier argument.
So convince me, that’s all I want. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. I done that on here a lot. I’m not closed-minded. Use a logical argument to support your position, and not one that relies on feelings, personal dislikes (Which appears to be the fundamental reason for this thread), xenophobia, or nebulous extrabiblical traditions. If you’re right, how hard can it be?
“@ The College Widdow: the angry sarcasm isn’t really called for.”
Sorry I hurt your feelings, R3. It was sarcastic but it wasn’t angry. I realize that it can be difficult to discern somebody’s intentions based on text but don’t read things into statement that aren’t there. Now if I added “What do you want, royalties, you little twerp?” THAT would be angry sarcasm.
I stated before that I’m not an apologist. I’m sure you aren’t close-minded and I do appreciate your point of view. Honestly. So out of respect for you I will see if we can come to some understanding.
“The Church says it matters therefore it matters, regardless of what the Bible and history say.” Did you see my previous comment where I tried to give you an official perspective on the role of music in the Liturgy? There is some wiggle room there, I’ll give you that. BUT the whole point was that I consider the Blues Mass to be completely wrong for sacred music. Obviously the parish priest did not or the man would not have been able to be there with his band to do the music. I’m glad I’m not a member of that parish.
“I pointed out that the history of those traditions is not nearly so monolithic as some people on here would seem to think.” You are absolutely right on this point. The Mass, and music used therein, has changed throughout the centuries.
“So convince me, that’s all I want. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. I done that on here a lot. I’m not closed-minded. Use a logical argument to support your position, and not one that relies on feelings, personal dislikes (Which appears to be the fundamental reason for this thread), xenophobia, or nebulous extrabiblical traditions. If you’re right, how hard can it be?”
Look, this isn’t about me being right and you being wrong. I merely attempted to point out to you, in case you didn’t have a real understanding, that Catholics have a Liturgy and music used as part of the Mass isn’t supposed to be a mockery of worship or to distract from the worship of God. I don’t have xenophobia of music…I just want the music used in Mass to be appropriate.
“Nebulous extra-Biblical traditions”? Now I think you’re being angry and sarcastic for calling me out on one of the fundamental differences of Catholicism and protestantism in general. If you’re expecting a
a sola scriptura defense of why I don’t want a fat man playing a harmonica with a band in Mass you’re not going to get it. I don’t expect you to accept the authority of the Magisterium but I do and that’s my choice.
“If you’re right, how hard can it be?” Again, this isn’t about me being right. It’s about me trying to make a point more clearly that I consider the Blues Mass to be Liturgical Abuse. And apparently convincing you of that is very hard indeed. If you have a complete blues band in your house of worship, Calypso Louis or a mariachi band AND that’s what your congregation wants AND it’s appropriate to your service, then by all means do it.
Look, I’m weary of this thread. I do respect my protestant brethren and their ways of worship – and that includes you, R3. In fact it was a scripture quoting fundamentalist friend that helped me return to my faith. We don’t agree on many point of theology but we agree on the big points, the ones that truly matter. And I hope we can too.
Fair enough. Sorry to misunderstand you.
>>“Nebulous extra-Biblical traditions”? Now I think you’re being angry and sarcastic for calling me out on one of the fundamental differences of Catholicism and protestantism in general. If you’re expecting a
a sola scriptura defense of why I don’t want a fat man playing a harmonica with a band in Mass you’re not going to get it. I don’t expect you to accept the authority of the Magisterium but I do and that’s my choice. <<
Not attempting to be disrespectful at all. Look at it this way: You, and seemingly everyone else on this site, have a common indoctrination in to Catholicism. You can all point to something that you all know, cite it as an example, and it makes perfect sense to you, and it's probably a valid case of internal reasoning. I'm not taking issue with that. But if you're trying to convince someone that yours is the One True version of the One True Faith based on the example of St. Elutherios, it's not going to have much of an effect if the person you're trying to convince was raised a pagan in Antarctica, and has no idea what you're talking about.
Does that make sense? Your long history of tradition might be valid, I don't know, but it's also very subjective and something that I don't have any knowledge of, so all I was trying to say there – and I could have phrased it less specifically, I guess – was something corroborating it from a more objective source, if that makes sense.
Moving beyond that, I will admit that as a Protestant (and former Baha'I, and former Unitarian, and former Protestant before all that), I don't really understand this concept of a "Liturgy." So let's start basic: What's that? Cuz we don't have that?
I'm sorry I've wearied you on the subject. If it's any consolation, you folks have utterly exhausted me as well.
R3, as they say in the NFL “upon further review”, I was a jerk in my last few comments on this thread. I do apologize for being defensive and a little hostile. I wrongly assumed that you were attempting to discredit me by challenging me on the basics of my faith. Based on your last few comments, it seems that you may have unwittingly pushed a few buttons that raised my ire. The way your arguments were constructed lead me to believe that you wouldn’t accept any of my explanations. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this thread and realize that regardless of the topic I shouldn’t be quick to anger.
You mentioned not knowing what I meant by liturgy so let me give you a brief definition from the Catholic Encyclopedia: “On the one hand, liturgy often means the whole complex of official services, all the rites, ceremonies, prayers, and sacraments of the Church, as opposed to private devotions. In this sense we speak of the arrangement of all these services in certain set forms (including the canonical hours, administration of sacraments, etc.), used officially by any local church, as the liturgy of such a church — the Liturgy of Antioch, the Roman Liturgy, and so on. So liturgy means rite…The other sense of the word liturgy, now the common one in all Eastern Churches, restricts it to the chief official service only — the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, which in our rite we call the Mass.”
American Catholics tend to be poor at evangelizing. I didn’t realize that you were looking for answers – I truly thought you were just trying to be argumentative. Believe me I’ve been involved in and seen a lot of debates that unfolded just like this thread. I didn’t want to get into a situation of constantly being on the defensive on matters that are deeply personal to each of us.
I would be remiss if I missed an opportunity to suggest a few websites for you to check out if you’re interested. A great source for answers is http://www.catholic.com/
If you’re interested in hearing one of the great apologists I recommend Bishop Fulton Sheen. This site has quality (and free) MP3s:
http://www.americancatholictruthsociety.com/articles/sheen.htm
There are some very, very good blogs out there. This one is one of my favorites since the author is very conservative politically:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/
Another site with a conservative perspective:
http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/
Other blogs I frequent:
http://frmartinfox.blogspot.com/
http://yimcatholic.blogspot.com/
http://mcitl.blogspot.com/
Finally I encourage you to read the works of Pope Benedict XVI. He has an amazing intellect and is a great teacher. His latest official letter, Charity in Truth ,or Caritas in Veritate, is profound.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0893.htm
My kids are much more Catholic than I. They go to Catholic schools and have had a lot of religious study. I was a public school kid who went to CCD one evening a week. And, back in the ’70’s CCD was mainly concerned with touchy-feely stuff. We had very little Catholicism. Every week seemed to be a reiteration of love thy neighbor supported by 45 minutes of coloring a picture with crayons.
I must admit I’m stumped by most of my kids’ religion homework. There are all these specific terms in Catholicism. Encyclicals, epistals, ecumenicals… I don’t even know the names of all the articles of clothing my kids don when they are altar servers. But they do.
This is all a way of saying, I’m not sure if you’ll get a lot out of those websites, Republibot 3.0. I am decent at trivia and often get asked by friends to be on their trivia teams at various Catholic churches. I’m almost always the only public school kid in the room and when the category is religion I don’t understand most of what’s being asked or answered. There is a specific language to Catholicism that is hard to pick up on if you are not raised with it. I do know some adult converts who get it, but they really threw themselves into it. Personally I find a lot of it arbitrary, so I’ve never bothered, but I know Catholics who can debate for hours on the nuances of whether a Pope was speaking ex cathedra when he made a statement, and whether it holds the same import of something some other Pope said… To me, once you get beyond the Gospels it’s all men speaking as men, but Catholics get really wrapped up in protocol and heirarchy and terminology and ritual.
I had a similar experience with my CCD classes growing up, Rufus. Too much time spent blathering on about social justice…the era of nuns in pants and felt banners. Had I had more of a theological background once I entered college I might not have been a lapsed member of the church for 21 years.
You make a good point regarding some of the nuanced arguments but that’s one of the aspects I enjoy: it’s like pie on the window – there when I want it. It’s fun to get deeper into it with the nomenclature, Pope Whoosis II and Pope Whatsis IV, etc. but one doesn’t have to. It’s optional. A priest said to me once that Catholicism has everything: you want people who wear robes and light candles, we’ve got that. Want incense and ritual? We’ve got that. If you want the basics, Jesus and the Mystery of Faith we’ve got that too. It can be as rich or as simple as one wishes. There are those who get a little too wrapped up in if it’s important to hold hands or not to hold hands or shaking hands at the sign of peace. It’s important to be reverent but not get too caught up in the rubrics. Each day I think of the Pharisees and try to keep in mind what is truly important. I have my fundamentalist friends who keep me in line.
I struggled with my last reply to R3. I don’t think this forum is the place to answer all of the questions he might have – even if I could. I want him to know that not all Catholics are like Nancy Pelosi or the Kennedy clan. I thought he might at least enjoy some of the conservative viewpoints of Elizabeth Scalia or use the online encyclopedia to answer a few questions.
“felt banners” I laughed out loud when I read that, The College Widow! An excellent summation of the era in two words!
I never thought of it, but what you write about Catholicism having everything is true. The one thing we have that none of the other Christian faiths (except for the Orthodox, like Father Ron) can copy is the ancient aspect. Nobody is going to write a Dan Brown novel on the United Church of Christ. There are no ancient mysteries. It’s all guitar mass.
Whoo! I made Rufus laugh out loud! Praise from Caesar.
I use the Catholic Encyclopedia all the time, ’cause I can never remember which heresy is which.
I’d hate to accuse someone of Pelagianism when he was actually an Arian, ’cause then he’d be all like, “What are you talking about? I believe in original sin!” And I’d be like, “Well I know you said something fishy, though.” And then I might have to let him go on a technicality.
Mike… love the Catholic Encyclopedia…
How’d you get the password, Floyd?
@TCW — “I don’t think this forum is the place to answer all of the questions….”
I can’t believe you wrote that. What would make you think a medium designed for communication in staccato is not designed to probe the depths of our human existence. To paraphrase… “We ought to seek in Threedonia ghostly profit rather than curiosity of style.”
Trust me — the profits around here are ghostly.
h/t: Thomas a Kempis
+JMJ+
So you’re saying that change is ok, as long as little people like me have nothing to do with it, as long as we rely entirely on the judgement of our social betters?
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. None of this is personal. Yet it’s a fact that some people really do have better taste in music (or fashion, or architecture, or anything artistic) than other people do. It’s also a fact that other people have greater influence over society than others do. There were historical periods when these two groups intersected, but ours is not one of them.
That’s all, and there’s no moral component here.
The Church says it matters therefore it matters, regardless of what the Bible and history say. I’m sure this is logical to you, and I intend no disrespect, but no one has been able to explain to me how this makes logical sense.
Republibot, I don’t know if you saw my earlier post in which I said I did not intend to turn this into a Catholic vs. Orthodox vs. Protestant vs. Evangelical issue. When I said “my church,” I meant the building in my parish, not the Catholic Church. There was no insult meant to your denomination, so please don’t take it that way.
Having said that, please let me explain the Catholic position on the Catholic Church and the Bible. To a Catholic, the final say on which books went into the Bible was the Pope’s; and for about four centuries, there was no New Testament canon, anyway, so people relied on Tradition just as much as they did on Scripture. I really don’t want to get into all that, because it’s not what we’re talking about, BUT I want to be clear that I’m not exalting Tradition at the expense of Scripture. I’m holding them together. Asking a Catholic to separate the two would be to ask him to be Protestant.
Now, I’m willing to accept the judgement of people who have more education than I do, because that’s hard fought and hard won and education is always worthy of regard, but I do not accept the idea that just because someone said something 300 or 1100 years ago, it’s automatically true. And neither should you.
I really don’t know why you think that’s what I’m doing.
My first point is that some music really is more wonderful than other music. That most of the former happened to have been written during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance shouldn’t be held against it any more than skin colour should be held against a person. There is a reason these compositions have been held up as a standard for centuries–in secular as well as sacred spheres–and why they are the “canon” of Music Education.
My second point is that I think that worship deserves the best that we can give it. And music experts all over the world will agree, without any religious motive, that “the best” would be the aforementioned Medieval and Renaissance compositions. (I daresay that asking atheist experts would get you the same answers.)
Sometimes (heck, most of the time) we can’t give worship what it deserves. Not just when it comes to the music we play, but also when it comes to what we carry in our hearts. I don’t think that means we should stop having ideals. And I don’t know if you’ve listened to the two videos Floyd posted about, but I don’t think you’d want that music in your church, either.
+JMJ+
After writing all that, I still forgot something . . . *blush*
Republibot, here’s something you wrote that I really don’t think was fair:
“Use a logical argument to support your position, and not one that relies on feelings, personal dislikes (Which appears to be the fundamental reason for this thread), xenophobia, or nebulous extrabiblical traditions.”
Nebulous and extrabiblical? Going to church on Sunday and a man having only one wife are both extrabiblical traditions, but hardly nebulous. Please check the anti-Catholic assumption.
I posted a reply on here a few days ago, and it never came up.
I don’t get why everyone is assuming that I have Anti-Catholic assumptions. I said some untoward things a few months ago, I was proved (relatively) wrong – actually, I proved myself wrong because I decided to go hunting for information, no one on here actually pointed out an facts on their own – and I apologized.
This whole thread is really about me attempting to understand your mindset, which is quite alien to me. If I’ve got any anti-catholic assumptions, it’s fairly clear (to me anyway) that I’m trying to learn more in an effort to overcome them, yet everyone’s taking it as a personal attack.
I do not understand the way you guys think. It is an alien thing to me. I would like to understand it because that’s the kind of guy I am. I gather from a number of the comments on here that you guys don’t understand the way my people think either.
I could explain, and it might be good for both of us. Assumign this post actually posts, of course.
Republibot 3.0,
I’m just getting caught up on the weekend comments, so somebody may have already replied. I was raised by an Eastern European Catholic mother and an athiest father. Mom made me attend Mass and get the sacraments, Dad mocked her for doing so, and mocked me for attending. So, I’ve got the perspective of an insider, raised in the faith, but with a skeptic’s eye toward all that was going on within. After the requisite shunning of religion as a late teen and flirtation with other faiths I have been back in the Catholic fold for a few decades, and am quite happy with where I am.
I think the oddest thing for those on the outside looking in (especially Protestants/Baptists) is the tradition and mysticism. The silly hats and robes, the statues, the iconography, the symbology, the ritual kneeling/standing/sitting/bowing, signs of the cross, gesticulations, genuflections, littanies of saints. Catholicism is steeped in 2,000 years of history and it’s picked up a lot of baggage in that time. Do I think God, Jesus, Mary or Joseph really care if one buries a tiny statue of Joseph upside down in the front yard when hoping to sell her home? No. Is there a home sold in my old neighborhood in Chicago without that ritual occurring? No.
Catholicism is rife with pageantry and mysticism. We are like the Free Masons of Christianity. Most of us don’t even know why any of these things are done. Some of us think about them a great deal, and of those of us who think about them some of us like the pomp and circumstance and some of us do not. As I age I see that the ritual and tradition can do a lot to draw people to Christianity and keep them in the fold. “I am the way.” Well, what is THE way? It probably varies for each and evey individual who is saved, but, at the basis of Catholicism is a ritualistic path that centuries (millenia!) of experience have shown often works to bring people to the Savior.
Hence the debates over things like guitar masses vs. Gregorian chants.
+JMJ+
What do you know! =) It posted! I’m glad I checked this thread today.
In fairness to you, Republibot, I don’t think you’re anti-Catholic. However, one phrase you used–”nebulous extrabiblical traditions”–does have a very anti-Catholic ring to it. A Catholic could come up with a sound historical defense of, say, prayer for the dead as a Christian tradition from the time of the Apostles, but could have that argument negated by someone who considers it extrabiblical. So a lot really hinges on what you mean by “nebulous.” I’ll grant you that the sacred music left to us by the great composers are “nebulous” enough in comparison.
Having said that . . . Catholics really will give great weight to tradition–whether Sacred Tradition (which Catholics consider equal in authority to Scripture) or musical tradition (which you’re right in pointing out is just man-made). This is not meant to bash someone who happens to have a different tradition any more than valuing one’s history is meant to bash someone from another country, who won’t share the same history. Yet I can see how it would come off that way.
Anyway, yes, I think one thing that was obvious to everyone was that we don’t understand each other’s people. Yet I do want to say again that the reason I’d even bother to discuss “Catholic” music on an open and ecumenical forum like this one is that I don’t think of it as just “my” music, but as “our” music as Christians.