Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Short Take on the DC "Music" for Mass

TNLM's take on that stuff in DC:

And it was to the grave embarrassment of all American Catholics that the music employed at the papal Mass at the Nationals stadium in Washington, D.C., not only represented a repudiation of everything that this pope has written on music appropriate to Mass. We can go further to say that there is no robust tradition of liturgical scholarship that is capable of defending what happened, and that is because it is indefensible.

But there's more, and it's appropriate.

In the name of "multiculturalism," the Pope was subjected to music more suitable to dingy dance halls than Churches. The Psalms of David were distorted to the point of ear-splitting dissonance. The congos, pan flutes, meringue rhythms, the jazz and blues and rock, the swaggering vocals, the puffed-up soloing, went beyond even the most pessimistic predictions.

Can you say "It's all about US!!"?

But it was really worse than that (I know..hard to believe that it could be worse...)

There is grave insult at the heart of all these attempts to construct styles that appeal to all people, pigeonholing their tastes the same way a racialist writing in the 1930s might do. This is not unity but dangerous division.

(No different than dividing children from parents and calling it "Yout' Mass" or "Chillun Mass," might I add.)

And the people get it. This is informative (see below under "Clericalism"):

There is no question that anger, even fury, is palpable. The USCCB has been deleting comments from its own website. Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, in his running commentary on EWTN, expressed astonishment. The blogs are overflowing with bitter comments...

So USCCB, in the spirit of "openness" which they trumpet regarding the sex-scandals, is not so "open" about its malpractice of Liturgy...

Surprise, surprise.

I wasn't able to hear the entire thing--and what I did hear (the entrance hymn) was not bad. Others have commented that the Pope was visibly happy with Domingo's Panis.

Those, evidently, were the two 'high spots' in music.

A LOT more is available here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank God I chose not to watch it for fear of this very thing. I've been reading comments and am sorrow-filled and heartbroken. Thank God also that my beloved debout relatives are not living to witness this shame. I sobbed through my evening rosary.

Anonymous said...

There is something about assumption...

My source tells me that Rome was involved and approved every detail, for what it's worth.

Dad29 said...

It's common knowledge that the Papal MC was over here.

But "every detail"?

That's a stretch, MZ.

Even assuming that the Roman Mgr. approved "every detail" of the music, that doesn't make it good.

It is merely an accomodation to what the USCC/NAPALM bunch jammed in front of his face. Several hundred people had been rehearsing this crap, after all...