PRIME OFFENDERS

The music at Mass should be promoting sacredness, holiness and separation from the world. But the music we have to endure at Mass not only merges with the world it celebrates Popular Culture. What made contemporary man less able to chant the hymns that suited illiterate peasantry for fifteen hundred years? Apparently the Mass had to be dumbed down to keep the common folk entertained. We got “Folk Mass” whether we wanted it or not with fake-folk music courtesy of Marty Haugen and other Haugen like artiiists to be played on guitars badly. Over the years the lousy tunes wrecked havoc with the solemnity and the theological truths of the Mass. They tend to grind on the nerves as well, it is no exaggeration that liturgical folk music has been a steady source of suffering to many people. The Mass should be a calling; not a devotion through which one endures penance, but how else can one cope? Sometimes I feel sorry for the thirty something generation knowing no other “liturgical music” besides the steady stream of insipid tunes and banal lyrics of the past forty years. They have simply no idea what has been taken from them. (The Sad State of Liturgical Music in the Catholic Church by Thomas McFaul)

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"Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship. It has its standards, and that standard is the Logos. If we want to know whom we are dealing with, the Holy Spirit or the unholy spirit, we have to remember that it is the Holy Spirit who moves us to say, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12:3). The Holy Spirit leads us to the Logos, and he leads us to a music that serves the Logos as a sign of the sursum corda, the lifting up of the human heart. Does it integrate man by drawing him to what is above, or does it cause his disintegration into formless intoxication or mere sensuality? That is the criterion for a music in harmony with logos, a form of that logiké latreia (reason-able, logos-worthy worship) of which we spoke in the first part of this book." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 151)

"...there is pop music... aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 147-8)

"Rock is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 147-8)

"Unfortunately, many Catholics judge the quality of liturgical music by its ability to make them cry, or to "speak to" them. And those who lobby for such music are too often backed by parish priests whose goal is to "gather together an affirming, inclusive, and supportive community." In the eyes of these priests, the liturgy is a "dynamic faith-journey through the labyrinth of life," rather than the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The music that we used at Mass has a powerful impact on the way we approach the liturgy, and the way we understand our faith. And any serious study of contemporary Catholic liturgical music should lead the investigator to recognize the ways in which many new hymns undermine reverence and faith.

The hymns of the St. Louis Jesuits, however hideously they might be crafted as pieces of music, at least are usually based upon Scripture and authentic Catholic teaching. But other songs from the 1980s and 1990s--by composers like David Haas, Michael Joncas, and Marty Haugen--are more frightening. Not only is the music poorly crafted; not only are the words trite; not only are the melodies shamelessly dramatic and emotional; but many of these contemporary composers proudly identify themselves as theological liberals, and the teachings that they subtly espouse through their music can be dangerous.

Personally, I stopped performing the music of David Haas after he published Dear Sister God, and presented a music workshop at which he and his ex-wife, composer Jeanne Cotter, informed the participants of their "duty" and "responsibility" to purge their parishes of "exclusive language" in the liturgy.

Father Jan Michael Joncas, the notorious composer of the drippingly saccharine "On Eagle's Wings," is another serious offender, who promotes misleading ideas about Holy Communion. His series of songs and rituals called "Tableprayer" is used all round the country by women and non-Catholics who act as quasi-celebrants, breaking bread and sharing wine at meetings that tread dangerously close to profaning the Catholic Mass.

Marty Haugen, a Lutheran whose music is probably performed more widely in American Catholic parishes than that of any other composer, has produced ugly, ridiculous hymns that emphasize the sun, the moon, trees, and dancing--all set to primitive melodies that evoke a whimsical stroll through a field of organic sunflowers.

Crack open a copy of GIA Publication's Gather hymnal or the annual Music Issue from Oregon Catholic Press, and you will find clear evidence of feminist theology, an overwhelming amount of confusing (if not outright heretical) texts about the nature of the Eucharist, and countless awkward "inclusive language" revisions of familiar hymns. You will find dozens of songs and "psalm settings" that are said to be "based on" or "inspired by" passages from Scripture, yet completely obliterate the meaning of the original text.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sacred Music

Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas

Dethroning the Ego before the Altar

A Church Musician's Lament