Latest / The Catholic Current / What’s Wrong with Modern Catholic Music? (Erika Ahern) 10/15/26

Transcript

What’s Wrong with Modern Catholic Music? (Erika Ahern) 10/15/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
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McTeague. What music is most suitable for the Mass of the
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Roman Rite? Why don't more people ask that question? They usually say
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it needs to be relatable, and they won't specify what relatable means.
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My gathering is kind of it means either something like Go Make a Difference
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or Lead Me, Lord or something that I don't know if I'm more surprised
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that it was written or that it was published or that it was purchased.
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You know, I don't really get any step along the way, but it's— as
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the Lord said, I see an enemy's hand in this. Yeah.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of
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Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
0:40
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
0:43
Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the
0:47
fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always, let's start
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with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God,
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through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy
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Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your
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command. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Well, friends, I've said very often on the air that one of my favorite forms
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of exercise is to leap from soapbox to soapbox, driving my
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menagerie of pet peeves before me. And one of the areas where I get especially
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peevish has to be the music at St.
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Typical's. My goodness, don't get me started on that.
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And it doesn't have to be that way, and we're going to
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talk about why it doesn't have to be that way, how that got that
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way, and what the alternatives are. Uh, my returning
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has done a very fine video about the real reason why modern
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Catholic music is so bad, and she's an
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experienced journalist and author and producer and host of The Loopcast
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and The Deep. Erika Ahern, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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Thank you so much for having me, Father. I'm looking forward to this.
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Erika, I almost hesitate to get involved in this topic because
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it seems to devolve into the kind of arguments
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that people have over what's your favorite dessert topping
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and what toppings best suit pizza. And nearly any
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topping is fine, of course, except pineapple, because that violates
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divine and natural law. But aside from that, I think we get a lot into
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pushing and shoving regarding liturgical music. So I'm going to make
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a bold statement and ask for your response to it. My bold
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statement is this: beginning with the question, what kind of music do
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you like at Mass, is the worst possible question to ask.
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What do you think? Yeah, I've come— actually,
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I've probably always agreed with that statement, because what
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the Council Fathers did in Vatican II, they spent a lot of time talking
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about liturgical music. And in fact, they called it
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the greatest of the sacred arts. And whenever you have
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a sacred something, it means it belongs to God,
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right? It is set apart for God. So when you
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frame the question about music at Mass as what do the people prefer,
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or what do you prefer, You know, aside from minor
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enculturations that we might see, and even a beautiful
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diversity of different cultures, the question, what do
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you like best, is a profane question, right?
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It's an earthly material question about the
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one who's not God. So, the framing of the question
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in terms of our preferences is missing
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the point of a sacred art, which is the sacred arts, we judge them
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not according to how popular
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they are, or, you know, how clever or new or
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revolutionary they are, but we judge them according to their reverence.
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And do they do the work of pointing us to God to whom
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these arts belong? And I think we can make a distinction between,
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say, religious music and sacred
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music. So, for example, there is a genre of music called
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praise and worship, and I'm going to ask Mr. Engineer to find an
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article called along the lines of, it may be praise, but it's
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definitely not worship. The tradition of
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the church, the distinctive teaching of the church,
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is that we want music that's not reminiscent of
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what you sing at the pub or in the
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concert hall. And yet,
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somehow, you know, we end up with Mary,
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Did You Know? And, you know, people doing, you know, the Uber
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driver who thinks that he's a liturgical musician because he's playing the guitar at Mass,
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doing Pete Townshend windmills during his guitar
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jam at Let There Be Peace on Earth.
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There's— we have a lot of problems here.
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And I think we've lost sight of what
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the church has always taught. So let's shift and say regardless
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of preference, we have an obligation to at
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least make ourselves aware of what the Church has always
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taught, and that for the Mass of the Roman Rite in any
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form, objectively speaking, certain types of music
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are better suited to it than others. And specifically,
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that is Gregorian chant and polyphony,
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specifically designed for Mass with a very
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noble heritage. And you don't confuse
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it with Bob Dylan or a drinking song. Why is
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that teaching such a hard sell these days? Yeah, I think that
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at this point in the Church, we are, we're not only deeply confused
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about things like the Eucharist. I mean, you can go, I think in previous
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conversations, we've talked about the percentage of Catholics who are confused about very basic
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teachings like, is Christ truly present in the Eucharist? What is marriage?
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What is, you know, all of these fundamental teachings.
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What's a man? What's a woman? Things that were obvious in previous
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generations are no longer just taken for granted. But I think that with
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sacred music, we have a couple of factors. Factors working against
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the idea of the sacredness of what should be at Mass. And that would
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be, in addition to just theological confusion, we also
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have now an inheritance of the last 60,
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even 70 years of Catholics being accustomed
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to hearing '60s contemporary folk
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music, '80s whatever that
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was, or praise and worship. And so, there's— because
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music is such a deeply felt art,
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and it is so powerful, it's a religious experience
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for many people, that when we've been habituated to,
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like, I think in the video I mentioned, at every single family funeral,
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we have sung Eagle's Wings. Like, I associate Eagle's Wings
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now. And so, I think the majority of American Catholics now
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associate a certain sound with the feelings,
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and with the experience of being at the Catholic Mass. And so we're working
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against that sort of habituation and deep enculturation of
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these less than worthy forms of sacred music.
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And I really appreciated what you just said about praise and worship,
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because this, this in particular, I think this is more my generation, because it really
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came of age in the '80s and '90s. So like older millennials,
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Gen Xers, I think a lot of Catholics experienced
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a real charismatic renewal through the ministries of a
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sort of praise and worship setting. And of course, you know, they've discovered
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the Holy Spirit, praying in tongues, or a personal relationship
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with Christ. If they've come to that through this sort of musical
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setting of the praise and worship genre, then over
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time, that's like, oh, well, why wouldn't we use this at Mass? Like, why not?
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This is where I experience Christ in the Eucharist. This is where I experience Christ
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through music. And so, we're going to put those two together. And again, just this
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sort of naive and, for the most
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part, in that sense, innocent confusion about
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what should— what is the role of music at
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Mass? Is it to make us feel that we're like close
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to God, to feel that we're close? In a sense, we can be habituated to
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that. Or is it— but we can also be habituated away from that, right?
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As we can discuss about chant. Because now you go to any parish
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and like if it's a No offense to the boomers on the call, but if
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you've got, you've got, you know, an elderly music ministry and you say,
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what if we just tried some chant? It's like, ah, I hate chant,
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you know, oppression, patriarchy. So that's,
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they've been habituated to not feel God's presence with
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chant, which is a terrible sin against their souls. Oh gosh, yes.
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But I think, but I think that what we're working with now is
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that, like I said, the vast, vast majority of American Catholics,
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they can't imagine any other kind kind of music at Mass.
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And that's a big wall to climb. Well, you know, I, I know some
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families who will go to one Mass at a parish rather than the other
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because they said, you know, one particular Mass they refer to as Mass
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the High School Musical. And I know one person referred to it as Mass
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the Effeminate High School Musical. And there's a lot of solos
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of a genre that I call, you know, Jesus is my girlfriend.
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Oh, oh, Jesus, ooh, ooh, ooh, what would I do without you?
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Hoo-hoo. You know, lather, rinse, repeat. And it's,
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it's painful. And I'll
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talk about this more in the next segment, but I think one of the reasons
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that we're in the mess that we're in regarding music is
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that we don't know what to do with silence at
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Mass. We treat silence at Mass the way we treat silence in live
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radio. It's dead air. It is the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit.
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So if someone isn't talking or singing or then
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someone has to be tickling the keyboard or strumming on the guitar.
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But in any case, there absolutely, positively must
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not be silence ever, ever,
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because nobody knows why.
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I think one of the reasons why there is a mania of anti-silence is
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that if you're not doing something, if you're merely silent,
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then you're letting it take longer than it absolutely needs
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to. And I've seen nearly violent rebellions against
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that. And I think a proper understanding of music paired with
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a proper understanding of silence is going to get us out
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of the clutches of an awful lot of mischief and an awful
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lot of misery, which is what we'll talk about in the
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next segment. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Erica
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Ahern of Loopcast and The Deep. We're talking about why so much
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modern Catholic music is just so awful.
11:06
And we're going to offer alternatives as well. Remember, our rallying cry here at the
11:10
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. Our topic
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today is this: What's Wrong with Modern Catholic Music? Our returning guest is Erika
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Hearn. She's a seasoned journalist and author, and you can find her very
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good work at The Loopcast and The Deep.
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Erika, you had a video not too long ago where you explained how
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we got here. It hasn't always been this way.
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And it wasn't inevitable. And I'm at the risk of appearing
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to sound as if my tinfoil hat is being worn at a rakish angle.
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We didn't get here by accident. Fill us in on the history, please.
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Yeah, as I was doing the research for this, I just kept wanting
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to scream, you've been duped! Like, we've all been duped,
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because there was an element here of orchestration.
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And I think it's important to go back. Everyone likes to blame Vatican II.
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Obviously, we mentioned in the last last segment that, you know, the Vatican II Fathers
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themselves really encouraged the use of Gregorian
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chant, a rediscovery of polyphony and the patrimony of the Church.
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And, but when that— when you came out of that, what everyone,
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all the liturgists and reformers, quote unquote,
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seems to pick up on the most was this one phrase, active participation.
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And what they used that phrase from the council to
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do was say, well, we just have to reform everything.
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Like, we have to change everything. We need a revolution and a rupture in
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order to accomplish this active participation. So,
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you'll— some listeners will remember, you know, in the mid-1960s,
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the dioceses were rapidly transitioning from Latin to English. And we
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even, we even had a little interim liturgy, which I had not known
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about while we waited for the new Novus Ordo to come from Rome. So,
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there was a very experimental time. But what happened was when you changed
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the liturgy to the vernacular, this vacuum
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which was seen by some as an opportunity, this vacuum is created
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in terms of music for the Mass, right? So all of
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a sudden, thousands of parishes need English language Mass
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settings, which no one had been thinking about 5 years earlier,
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songs that would be accessible and encourage, quote, active participation.
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And instead of thinking, well, maybe we should read
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the council documents and maybe learn how to chant better and learn polyphony, it was,
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forget it, we're just going to have a big Bob Dylan
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sing-along. Like, that's the only phrase I could come up with was like, so you
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get things like the Bossa Nova Mass, which I did. I listened to
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all of the settings. You get the Mass of the People by
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Ray Rep was sort of the key figure in this
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founding, Ray Rep of the '60s. And his monos— Don't forget the Polka Mass.
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The Polka Mass, the poles. I love the poles, but we got the
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Polka Mass. We got, so one, the big inspirations were like
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the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary. I mentioned Bob Dylan,
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Willie Nelson. So, these are the sounds— Willie Nelson?
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Really? Yeah, we've got Willie Nelson in the '80s especially being
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a big, big influence on Marty Haugen. Can you imagine?
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And so, you're— what the idea is that we're going to open
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the doors of the church to modernity. And to attract the young people,
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we have to have a sound like what they're singing out in, you know,
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on Woodstock lawn. But what you get is
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sort of just this bad simulacrum of contemporary
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folk music of the time, with like Bible
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words slapped onto it. Where it really takes
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off, though, and this is where it's most interesting, and I think people don't realize
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that there was a lot of money involved in this transition,
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because again, you have this vacuum, and you have all these priests who never had
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to think about music settings for Mass now being like, please give me more,
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you know. And so, what you get is, well, we'll start
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with Oregon Catholic Press. There's also Gaia Publications, but I'm going to use Catholic
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Press, because that's what most people see in their pews on Sunday. Sure. Yeah.
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Which actually began as a— they published
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Catholic tracts like challenging the Ku Klux Klan and all these, you know, very sort
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of noble causes. Truth Society, right? Yeah, the Catholic
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Truth Society. And they became, of course, this sort
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of duopoly, Gaia and OCP, of Catholic music.
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So what they did in the '60s through the '80s and '90s, they— OCP
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amassed amassed tens of thousands of copyrights
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of not only contemporary hymns that we were getting from
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like Dan Schutt, Marty Haugen, the Haagen-Dazs
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Mass staff, as I like to call them, but also traditional
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hymns that had survived the slaughter. So things like Holy, Holy,
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Holy, or now we have O God, Be Adored and Praised,
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etc. So they amass all these copyrights, and then
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they required American parishes or dioceses to maintain ongoing subscriptions and licensing
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fees. But what they promised in return is the one-stop
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shopping. You get your disposable missal, you get your—
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all the music you could possibly need for the entire liturgical
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year. All of any changes we will take care of for
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you. And I mean, it was easy, it was comprehensive, and priests could
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avoid all legal liability. So it's kind of irresistible, right, for a
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busy pastor at a time when he doesn't even know, like, like,
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what's the language of the Mass going to be next week? It's a very unsettling
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time in American parish life.
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And so now, today we end up with breaking bread.
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It's the most recognizable throwaway missile. I mean, I can't
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believe the climate activists have not come after the Catholic Church for, you know,
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having throwaway missiles still. But here we are. Isn't that interesting?
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Yeah. Yeah. So what you get is a a very
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small group of artists. Some of them I've named, but you get like John Foley,
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Michael Joncas, Bernadette Farrell, Sarah Hart. Small group of artists.
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Most of the songs, the vast majority of the songs, were written after 1975.
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Only about 15 this year include Latin lyrics, and that's up from maybe 2 back
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in the '90s. So you can see how quickly
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this sort of empire of liturgical music was
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able to change not only— and you have to, I think
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people don't understand understand. It's not just song and praise
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and the music. It's not just an add-on to Mass, but you're actually—
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Augustine said, when we sing, we pray twice. And so when
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you have this very limited group of people influencing how
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Catholics are praying with some songs, and I go into this
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in the video, that actually have anti, you know,
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lyrics that are anti- to Catholic doctrine,
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you know, mischaracterizations of the Eucharist,
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mischaracterizations of sin and repentance,
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and mischaracterizations of God's mercy in the lyrics we're singing.
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You actually have OCP and Gaia at the forefront
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of not only changing how we sing, but also changing how we pray,
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and ergo, how we believe. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
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Right. You know, I caused a stir several
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years ago when I was writing for— I used to have a weekly for Alithea,
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and I referred to a song as the song that canceled Christmas,
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and it was Mary Did You Know. And I was, I was at my
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sister's parish, and it was during the Christmas season, and they started
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to sing that, and my sister thought I was gonna have a stroke, and she
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said, please go outside and, you know, lie down out in the parking lot because
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I don't want my young daughters to be traumatized seeing their uncle the priest drop
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dead during Mass. Mary, did you know that the baby you
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delivered would soon deliver you? Look at me, I'm a poet. And I said,
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well, sure, if there's no Immaculate Conception, and that makes sense, but without the
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Immaculate Conception, you can't have the Incarnation. And so
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many people responded to that that Alatay had me respond to the respondents,
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and there was a small minority said, aha, I knew it. I can't wait
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to tell my snarky sister-in-law about this. Take that.
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But then there was, well, yeah, but if you just ignore everything the Church teaches
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about music and the Immaculate Conception, it's fine. And then
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the third most popular response was, but I like it.
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I said, but I like it is not a theological
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argument. But it seems to me now that we're kind of in
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a corner, because if you want to have music at Mass and not
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get arrested for copyright violations, you know,
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Oregon has become kind of the Walmart
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of Catholic liturgical music. Is that a fair assessment? Absolutely.
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I think that's a great analogy because, yeah, it's the Walmart, but it's
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got a lot of knockoffs in it, right? Which Walmart does too, right?
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And sure, again, like you said, I think that this music—
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music is so close to the human soul. So when
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we are from a very young age habituated
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to, to a certain kind of sound,
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especially associated with our religious life,
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our spiritual life, it is very, very hard
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for anyone to make a U-turn or a change.
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So that's why, like, in parishes where there's been a successful transition
22:05
from the Häagen-Dazs Mass to a more sacred
22:09
polyphony or chant, it's tended to be very gradual.
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And when it hasn't been gradual, it has resulted in massive
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ruptures in parishes. And I'm sure you have a lot of war stories about
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that. I mean, I've— yeah, I've been in parishes like this too. But yeah,
22:25
It is so sensitive. But I think that music is
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really powerful, isn't it? You know, it is so powerful. It's so human.
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It's one of the arts that, you know, none of the animals produce
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music. It is of the higher order, and it puts it— we
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know that the angels sing, so it's part of our spiritual identity.
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And so, I try when I'm in conversation
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with people who give the response, well, but I just like it. I try so
22:55
hard to listen and to remember why
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it is that they're so wedded to songs that are manifestly
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bad for us to sing. Because again, it shapes how we believe,
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what we think about Mary, to sing Mary Did You Know. It shapes what we
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think about the Eucharist to be like, this blessing cup is our, you know.
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I think that I try to remember that. But I also
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think it's important that more Catholics be willing to say something like,
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You know, all these songs are aimed
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at producing a very specific emotion in you,
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and they're very effective at that. But what's
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the purpose of going to Mass? What do we think is happening on that altar?
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I mean, Christ himself, we are representing his sacrifice
23:40
on the cross. Have you ever seen The Passion of the Christ? Why was that
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movie so powerful? Because it didn't sugarcoat it with, you know, a guitar
23:48
background. Mel Gibson didn't pick, like, Gather Us In
23:51
for the final scene of the crucifixion for a reason, right?
23:55
Because the majesty and the fearsomeness of
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what's going on at the Passion is— it
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deserves a different sound than what we're giving it. And people
24:08
still don't like that, but sometimes it opens it up. I can testify to
24:12
bad habits formed at an early age. I mean, one of the reasons
24:15
why I have trouble with opera, was because as a kid I
24:19
grew up with Bugs Bunny, and whenever I hear opera,
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I hear Bugs Bunny in a beat. Whoa, my love,
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or, you know, go kill the wabbit. So that's ruined
24:29
it for me at a very early age. And I, I think we
24:34
have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to our children? Well, among the things
24:37
we're doing to our children is we are denying them not only access
24:41
to this glorious Catholic musical heritage,
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we're spoiling their taste for it. Now, I had
24:49
to undergo a conversion experience. I admit with shame that in the 1970s,
24:52
I was in high school, and I saw the play Godspell 3
24:56
times on Broadway. But as Monty Python would say, I got
25:00
better. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Erica Ahern.
25:03
We're talking about contemporary Catholic music, and why
25:08
an awful lot of it is just really awful, and there
25:12
is a lot of it. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
25:16
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26:00
This is the Catholic Current from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media
26:04
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26:22
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26:51
We're talking about modern Catholic music, what's wrong with it, and how it might
26:56
be saved. My returning guest is Erica Ahern, a journalist and author,
26:59
and you can find her good work at Loopcast and The Deep.
27:03
Erica, I think one of the, the words that makes
27:07
people stop thinking, or it causes people to stop thinking
27:12
well, or prompts people to know what they in fact don't know,
27:16
is the magical word participation,
27:20
always in caps and usually scrolled in fine calligraphy
27:25
and gold leaf. How did participation become
27:28
the word that led to so much mischief? That's a great question.
27:31
And I think you're right, there's always, whenever there's an opportunity
27:36
for change, people tend to latch on to a catchphrase. And I do think active
27:40
participation was the catchphrase here. So it is mentioned in
27:44
the council documents that the Fathers urged
27:48
liturgical ministers and the clergy of bishops
27:51
to encourage active participation in Mass.
27:55
And so this is in Sacrosanctum Concilium. And they say
27:58
that the Mother Church, and I'll just quote, Mother Church earnestly desires
28:03
that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious and
28:07
active participation in liturgical celebrations.
28:11
I think where we went wrong in latching
28:14
on to— where we interpreted that, though, was thinking
28:18
of it in terms of, you know, participating in class. Like,
28:21
maybe picture nursery school children sitting around and they're
28:25
engaged by their very dynamic teacher singing a nursery
28:29
song with them. And, you know, they're You know, they're engaged if they're singing along
28:33
and they're clapping along and all that. And sure enough, we were pretty soon singing
28:37
along and clapping along to this music at Mass supposedly.
28:40
But I think that when we're talking about a fully active
28:44
and conscious participation at Mass,
28:48
that can look a lot different from, is everyone singing
28:51
the processional and recessional songs? And I think, you know,
28:55
as someone who's been a spiritual director, you would be able to say
28:59
that for every person in attendance at Mass, it's almost impossible
29:03
possible to judge from appearances who's participating and who isn't.
29:09
And participating in what? In the passion and resurrection and
29:12
the Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.
29:15
And where I think contemporary music misses
29:20
the mark in active participation is that it offers a really
29:24
limited way of participating. And I've talked about sort of
29:27
the limited emotional range of this sort of utilitarian,
29:31
you know, we can have happy clappy, all are welcome,
29:35
peaceful, you know, God is all merciful, God is kind,
29:39
he's never angry, there's no judgment, there's no hell.
29:43
That, that's— it's this very limited kind of music. So, you know,
29:46
I've been to Mass at a time, I remember distinctly, after we lost
29:51
our, our 5th child. And I remember going to Mass
29:55
and hearing— we had— we were singing Sing a New Song,
29:59
we were singing Gather Us In, we were Table of Plenty.
30:03
And my thought because this is so out of line with where I'm
30:07
participating with the cross right now that I can't even sing.
30:12
And so, I think that that's sort of the cruelty of this pop music
30:17
is that it's shutting out the actual almost
30:21
infinite range of human experience at Mass.
30:24
I think— 2 thoughts on that, if I could interject, please. And I've mentioned this
30:28
on the air, but we're talking about the narrowing of an emotional range. I was
30:31
stationed at a college some years ago while teaching at a
30:34
local seminary, and it was the end of the academic year, and you know,
30:38
that's tense for college, and one poor young man
30:41
snapped during finals week. He took his life. Next semester, we had
30:46
a memorial Mass for him, and some of his cremains
30:49
are there, and his grieving family is there, and some— please
30:53
God, let me say this with sincerity— well-intentioned layman
30:57
from campus ministry before Mass ran to the microphone and yelled,
31:01
welcome to our celebration! Is it really?
31:04
That's all we got? The Church has nothing
31:08
else to say in a time like this except welcome to
31:12
our celebration? So that's my first concern. The second
31:16
is, you want to talk about participation, we have to define it as
31:20
the Church defines it, which means you have to go back to
31:24
Pope Pius X and his document
31:27
on music, where he's saying, you know, participatio actuosa
31:32
doesn't mean so much active as actual as engaging the
31:36
whole person, including the higher powers of
31:40
the soul. So a mute man in
31:43
a wheelchair might be experiencing
31:48
ecstasy contemplating the Holy Sacrifice of
31:52
the Mass, offering himself absolutely in
31:56
a way that only God can know.
31:59
But according to this narrow range, he's a failure.
32:04
Because he's not moving and he's not making
32:08
noise. So, that seems to me one of the problems
32:11
of the misunderstanding of participation is we've
32:15
cut that word off from its histories. Is that a fair assessment on your view?
32:19
I think so. It's a— and it's a very shallow understanding
32:22
that we have now of participation. And honestly, I mean, you can
32:26
probably speak to this better than I can, Father, because you're facing the congregation for
32:30
much of Mass. But I do notice when I attend and more relaxed
32:34
Novus Ordo iterations with the Häagen-Dazs
32:38
Mass, very few people sing along, right? It might
32:42
be some of the older generation, but for the most part, you know, the young
32:46
dads are not singing these songs. The young moms are like juggling
32:49
the kids. And I think that using participation
32:53
as sort of a wedge in the door, a foot in
32:57
the door to foist this musical tradition
33:01
that we now have on us was like,
33:04
you said, it's a very shallow, it's a dumbing down.
33:10
I love the document you referenced from Pius X. I think he starts
33:14
off with, he's concerned that the music in the liturgy
33:17
has come to reflect the music of the theater. And this is back
33:21
in the 1920s, I think, or in the '20s or '10s.
33:24
Earlier than that, yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh, it's— I'm glad he
33:28
passed on before we got the music of Woodstock.
33:32
No, it would have killed him for sure. God bless him. God bless
33:36
him. And not to be facetious or anything, but I think that a lot of
33:40
the folk Mass, the contemporary Mass, like Sing
33:43
a New Song from Dan Shute, they're also
33:47
fundamentally unsingable, right? Unless you've grown up with that song
33:50
and you kind of know what's coming. You've got these like weird changes
33:54
in time signature in the middle of a piece. You've got
33:58
these ties that really only trained musicians like, can sight-read
34:02
in front of them. These weird rests, these bridges.
34:07
The promise was we were going to get folk music at Mass, but actually,
34:11
real folk music, which can have pretty complicated melody lines,
34:15
and they can be hard to learn. The thing about them is
34:19
that the music is predictable. So if you grew up in that folk culture,
34:23
you know how a phrase of music is going to end. You know how the
34:27
melody resolves at the end. The problem with, like, Companions on the Journey or
34:32
and vessels is that your ear doesn't know where it's going if you've
34:35
never heard that song before. So, it's a very unsingable sort
34:39
of like, here's what you're going to participate in,
34:42
but it's going to take you years or musical training to be able to actually
34:46
sing it. So, people just don't, is what I found. They don't,
34:50
because it is unsingable. And we also have the— there was,
34:54
I won't embarrass the diocese, but it was a very prominent diocese in
34:58
the Northeast. East, where the— I think Mass participation dropped
35:03
something like 40% in 10 years. And the response of the local bishop
35:07
was, well, I guess we need better music. In context, what he meant
35:10
was more entertaining music. So if we have the
35:14
right kind of music and it's more entertaining,
35:18
then people will like it and they'll come to Mass. And the reason we
35:21
have Mass is because, you know, that's where we take up the collection. And I've
35:25
seen this where we need to get young people, so we're going to have praise
35:28
and worship. Do half-hearted,
35:31
half-witted praise and worship, you get a bunch of, you know,
35:35
well-intentioned boomers trying to do praise
35:39
and worship to attract young people. They all sound like they have tuberculosis.
35:43
You know, here I am to worship.
35:50
Here I am to— and it's deadly. It's deadly,
35:54
and it's laughable. As well. So I want to talk about
35:58
the importance of music in relation to silence.
36:02
In my experience at St. Hippo's, people lose
36:05
their minds if you have any kind of pause
36:09
at all, and they try to fill it in with words and music
36:13
as a kind of a panic. I've been away from that for a
36:17
while, mercifully. I imagine you see that more than I do.
36:21
What do you think drives the, oh my God, there must never be silence,
36:24
and how does that relate to our understanding of music at Mass.
36:28
Yeah, that's really interesting. One of my favorite books about silence is The
36:32
Power of Silence by Cardinal Sarah. And I think
36:36
that he writes in there about the busyness of our entire world,
36:42
that the— and I think the quote is something like, the fire of silence
36:46
is weak because it is bothersome to the busy world.
36:51
And so, So, while Pope Benedict, Cardinal Sarah
36:55
spoke so beautifully of silence, that that
36:59
really is the space where we can enter
37:02
into the ecstasy and contemplation of God,
37:06
and in His Eucharistic presence, especially how important that is to the liturgy.
37:11
But in the West, especially, we,
37:14
we actually see what is so precious to us, silence, as something grating,
37:19
as something annoying. Um, because we are so
37:23
locked in. This is the one hour of our lives every
37:26
week where we're not doing, doing, doing, scrolling the phone, multitasking.
37:30
So when we actually come to Mass and the priest
37:33
allows for silence, it's like, what the heck are you doing to me?
37:37
It's, it's painful, right? Because we haven't been— again,
37:40
we'll go back to habituation, right? We haven't been habituated to know
37:44
what to do with it. One of my favorite philosophers, Blaise Pascal,
37:48
I wrote my master's thesis on him. But he, of course,
37:50
said, was it the problem with modern
37:55
man is that he cannot sit alone in a silent room for 5 minutes,
37:58
right? Yes. Where we don't see
38:01
the use of it. But what is the use of any loving relationship?
38:06
We don't say like, well, I can't just sit with my husband if we're not
38:09
talking about schedules, because what's the use of it? We're not doing
38:13
anything. No, I sit with my husband quietly. In the evenings.
38:17
We don't always have to talk about everything. And if we felt that we
38:21
did, that would be a sign that something was wrong in our relationship. Sure.
38:24
We felt like we always had to be filling every space with like doing something,
38:28
right? We'd be exhausted. So, I think we need to apply that more
38:32
to God. And music, when it's frenetic and
38:35
busy and happy and clappy, it's not going
38:39
to transition easily into a moment of silence in the liturgy.
38:43
That's why I think in a lot of praise and worship sessions, you don't have
38:47
like the end of the song. You have the music continues and people
38:51
start praying out loud in tongues, or there's the sort of, you know,
38:54
improvisation from the singers and the, oh, you know, and there's a
38:58
place for that and you're expressing your feelings vocally.
39:02
But I don't— I think that that perhaps doesn't
39:06
conduce us either to silent contemplation, although I have seen it done
39:09
well. Um, but for the most part, I think like the Father
39:13
said, Gregorian chant and polyphony by their nature
39:17
have a resolution and an end that's conducive
39:20
to then following a period of silence, to follow, be followed by a period of
39:24
silence. That's very beautiful and necessary. And I'll try
39:28
to get this in before the break. My experience of being among the
39:32
typicalians was that when I told, for example,
39:35
musicians, there will be no music while I'm purifying the vessels,
39:40
they were gobsmacked. They never heard of such a thing. And the ushers
39:43
were so angry that I wanted to sit in the chair after I received communion
39:47
and have a moment of silence after I distributed communion. They opened
39:52
the doors and let the traffic noise in to let me know, it really
39:55
is over, Father, let's get on with it. And that
39:59
was really painful to be around. Friends, we come back, going to continue
40:03
our conversation with Erika Ahern. We've been talking about why contemporary Catholic music
40:07
is so bad We're going to propose some, uh, if not solutions, at least suggestions
40:11
and recommendations. Be part of the conversation.
40:15
Follow what we're following by following us on Gab. That's gab.com.
40:20
The channel is The Catholic Current, and you can influence the conversation.
40:24
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Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations— we want to hear from you,
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40:35
Contact us at stationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:39
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41:01
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41:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic? Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather
41:12
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41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:27
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:30
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim
41:33
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. My returning
41:37
guest today is Erica Ahern. You can find her good work at Loopcast and The
41:40
Deep. We're talking about modern Catholic music.
41:44
Erica, we agree it doesn't have to be this
41:48
way. We don't have to resign ourselves to being locked into a Spotify
41:53
playlist from the '70s and the '80s. There genuine
41:57
alternatives. And one of the reasons why it's a good thing that I'll never be
42:02
a pastor is I don't have patience. And you've
42:05
got to make these kind of changes gradually,
42:09
get people to eat their broccoli without letting them know that
42:13
it, it's broccoli. And we— you have to have a spine because
42:16
there's going to be pushback because of what people think is a
42:20
decisive theological argument. But I like it.
42:23
What are your rec— if you were going to sit down with a room full
42:25
of pastors, what would you recommend? Well,
42:29
I praise God every day that I will never be a priest or a pastor,
42:33
um, because I just hand it to you guys, uh, it's not
42:37
an easy row to hoe. I would say that there are,
42:40
there are fortunately and blessedly so many, uh,
42:43
resources now to slowly introduce people,
42:47
especially young people and children, to, uh,
42:51
the sacred music tradition. And I don't want to say like writing
42:55
off the older generations, but remembering that it's very hard
42:58
to change your habits once you're, you know, 40, 50, 60.
43:02
So I think that helping, helping parishes,
43:06
whether you have a school or a music director
43:10
who's willing to do something a little bit revolutionary with the children,
43:14
as in maybe Maybe the children's choir could learn a
43:18
beautiful chant that would bless, you know, Grandma or Grandpa
43:22
who remembers it from their early childhood, perhaps, that that might be the way to
43:26
go. And like I said, there are so many resources now,
43:30
including the Gregorian Chant Academy, which is— that's a
43:33
trademark name right there. They have camps every year.
43:37
They are overflowing. They're adding sections all the time.
43:40
The good news too is that a lot of young priests and seminarians,
43:44
we've talked about this on the show a lot. That they're more
43:48
sympathetic to or eager even to learn these
43:52
earlier forms. So now seminaries and novitiates are offering young men
43:56
more formation in sacred music and the Latin language, which is necessary
44:00
for participating in that sacred music. And I think,
44:04
too, if you have a music director or
44:08
a volunteer music person who is willing
44:12
to at least entertain uh, breaking out a little
44:16
bit into something that they've never heard before or trained
44:19
in before. These organizations like the Catholic Sacred Music Project,
44:23
like the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music, getting, getting some
44:27
funds together— maybe a donor could send them to one of
44:31
these workshops one summer, about a week long, 4 to 6 days, to just
44:35
get exposure to it. Right. Yeah. And field trips
44:39
to parishes that have these would be wonderful as well,
44:43
that they have more exposure to it. But I I think that, you know,
44:46
starting— the bishops did try to start reeling it back
44:50
in a little bit. There was a statement from them a few years ago,
44:53
you know, here are some hymns that are no longer permitted at Mass because they
44:57
have texts that are theologically contrary to our beliefs.
45:01
But I think individual pastors can also sit down and have a serious
45:05
conversation, hopefully, with the directors of the parish
45:09
that we can look at some of these songs and ask a few pointed questions.
45:12
So, is the text sacred? And is it theologically
45:16
sound? Sound? Does the music serve the words or does it overpower
45:20
them? Is it different from secular entertainment like what people would
45:24
encounter at a Broadway musical or at a school play?
45:27
And are people actually singing it? I think a lot of parishes,
45:31
the music director is hopefully in the back and not in front, so they
45:36
might not see that nobody is singing along to these. And just sort of
45:40
a little helping to increase self-awareness in a very gentle
45:43
way might go a long way. But I think that children really are
45:47
the key to this. So, if you have a school being able to introduce
45:52
chant and Latin studies very young, children love to learn
45:56
nonsense, and to them Latin sounds like nonsense and they will sing it.
46:00
And, you can think of the resurgence of classical
46:03
education. Most of these classical schools have their students,
46:07
whether they're Catholic or Protestant, they have the students singing
46:10
ancient Catholic hymns just to learn the language because it's in
46:14
Latin. And to introduce that at Catholic
46:18
schools again might be a long-term investment in turning this ship around.
46:22
Right. I think we have to start early. And we,
46:27
you know, gosh, it really isn't that hard.
46:31
You don't need to be a member of the Metropolitan Opera in
46:35
order to get some basic chant.
46:38
And I do, for example, St. Patrick's Seminary in San
46:42
Francisco takes music very, very seriously,
46:46
and I'm grateful for that. And had we but whirled enough in time,
46:50
we would talk about the scandal of what's called the For Him
46:53
sandwich, because that's just a Frankenstein monster that
46:58
nobody really wanted, and it's become so familiar
47:02
that we can't even imagine anything
47:06
different from that. You know, I'm the guy in
47:10
the sanctuary. I know what difference it makes to me when
47:14
music is authentically Catholic and beautiful and
47:18
singable. What's it like for you in the pew?
47:22
I— it's the same. And I think that, you know,
47:25
when we're not distracted by the
47:29
music, but when the music takes a backseat to lift us to God
47:33
from the congregation, Uh, it makes such a radical difference.
47:37
And I know what you mean about the 4-hymn sandwich. And one thing I
47:41
really appreciate in our parish is that the music director has,
47:44
you know, moved towards having the, the, uh, the introit,
47:48
the antiphon, the entrance antiphon chanted by the choir instead
47:52
of doing a hymn at the beginning. And I've just found that
47:56
very restful, that I'm not flipping, I'm not looking for numbers on the page.
47:59
And then in the middle, during the off oratory, having a sacred
48:03
chant, a Latin Marian hymn or something
48:07
along those lines where you don't have to, again, you don't have to pick up
48:10
your hymnal and kind of switch gears from, okay, homily,
48:13
prayers of the faithful, switch gears, now we're singing, switch gears again, now we're
48:17
having Eucharistic liturgy. You know, it flows so much
48:21
better. And I appreciate that as a Catholic,
48:25
for sure. We don't get interrupted by a lot of the songs
48:29
from the '70s and really lend themselves, I think you said
48:32
at the beginning, to a solo performance, right? And not being
48:36
distracted by the performance in the middle of Mass
48:40
is a great gift to me as a parishioner.
48:43
I was visiting in rural Texas,
48:46
remote areas, and there were a series of churches
48:50
built in the 19th century by Eastern European immigrants, and these
48:54
beautiful wooden churches, dignified Sometimes
48:58
the high altar is intact, the stained glass windows are fine. Some genius
49:02
decides to throw in a red plush carpet, but then a
49:06
quarter of the pews are ripped out so there can be a piano and a
49:10
drum set right in front of the pulpit. And I said, you know, something wrong
49:13
must have gone somewhere. This is really not what
49:17
is supposed to be for us. And I'll quote A.W.
49:21
Tozer here as we close. He said back in the '50s,
49:24
a congregation unwilling to worship will demand to be entertained.
49:28
And pastors incapable of calling men to worship will
49:32
offer to provide the entertainment. And I think
49:35
that's a cul-de-sac we absolutely need to get out of.
49:39
Erika Hearn, thank you for a fascinating conversation. God bless
49:43
your very good work, and I do look forward to next time. Thank you,
49:46
Father. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
49:50
You want to join us tomorrow, Friday, in The Catholic Current? You know what happens
49:54
on Friday? You and Me. Let's talk about this. We walk through a complex issue
49:57
together. We're going to continue our series on novel prophecies.
50:01
This is going to be episode 12 of our series. We're going to wrap up
50:05
C.S. Lewis's science fiction trilogy with the volume that I think
50:09
is the strongest of the 3, and it's called That Hideous Strength.
50:13
You don't want to miss out on that. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
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50:38
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do pray for
50:42
me, for I am a sinner.