NOVEMBER 2022 III. Specific Concerns
Question: Are our liturgies moving toward folk music, or remaining traditional?
Elaine Rendler: I think we musicians are creating an unnecessary division in music, through style, and there are wounds that need to be healed. If we can’t talk to each other in the folk group and in the choir, if the CCD director isn’t talking to the musician, then what are we teaching our children about love, church, and community? Different music does different things. We must use all styles. Tis is where you stop being a purist, or a fine arts person, and start dealing with people and where they are. Don’t begin with the clergy; begin with yourself. People go home humming tunes, not sermons. You shape the spirituality of your church, and it can’t be in just one style, or one way.
Question: What do we do with priests who won’t sing or can’t sing?
Joyce Lavoy: In the ’70s, we invited Fr. Lucien Deiss to the seminary at Boyton Beach. He directed us through an entire day and concluded with a celebration of the Eucharist. When I got home that night, I realized he hadn’t sung a note. His style of celebration, his manner of leading us in prayer helped us to sing, but he didn’t sing at all through that entire eucharistic celebration. Some people can invite us to sing without us knowing that they are not singing.
Question: How can we involve people in the communion song?
Elaine Rendler: People want silence somewhere and we haven’t told them where. If we give it to them after the first reading, after the gospel, and perhaps after the homily, and if we add some instruction on what to do with the silence, then the musician is assuming the responsibility for teaching the congregation about song and about silence. Second, there needs to be a greater emphasis on the theology of the communion rite as an action of the people, as a community act. And a community act is not best expressed in silence. It is best expressed in song.
Question: During the preparation of the gifts, too many things are happening at one time: ushers passing collection plates, the host family walking down the aisle, the choir singing, the priest preparing the altar. Tere is no semblance of focus on one idea. Do we need to spend more time at the actual preparation of the banquet table?
Tomas Caroluzza: Te preparation rite can’t be a time for silence in our parish because we have a separate liturgy of the Word for children, and, during this time, some 250 children are joining their parents.
Elaine Rendler: In the overall flow of the rite, it seems some sort of “break” or release of energy is needed at this point. I’m beginning to question whether there should always be a procession her; it just seems to lose its sign value if it is used every Sunday in the same way. Certainly there shouldn’t be any competition going on between the celebrant attempting to say the prayers aloud and the organist.
John Gallen: Liturgy is not a theory or a doctrine. Liturgy is primarily an event—something people do. Our everyday experience of meal is contributing little to a genuine experience of sharing a common meal. Fast food service, with little service, is the most common of our everyday experiences and this experience is affecting in a very negative way, I believe, our experience of the Eucharist. Central to how we experience the preparation rite and the communion rite is the space. We may say that we are ready for a meal or that we are sharing a meal, but if the space and every other experience leads you to believe that something else is taking place, then we are saying one thing and experiencing another. And perhaps that is a good place to end this discussion—where it began, with the idea that central to our faith today is the vitality and integrity of our experience.
Looking Forward
Did something in this article strike a chord with you? Share your response to this blast from the past by sending an email to
npmsing@npm.org. Reader responses will be featured in a future edition of Pastoral Music.
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