Editorial (01/17/08)
How Gather Divides
As the moribund collection of popular music for Mass erodes at the faith of the faithful every week, every day, it amazes every good Catholic that the pastors of the Church do everything except abolish it.
A recent perusal of Gather Comprehensive ( Second Edition) – you know, those “Gather” hymnals in so many parishes today, reveals how at odds Gather is with the principles of sacred music proper to the Catholic Church. This comes as no surprise, I’m sure, to the Gentle Reader, but it’s worth highlighting one particular aspect of the hymnal’s non-Catholic quality.
I could expose the type of music, I could expose the words of many of the songs, but today I wish to focus on the instruments.
The introduction to Gather says, and I quote, “This edition includes both contemporary and traditional, or folk-style and classical, or piano/guitar-based and organ-based music – depending on how one chooses to identify musical styles – with the mix leaning toward the former in each case. The accompaniment for many items in the first category are clearly pianistic and cannot effectively be played on the organ without adaptation. To maintain the integrity of performance practice, it is our strong recommendation that these pieces be played on the piano as intended. Other accompaniments, of course, can effectively be played on either organ or piano.”
There are a few things worth noting here:
1. The entire hymnal is inclined away from the organ and toward the piano or guitar. Yet the Vatican II document SC establishes the organ as the norm and other instruments as exceptions (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium #120), gives Gregorian Chant “pride of place” (#116), and says that Latin should be preserved (#36, 1). Regarding the pipe organ our Pope has spoken profoundly in Regensburg (read here); regarding the use of Latin, Pope John XXIII promulgated Veterum Sapientiae on why the Church should and will retain the use of Latin. The use of instruments of popular and undignified music are not to be used in a Church; our bishops took sides against Pope Pius X on that point (Tra le sollicitudini, n. 19, forbids pianos, drums, and other such stupidities in the liturgy) in the USA adaptations to the GIRM (n. 393).
2. Observe how the author(s) divides and pairs his sets:
either contemporary traditional
or folk-style classical
or piano/guitar organ
The only logical conclusion possible is that folk music, pianos and guitars are not part of the musical tradition of the Church. So why use it? We know the answer: because many are bent on bringing a “new church” into being – as one contemporary, folk-style, piano/guitar based song sings – since they don’t like the one Jesus gave us.
The Gather hymnal therefore does nothing to promote Church practice, the norms of Vatican II, or decent philosophy or theology regarding sacred music. It has clearly and explicitly set itself up against this type of healthy unity in Catholic thought, liturgy and discipline.
May God inspire our dear Bishops to abolish Gather from the Churches, restore the high-quality use of the pipe organ, ban pianos and guitars and drums from the Church, and restore a new sacredness, long lost, in the liturgy of the Roman Rite.
I cannot help but add, as a sort of appendix to these thoughts, the following note. Pope Benedict XVI, in a recent Audience (Oct. 3, 2007), spoke of tradition in the context of a panegyric about St. Cyril of Alexandria. He said, “In the second of Cyril’s letters to Nestorius, written in February 430, we read a clear affirmation of the duty of Pastors to preserve the faith of the People of God… This is what he wrote to Nestorius: ‘It is essential to explain the teaching and interpretation of the faith to the people in the most irreproachable way, and to remember that those who cause scandal even to only one of the little ones who believe in Christ will be subjected to an unbearable punishment.”
All the happy-clappy tunes with heretical words undoubtedly causes scandal not on only one of the little ones, but to millions. Kyrie, eleison.