Editorial (12/27/07)

Music of the Senses in the Temple of God

A young man told me the story of the wild bongo session in the middle of the Mass at his parish. (By 2007, I would have hoped for a bit more progress in overcoming the hippyization of the Church, but alas.) Being a good Catholic, he was outraged. But as he described the event to me, we both could do nothing more than break out laughing. It was the only way to keep from breaking out crying.

We are all witnesses to the fact that Catholic sacred music has been hijacked by Marty Haugen and David Hass, and between eagle’s wings and being not afraid we are continually encouraged to do things like sing a new Church into being and create ourselves anew; all with the hope to dissolve our creed into some “story” in the manner of the pagans. It is one piece, an important piece, of the massive and catastrophic failure of the post-Vatican Bugnini-lead “reform” of the liturgy, in fact a DEform instead of a REform, which has had devastating effects on the lives of Catholics everywhere.

More still, now Catholics can’t sing together. How rarely do I find a group of people now who can sing standard Catholic hymns, such as Holy God, To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King, Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above, Immaculate Mary or Oh Jesus We Adore Thee. Every parish now has its own music “minister” who, usurping God’s role as creator, claims to be creative, and yet in the process only chases after the latest pop chart of liturgical ditties. The changes are so hard and fast, that the congregation never learns the new songs, they don’t get a chance to sing the standard songs, and acquire the habit of not singing. How often I’m with young people, and, at the end of the Rosary with them, intone the Immaculate Mary, only to find that youth from more traditional parishes sing it, and youth from modernist parishes have no idea what’s going on. It’s not their fault: the pastors, and even musicians, have hid it from them.

Certain philosophical errors, which have crept in after the reprehensible abandonment of Thomistic philosophy among the clergy, have permeated this hijacking of our Catholic music. Such errors include premises such as, it’s real if it’s emotional, or it’s good if it makes me smile and laugh, or it’s international when we hear lots of different languages at Mass. Some are eager to push liturgical dancing, and want the music to reflect liturgical dancing. They do so in spite of the wise yet severe judgment which both the pagan Cicero and the wise St. Ambrose formulate regarding dancing (see footnote below). In every age, philosophy and art have gone together; the magnificent classical Greco-Roman philosophy gave us manificent renaissance art, and the abominable philosophers such as Kant, Descartes and Hegel gave us abominable art. So the superficial and erroneous philosophies of our day give us an art which corresponds not to beauty but to falsehood.

No, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It coincides perfectly with all that is good and true, all that is real. It’s out there, and it can be found. This goes for music, too. And the experience of beauty is enough to move the soul to the greatest and most noble gestures, to and understanding of transcendent things, and to interior peace and harmony.

A distinction, however, must be made between sacred and popular music, especially if we wish to discern what to include in the sacred liturgy. This distinction is impossible when one has a bad philosophy about the world, and about music in the world. For from a bad philosophy there can only come a distorted doctrine regarding beauty; and beauty, distorted, is the Queen of Abominations. Popular music is simply fun; sacred music is profoundly beautiful.

Certain harmonics, rhythms and keys are great for fun music. (Incidentally, it is my opinion that very little of popular music is both fun and harmless.) But if the senses become intoxicated, and the music lacks the greater spiritual side, full of rationality and control, it becomes an exercise of sensuality and nothing more; and sensuality always makes man sad. When music makes swell not so much the senses as the heart, then it becomes a spiritual exercise capable of making man happy. The music of sensuality enslaves soul to body; the music of beauty orders the senses to the soul. Good souls go to Mass, and are disgusted with sensual music; sensual souls go to Mass, and remain quasi-depressed (have you ever noticed how much of the popular-style new church music serves as an expression and reflection upon the emotional state of depressed people? No coincidence...); so one and the other all get disgusted with the sacrament.

Never in the course of musical history has there been anything else except harmonious development. Yet after Vatican II, this didn’t happen. If we consider our sacred music, particularly Gregorian Chant, and much of polyphony, as “children” of the Church, then we can say that countless bishops and parish priests, not to say superiors of religious orders, waged abortion and contraception and infanticide against the Church’s offspring. (These same clergy were usually quick to dissent against Humanae Vitae, curiously.) They aborted the Gregorian Chant, they contracepted against Latin, they murdered Catholic Music. And now they are more worried that the likes of Haugen and Hass, and their publishers, maintain their income sources than that Catholics lift their minds and hearts up to the experience of beauty, from there to enter into prayerful contemplation.

No, you don’t have to freeze musical development at the 1400’s. But jettisoning so many centuries worth of development cannot be considered “organic development” of any sort of music. We are all victims of Church-music bullies, and we should not put up with it. We don't need popular music in Church, we need sacred music, and the two are by nature mutually exclusive.

Before signing off, I wish to offer a small list of great reading on the topic of sacred music, for those Gentle Readers who wish to explore a bit more, enjoy:

Pope Benedict (Oct. 13, 2007): Visit to the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music, Address

Pope John Paul II, Tra Le Sollicitudine, on Sacred Music

United States Bishops (2006), discord over the National Hymnal requested by the Holy See

St. Ambrose, Concerning Virgins, Book III, end of chatper 5 and all of chapter 6 (click here, or here) on dancing

A tear-wrenching description of a bongo-Mass (click here), by a retired English priest, Fr. Michael Clifton. This is not the same bongo-Mass to which I referred at the opening of this article.

Michael Knox Beran, Mysterious Encounters, a fabulous in-depth reflection on the Pope's philosophy of music, in National Review

Sandro Magister, A New Musical Season Opens at the Vatican – And Here's the Program, published the same day as this editorial, on Pope Benedict's new musical program and reform.