Latest / The Catholic Current / Vaguely Pious Noises (Josh Long) 9/15/26

Transcript

Vaguely Pious Noises (Josh Long) 9/15/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
0:03
Mattheig. You and I agree that things are not well.
0:07
Now, that admission runs afoul of Mattheig's axiom,
0:11
which states most institutions would rather die than admit
0:16
that anyone ever made a mistake. Are they gonna square the circle?
0:19
We have to do something, but nothing has ever been wrong?
0:23
Exactly. They're wearing an ideological lens, and,
0:26
you know, ideologues don't look for empirical evidence. Ideologues are looking
0:30
through the prism of their own biases.
0:34
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
0:37
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
0:41
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
0:43
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim
0:47
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:51
As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
0:55
Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you
0:59
pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your
1:01
voice and obey your command. In the name of the Father,
1:05
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hey friends, you might have noticed an odd
1:08
title for today. It's called Vaguely Pious Noises. I, I wish I'd
1:12
come up with a title myself, but it is a title from an essay in
1:16
Crisis magazine that talks about the all-too-common
1:21
misunderstanding and misapplication of music
1:25
at Mass, which should be liturgical music, but more often
1:29
than not is simply music being played while Mass is
1:33
happening. You know, one of my favorite forms of exercise is to leap from
1:37
soapbox to soapbox, driving my menagerie of pet peeves before
1:41
me, and liturgical music is one of my favorite peeves
1:45
to flog. And to help me do that, we have the author of the essay
1:48
himself, who is himself a musician. Josh Long, welcome to
1:52
The Catholic Current. Thank you so much for having me, and it's— I'm grateful to
1:56
get the chance to sit here and talk to you about it. Well, likewise.
1:59
Josh, one of the things that I've observed— I have this imaginary place called St.
2:03
Typical's. It's akin to Lake Wobegon
2:08
from the Garrison Keillor stories back in the day. And at St.
2:10
Typical's, which is a welcoming community pastored over by
2:14
Father Cheerful and ably assisted by Father Stifled, the Mass is
2:18
treated like live radio. Now, on live radio, the unforgivable
2:22
sin against the Holy Spirit is silence. Also known as dead
2:26
air. And at St. Typical's, if someone isn't talking, if someone isn't screeching
2:31
at the microphone, someone is hitting the
2:35
organ keys as if the organ owed them money, or someone's strumming on
2:38
the guitar. There must not be silence
2:43
ever. People panic like they've missed their cue and we're in our junior
2:47
high school theater production. But music at Mass
2:51
isn't just meant to be background music. It's not elevator
2:56
music, and it's not meant to be something that's rescuing us from
3:01
the scourge of silence. And yet it is so often presented
3:06
that way. You're a musician, you're a convert, you didn't
3:10
mean to make vaguely pious noises, and yet you did.
3:13
What's going on here? So it was It was the
3:17
realization— well, I'll back up a little bit, right? So I had like maybe
3:21
a decade spent working just in the industry as a
3:25
performer, as a musician, in totally secular environments.
3:28
And growing up with that, I remember the music that I would experience in
3:33
the kind of— I guess it would have been the Lutheran church that I was
3:35
in, or maybe one of the evangelical megachurches. I always kind of had the
3:39
sense that the liturgical musician or the church musician was
3:43
the lowest thing that a musician could aspire towards because
3:46
of sort of what I witnessed. And then after my conversion, which would have been—
3:50
I guess I was confirmed on Pentecost 2022— I was
3:54
able to kind of fall into serendipitously a very
3:59
excellent parish and community that had Gregorian chant,
4:03
they had the Latin Mass, they really were handing on the patrimony of
4:07
the Roman Rite and the Western tradition.
4:11
And, you know, by the grace of God, thankfully,
4:14
I was exposed and immersed in that for about 2 years,
4:18
and then when I started kind of exploring other parishes,
4:21
I actually had the chance to visit St. Titnickel's, and I was kind
4:24
of shocked at what I saw taking place, you know,
4:28
because the church that I had read about, the rubrics that I
4:32
had read about the music in the liturgy, you know, all the way
4:35
from 1904 with, I think it was Pius X, you know,
4:39
through the council, as it's often called, and through
4:43
the, I guess, working documents to this present day, all that
4:46
I've seen is that we should be mostly using Gregorian chant
4:50
and hymns and Latin, and I've experienced
4:55
an extraordinarily low amount of that in St.
4:58
Tipico's. Sure. Um, but, and as
5:02
I started, I guess, serving in that liturgical office
5:05
of the musician or kind of like music director more, I began to have
5:09
the sense that, you know, what I was being asked to do,
5:13
or how my work and contribution was being evaluated,
5:17
was something very different, or the standard was very different than what
5:22
I was actually trying to accomplish and my idea of what the Church was asking
5:26
for from her scholas, from her choirmasters and the church school
5:30
musicians. Because the teaching of the Church
5:34
really is very clear. And here, I think
5:38
there's a right question and a wrong question. I would say the wrong question is,
5:41
what kind of music do you like at Mass? And the proper question
5:46
is, what music is most suitable for the Mass of the Roman
5:49
Rite? And that is a very objective
5:53
question with a very objective answer. Why don't
5:57
more people ask that question? Hmm, I think it lives in sort
6:01
of a, I guess, a dark place of our self-awareness,
6:04
in the sense that if we look more broadly, you know, in a,
6:08
like, a classical liberal arts education, you know,
6:10
everybody would come out with a certain degree of musical literacy because
6:15
music was part of the quadrivium. It's an integral part.
6:19
And that's not being a music performer. That's knowing what
6:22
you're hearing and being able to kind of discern the meaning and
6:26
substance of the music that you hear. We don't really have that today. You know,
6:29
most of the music that we're exposed to is background music.
6:33
You know, it's music that's just kind of intended to produce a certain
6:37
feeling or vibe, you know. So what, you know, that whole idea of
6:40
vaguely pious noises is what I think people's expectation
6:44
is when they go into Mass, is they're expecting music
6:48
that in some generic vague way makes me
6:51
feel like I felt in church when I was a kid with my grandmother,
6:54
you know, or some kind of like— it's meant to cultivate a certain feeling.
6:58
Um, and that's very different than the, I guess,
7:01
the, the vision of the church for what liturgical music ought
7:05
to be, because that is more reliant on its meaning, both of the text
7:09
itself, you know, what's the theological catechetical content,
7:13
but also what does the music at the level of kind
7:17
of craftsmanship, at the level of harmony and all that, what does
7:20
it communicate? And a kind of pervading theme we
7:24
see, and again the piaeces are very insistent
7:29
on this, is that you know, sacredness is a quality
7:32
of music that should be used in the liturgy as something that's universal.
7:36
It's something that we can really qualitatively say is present or
7:40
is not present in music, right? And that's something that I see being
7:44
abundantly present in Gregorian chant and Byzantine chant
7:48
and, um, sure, and in hymnody, and I see as being largely
7:53
absent or at least very thin in a lot of
7:56
the more music that mimics the contemporary styles.
8:00
You know, when I'm— I guess because I have more of the background in like
8:04
musical theater and commercial music, you know, when I'm learning some of the stuff
8:08
that I'm being asked to play, I'll find, you know, oh, this communion hymn sounds
8:12
exactly like I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis.
8:15
Right, right. It has that particular melodic device active
8:19
in it. Or this one, you know, my hands just kind of start playing Brown
8:22
Eyed Girl because it's the exact same chord progression and feel and everything.
8:26
My Little Pony, you know, or that, or that,
8:30
or Rainbow Brite. That's the— yeah.
8:33
Well, I, I'm not a musician
8:36
and my musical range is about a quarter of an inch wide,
8:40
but I do know what the church has taught. And the church is
8:43
really clear that the, that the lyrics, the melodies,
8:48
and even the instruments are not—
8:51
it is forbidden to have it be reminiscent of
8:55
secular instruments and melodies and
9:01
secular lyrics as well. So, you know, guitars,
9:04
banjos, bongo drums, Bob Dylan,
9:08
that it is actually expressly
9:13
forbidden. And yet we seem to be— this is
9:18
what I call a liturgical autopilot wasteland, as I boldly
9:21
mix metaphors. So with a minute and a half left in this segment, in your
9:25
experience, are most parishes just an
9:29
autopilot. We just show up because that's
9:33
where we have to take up the collection, and we just try to pass that
9:36
hour as painlessly as possible with some pleasant background noise.
9:40
Has that been your experience? So my,
9:44
my sense is that it's, it's not— I think it
9:48
might be more tragic than an autopilot in the sense that
9:52
it is more driven by the avoidance of complaints. Than it is
9:56
by a genuine apathy, and that the people who are
9:59
really, you know, hungry for vaguely pious noises are
10:03
the people who will vocally complain and make noise when they don't
10:06
get them. No, that's, that's, that's certainly true,
10:10
because I, I remember I was at a new assignment
10:14
and I, I intoned the Agnus Dei and the Sanctus, and I was tackled
10:19
by, by a typicalian aftermath and said that
10:23
I was a typical post-Vatican II priest changing
10:27
the according to my whim, you know, with that Latin,
10:30
which apparently is expressly forbidden, and that I was clearly a
10:34
younger member of the Latin Taliban. And I remember
10:38
saying this to a friend of mine who was a very serious liturgical musician and
10:41
composer, and he said, Father, if you are the Latin Taliban,
10:44
then I'm Osama bin Ablative. And we all had a good chuckle that
10:48
way. But there's a lot of education and correction that needs to take
10:52
place. Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with musician Josh
10:55
Long. We're talking about vaguely pious noises at
11:00
Mass and why, and why God deserves better than that. Remember,
11:03
our rallying cry here at the Catholic Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo—
11:07
bringing Christ to the world and the world to Christ. We do it because our
11:10
Lord says so, for the greater glory of God, the love of our neighbor,
11:13
and the salvation of our own soul. After the broadcast today, go to
11:17
thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our
11:20
audio as podcast. Wherever you can find audio, you can find us.
11:24
Follow us on your favorite platform. Write a 5-star review. We need
11:27
to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get the attention
11:31
that they deserve. Take us to your family and friends. Together we'll take it to
11:34
the whole world. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
12:00
You're listening to The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTague from
12:05
the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Stay connected with the show
12:08
and our guests and topics by following the show on Twitter
12:12
and Gab. Just search for The Catholic Current.
12:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
12:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
12:27
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
12:30
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we
12:33
proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Hey friends,
12:37
did you know iCatholic Mobile supports only Catholic causes?
12:40
iCatholic Mobile offers unlimited 5G data, text, and talk, and iCatholic
12:44
Mobile gives a portion of every dollar earned at the Station of the
12:47
Cross Catholic Media Network. By subscribing to iCatholic
12:51
Mobile, you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith.
12:54
Speaking with musician Josh Long, we're talking about vaguely pious
12:59
noises, why so much music at so many
13:03
parishes is just so god-awful, and why
13:06
it seems to be stuck that way. You know,
13:10
Josh, I nearly had a stroke at Mass. I was visiting my family around Christmas
13:14
time And apparently the very best
13:19
that the Catholic Church has to offer around Christmas time is somebody doing a
13:22
saccharine rendition of Mary Did You Know. Now there's all sorts of reasons
13:26
why that's a horrible tune, a ditty, I won't call it a hymn. The lyrics
13:30
are theologically offensive and incorrect. I call it the hymn that canceled Christmas.
13:35
But it seems the ultimate trump card is, but I
13:38
like it, and people stick their fingers in their ears when I point out that,
13:42
but I like it, is not a theological argument. So remember
13:45
we were talking about autopilot before? It seems to me that as long as
13:49
you're on the path of no complaints, it almost
13:53
doesn't matter what you do as long as it doesn't generate
13:58
complaints. My perception is that Father Cheerful, in order
14:01
to avoid complaints, doesn't make much effort at teaching
14:05
people about what the real musical patrimony of of the
14:09
church really is. Has that been your experience too?
14:12
Absolutely. Well, the, um, if you want to talk about trump cards,
14:16
the, um, the 2 I think most loaded words,
14:20
you know, because it's never, you know, they never come out right and say,
14:23
you know, we want vaguely pious noises, we don't want real peregrine piety,
14:27
right? They usually say it needs to be relatable, and they'll just
14:32
say relatable over and over again. That's usually more common with like a school
14:36
Mass or a children's Mass or a Mass for a confirmation program. Right. And they
14:40
won't, they won't specify what relatable means. Right. But my gathering is
14:44
kind of, it means contemporary and upbeat and exciting
14:48
and either something like Go Make a Difference or Lead
14:52
Me, Lord or something that, you know, probably should have— I don't know if I'm
14:56
more surprised that it was written or that it was published or that it was
14:59
purchased. You know, I don't really get any step along the way.
15:03
But it's— as the Lord said, I see an enemy's hand in this. Yeah.
15:06
Yeah. But it's stuck just by inertia.
15:10
Right. And it's just, you can't get rid of it because
15:14
that actually leads us to the other trump card, is that if you want to
15:17
do something that's more traditional, the common objection is,
15:21
well, nobody knows it. So how will they sing along if they don't know
15:25
it? To which I would, you know, I've sometimes said, well, why don't
15:29
we teach it to them? Right. You know, because that's part of it. I mean,
15:31
no one was born knowing On Eagle's Wings. People had
15:36
to learn that too, didn't they? I'm beginning to second-guess that.
15:39
But, well,
15:41
yeah, I was there when the ring was
15:45
forged. I saw it made because I'm that old.
15:49
But it does seem to be a hardy perennial.
15:52
It's part of the problem that we think that— here's
15:56
my take on it— people don't really know why they're at church.
16:00
The marketing has said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to sell
16:02
anti-Hell insurance on a weekly subscription. If you
16:05
let God interrupt your weekend for an hour on either
16:09
Saturday or Sunday and throw a couple of bucks in God's tip jar,
16:12
then if you get hit by a bus that week, God owes you heaven.
16:16
And as long as it doesn't take long, it doesn't matter what you do at
16:19
the altar, the pulpit, or in the choir loft. And Father
16:23
has to have Mass because that's where the collection is taken, but nobody really
16:27
wants to be there, so let's just make it as agreeable as possible.
16:30
That's been my, my very dark, gloomy perception. I'm wondering
16:34
what yours is. Well, so I think it's, um,
16:37
I've seen a pervading kind of sense in the more, you know,
16:41
at St. Typical's, you know, or any church where vaguely pious noises is kind of
16:45
the standard. It does seem to be that more Protestant
16:49
or low church ecclesiology where they're really emphasizing, you know,
16:52
not the sacrifice, but the meal, you know, not the
16:56
church as God's institution, but as kind of our performance
17:00
that God is witnessing to, you know, rather than we being
17:03
here to witness to what God has done, you know. And that actually creates—
17:07
there's a kind of loop taking place because a lot of the music that comes
17:11
from that is kind of perpetuating it because of the way that we're just— we
17:15
are formed by the words we sing, I think, whether we're paying
17:18
attention to them or not. That's the kind of the whole— the reason the Psalter
17:22
and the Psalms, um, in the breviary, you know, has been the,
17:25
the heart and soul of the church's prayer for so long is the idea
17:29
we're formed by repeating and singing those words
17:33
and doing so in community. So when we sing, you know,
17:36
All Are Welcome, which has the link— it says that the church is built of
17:40
hopes and dreams and visions. And if that's the case, you know, we're all
17:44
wasting our time. You know, if we sing, um, the other
17:47
one, Spirit and Grace, you know, a communion song
17:51
from a similar era, and it— the opening line says,
17:55
Spirit and grace here in this meal, you are the wind
17:59
that breathes in the field. And it's— I was pondering it because
18:03
I, I had the, the misfortune of learning it.
18:06
And okay, it's simultaneously, you know,
18:09
asserting that the Mass is a meal rather than a sacrifice.
18:13
It's kind of— it's also teaching consubstantiation, you know, saying that God
18:17
is present in the meal. It's not actually transubstantiated.
18:20
But it's also by juxtaposing you know, God's presence in
18:24
the wind breathing through the field with his presence in the Eucharist. That's just pantheism,
18:29
you know, right? I don't think anybody's listening to
18:32
it because they're pantheists, but I think that singing it repeatedly
18:36
is spiritually damaging and theologically
18:40
damaging. And that's actually exactly sort of what the, um, the bishops announced a few
18:44
years ago with hymns like All Are Welcome, saying, you know, it's technically
18:49
allowed But using these repeatedly over time
18:52
seems to be leading people into false beliefs about faith
18:57
and morals. So it's— the inertia needs to be broken,
19:00
I think, in order to actually not just to get more
19:04
appropriate liturgical music, but to kind of carry out the New Evangelization
19:08
and remind people what we're actually doing is, you know, maybe the first step is
19:12
to stop singing about, you know, the meal or
19:15
the table of plenty or all these things. Right, right.
19:18
Well, I, you know, I also think there is an approach that I call the
19:22
hashtag approach to singing at Mass. So, I would look
19:26
at, you know, the readings early because I actually like to prepare before I preach.
19:29
I know that's not the industry standard, but there we are. And I said,
19:33
oh gosh, there is a reference to something either
19:37
being eaten or something being quaffed. So,
19:40
therefore, a food reference. So, that means 5 rousing
19:45
choruses of Table of Plenty, because apparently it's
19:49
part of the natural law and the divine law that if you make any
19:52
reference to anything ingested from scripture,
19:56
you absolutely must, must, must have Table
20:00
of Plenty, because, you know, food. And I remember sending
20:04
the sacristan up into the choir loft to tell the,
20:09
the Uber driver who plays the guitar on Sunday,
20:12
please stop singing Alleluias because, you know, it's Lent.
20:17
And the message came back from the Uber driver with a guitar that
20:22
it's okay, Father, I'm taking all the music from the Catholic book.
20:26
Now, you wouldn't let a surgeon who doesn't know how to make
20:30
incisions operate on your child. Why do we allow utterly
20:34
untrained and uninterested and untalented people sing
20:38
at our worship. I find that rather telling.
20:42
Yeah, well, and if we look, you know, again, um, I think the idea
20:46
that you mentioned earlier in the last segment about, you know,
20:50
music should have no reminiscence of popular,
20:53
uh, music qualities, I think that comes from Pius X in Traele
20:57
Sollicitudini, I think, in like 1904. And in a similar
21:01
area, he says very clearly, you know, if you do not
21:04
have people who are capable of executing appropriate
21:09
liturgical music, it is better to have no music at all than to have
21:13
poorly done or inappropriate music, right? And I mean,
21:16
I personally would live and die by that, you know. I would also rather
21:20
hear an a cappella Mass than a Mass with piano
21:25
or guitar accompaniment, right? And that's again something that,
21:29
that, um, the Pope there, the Holy Father, mentions that
21:33
we lose no solemnity by having simply an
21:36
a cappella sung Mass as opposed to having one with accompaniment of one instrument
21:41
or another. And I think it goes back to that inertia that
21:45
it will continue until enough people
21:49
in positions of authority accept that it will continue
21:53
until they do something about it, and that will probably be received in a
21:56
negative way by some people But, you know, the question of how
22:00
is that navigated or when's the— what is the time and way to do that,
22:04
you know, that's, you know, thankfully far above my
22:08
pay grade. But it comes up a lot with— well, sorry, at the
22:12
level of just like who is there in the choir loft. You know, I think
22:15
that again, the kind of an institutional question of people
22:19
are so concerned about having someone in the position, you know, because if
22:23
there's no one, it's the end of the world, you know. Well, I don't think
22:26
it is. You know, I think you'd be better off not having music for 3
22:29
months while you wait to find the right music director than you will,
22:33
you know, um, just kind of taking the first person who
22:37
walks in the door who's probably going to be a gigging
22:41
musician who just wants a job and it's probably not somebody who has
22:45
a vested interest in the liturgy. But the, um, but the other side
22:49
of things, you know, what, what it brings to my mind is the question of
22:51
funerals. And funeral music, because I don't know how
22:55
it is across the country, but the inertia is really encoded
22:59
in there by the funeral packet and this idea that families
23:03
should be able to plan their own funeral masses for
23:07
their deceased loved ones. And we hand them a list of,
23:11
you know, 50 to, you know, well, 30 to 80, I don't
23:14
know, songs, which usually right at the top has
23:18
you know, Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, which are both
23:22
fine, you know, but you also have ones like Be Not Afraid, Eagle's Wings,
23:25
you know, all the ones that you hear over and over again. Or even
23:29
a lot of songs that, um, what I've found, songs that are directed toward
23:33
Jesus or Our Lady, but since they rely on
23:37
second-person pronouns, people choose them and sing them to
23:41
the deceased. You know, it comes off a lot with Marty Hoggins, We Remember.
23:44
You know, we remember how you loved us to your death. And now we celebrate
23:48
that you are with us here. You know, it's— we're not singing, we remember how
23:51
mom loved us. You know, it's about God,
23:54
you know, and that equivocation taking place in this election.
23:59
But the frustrating or tragic, really,
24:02
part to me is that I don't think any of the families
24:05
actually have strong feelings about the music that's done
24:09
at the funeral. I think they're grieving and they have this packet
24:12
kind of forced in front of them and a responsibility that they didn't
24:16
ask for put on their table, and they pick the first titles that they recognize.
24:21
That's my, my own theory, that that would probably be a
24:25
lot easier for many churches to change. But there's maybe more interior
24:29
resistance to changing that than, um, than exterior,
24:33
right? I, I think that, like I said, we're,
24:36
we're— I keep coming back to we're on autopilot.
24:39
The business model, as I said many times, is we're selling anti-hell
24:43
insurance on a weekly subscription, and there
24:46
seems to be kind of a conspiracy of silence. Look, Father, this doesn't—
24:50
if this doesn't take long and you don't upset us, we'll give
24:54
you money. And the pastor says, yeah, I'll take that bet. And friends,
24:58
when we come back, I'm going to quote from A.W. Tozer, a name
25:02
you should know. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTiger, host here every day of the Catholic
25:06
the current. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
25:10
list, download our audios, podcasts. Wherever you can find audio, you can
25:14
find us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review.
25:17
We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations
25:20
get the attention they deserve. Everything you need to take this to your family and
25:25
friends, we give to you. Together, let's take it around the world. We can do
25:28
it with you, we cannot do it without you. Let's do this good work together.
25:32
Let us strive to be so very much more than merely relevant.
25:36
Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
26:00
This is The Catholic Current from the Station of the Cross Catholic
26:04
Media Network. Catch up on an episode you've missed or share them with your
26:08
family and friends. The Catholic Current is podcasted wherever you
26:11
enjoy listening: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean,
26:15
TuneIn, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
26:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTighe. Of the Society of Jesus,
26:23
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
26:27
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
26:29
your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness
26:34
of truth with clarity and charity. Hey friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic
26:38
analysis, help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
26:42
Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully, and that
26:46
intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
26:49
Support us at thestationofthecross.com. My guest today is musician
26:53
Josh Long. We're talking about vaguely pious noises,
26:57
kind of a conspiracy to have us
27:01
stuck on stupid when it comes to music. The coffee's
27:04
starting to kick in. I'm becoming more cranky now. So Josh,
27:07
supposing, just supposing you've got a pastor who's kind of
27:11
seen the light. You know, God and the people entrusted
27:15
to my care deserve better than what they get at
27:19
St. Typical's. What's the next bit of advice for him?
27:24
I— so it's a complicated question for me because I think
27:28
everybody who leads, you know, everybody has a different leadership
27:33
style. And when it comes to affecting change like that, you know, some people,
27:37
you know, the whole bull in a china shop approach just like works
27:41
for them. Sure. A lot of people it doesn't, you know, or a lot of
27:44
people, that would horribly backfire. But the, um, you know,
27:48
when it comes to, you know, what's the first step to
27:52
reintroducing, you know, good liturgical music to
27:56
maybe a place where that's foreign, I would think the,
27:59
um, it has to do with presenting them with the final product before
28:04
they know where it came from. So the, the particular idea
28:08
that I have is to start a children's choir to teach the children
28:12
Gregorian chant and to chant, probably to chant the Liturgy of the
28:16
Hours, not necessarily because they're going to become like Benedictine
28:20
monks, but because that's a wonderful way to learn just like what chant
28:24
is and what music is and what liturgical music really is.
28:28
And I think that that sort of approach
28:33
might be the most widely applicable because children have
28:36
not yet been taught, you know, what they're supposed to find
28:40
relatable. Right, right. They haven't acquired the taste for vaguely pious
28:44
noises. In my experience, years ago, I was a
28:48
science teacher for a year, and during the Easter season, I taught
28:52
all of my 5th grade classes the Regina Caeli, and we sang
28:55
it every day during the Easter season because it's a short,
28:59
it's singable, it's easy to learn. And I found they took
29:03
to it so quickly and joyfully And there's just
29:06
a unique experience that really stuck with me of, you know, starting class,
29:10
singing the incipit, and then having this like horde of 20
29:14
like small children like shouting the Regina Caeli
29:18
back at me just with like, with so much joy that it was really— I
29:22
think that a lot of people, probably people who like vaguely
29:25
pious noises, will insist that chant is not relatable to children.
29:30
But I think that if they were to see children singing it and enjoy it,
29:34
and seeing just how relatable the chant actually is,
29:38
right, then I think that that might be the shoo-in
29:41
to kind of, kind of soften the approach or soften their
29:45
hearts to that sort of, um, style. And then when you're working
29:48
with, with children, you know, that's a part of normal catechesis,
29:51
that's a part of normal education and formation. You know,
29:55
why don't we just hand on what we should have been handing on
29:58
all along instead of handing on on, you know, what— I
30:02
don't know— certain generations have tried to— well,
30:06
you know, what has been handed on and resulted in people leaving the church.
30:10
You know, why would we continue trying to hand that on? But I think a
30:13
children's choir or something like that might be the right way to start.
30:18
Right. And I think that the children's choir, for example, has to have
30:22
the right kind of motivation, because I've heard where they said, well, we should have
30:25
a children's choir because the kids have to doing something or they'll
30:30
get bored. And that is horrific. I— there's a
30:34
Protestant author writing in, in the late '50s, early '60s. If you're not
30:38
familiar, I do recommend him. His name is A.W. Tozer. He said this, and I'd
30:42
like to get your take on it. He said, men unwilling to worship
30:47
will demand to be entertained, and pastors unwilling
30:50
to call men to worship will provide the entertainment.
30:54
Can I have your thoughts on that, please? I think that's, that's pretty on the
30:57
nose for, yeah, for where we are. Yeah, I think so too.
31:01
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, I, I think that's, uh,
31:05
that, that's spot on. So I think we, we need to recover— wait,
31:09
what, what are we doing and why? Which is very different
31:13
from what kind of thing do you like? You know, how, how do you think
31:17
we should avoid awkward silence? How do you think we should avoid complaints?
31:21
That's not it. That's not what I want
31:25
to see us doing. But, you know, you can't give what you don't have.
31:28
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a fair number
31:32
of my brother priests probably aren't really sure about what
31:35
they're doing liturgically either. But, you know,
31:39
you got to have Mass because that's where the collection is taken up.
31:43
And if you don't show up with collection, you're going to get a phone call.
31:46
So I think Sadly, that's where a
31:50
lot of priests are. And, you know, I want to disabuse them of
31:54
that because, you know, when children, for example, are taught to
31:58
sing beautiful music with dignity, you know, granted they're kids,
32:01
but they really can sing beautiful music with dignity.
32:05
That is edifying. And that's so different from,
32:09
oh, you know, this is our churchy
32:13
way of doing the school show. And I think that's
32:16
where we are very often. So, how about the
32:20
idea of fielding complaints? Because that does seem to be the worst
32:25
nightmare for most pastors I know, that somebody is going
32:28
to complain. And, you know, I'm descended from a long
32:31
line of Jesuit martyrs. I think there are worse things than complaints.
32:36
How can we get people past that fear of complaint?
32:40
That's a really good question. The, um, I guess from
32:44
the people, I guess from the pastors that I've spoken to,
32:48
it seems to be more of a fear of
32:51
a lack of support from their bishops,
32:55
um, in the sense that, you know, if you get complained about,
32:59
you know, it's more likely that you will be reassigned than it is that you
33:03
will be supported. Right. Um,
33:06
and the other side of it, you know, maybe in a much more practical sense,
33:10
You know, because, you know, that's— I'm sure that depends on the
33:13
specific situation by and large. But I fall
33:17
back on the Field of Dreams principle. You know, what I call the
33:21
Field of Dreams principle is almost the opposite or the antithesis to
33:25
the, um, that kind of business model. You know, people might say,
33:28
you know, well, if people complain that we won't get the collections and then
33:32
we'll be in the, in the red and then we'll, we'll have to, you know,
33:35
downsize or close or whatever. You know, I, I think as soon as you
33:39
start looking at the parish or the school or the church as a business,
33:43
you know, you're— you've lost the point and you've lost your mission.
33:47
Um, but that Field of Dreams principle, you know, if you
33:51
build it, they will come. You know, you have a beautiful liturgy
33:55
that is celebrated— I mean, I, I would say reverently, but I'll just
33:58
say celebrated according to the rubrics and according to the rite.
34:02
Which is not the norm right now,
34:06
alas, people want that and people will search it out.
34:10
And when they find it, they will stay there. Right. You know, so it's almost
34:14
insofar as you're avoiding complaints and that's kind of the tyranny
34:18
that you're under, you know, I don't think you're going to be evangelizing
34:22
or growing. You know, you're going to be slowly receding into oblivion.
34:26
You know? Right. But if you're willing to actually take
34:30
that position of leadership and, you know, perhaps have difficult conversations,
34:34
you know, with people who, you know, somebody complains about, you know, I didn't—
34:38
well, you know, if they don't like the musical change
34:42
or if there's a particular song that they really want to hear, you know,
34:45
they say, ah, it's been a long time since we've done Lead Me,
34:48
Lord, you know, that's my favorite song, you know, the common advice
34:52
that I've heard as well, you know, do it every now and then.
34:56
And I said, that's why God made Spotify.
34:59
That's your favorite song? Knock yourself out. You can listen to
35:03
it as often as you want. Put it on a loop. But I think we've
35:07
lost what— we're here to worship God,
35:12
not be entertained. But that— but what
35:16
do I know? What do I know? So, um, I agree with you, you know,
35:20
start small, start with You know, if you
35:23
want kids to have something other than a taste for bubble gum,
35:28
you have to give them solid food. You have
35:31
to know that yourself. I said, look, I have zero musical ability,
35:36
and I can barely warble a marginally competent recto
35:41
tono, and yet I can have Mass with a congregation that
35:45
is very, very serious about music, and they don't throw tomatoes at
35:50
me. So, I think it really isn't that hard. It takes some courage and it
35:53
takes some conviction. Well, let's give advice to your
35:57
fellow musicians. You know, you're a musician and
36:01
you want to pay the rent and you also want to glorify God, so you
36:04
have a side gig on weekends at St. Typical's and
36:08
you're given the Gather hymnal. I once
36:12
walked into a seminary that had the Gather hymnal classic
36:16
edition, which I presume meant It was arranged for out-of-tune guitars.
36:20
But if you're at St. Typical's, you're a recently arrived musician,
36:23
where should you start there? I think it begins
36:27
with a close collaboration with the pastor, you know, for what
36:31
is his— Yeah, yeah. What's he know about the community and what
36:35
direction does he want to take it in? You know, in the sense that,
36:38
you know, I would say, you know, that's kind of the direct channel of
36:41
hierarchical obedience. Right.
36:45
Um, you know, maybe that's my own misunderstanding of obedience, I don't know, but it's—
36:49
I, I would feel out of place, you know, trying to push things in a
36:52
traditional direction overtly if the pastor did not
36:57
want to do that, right? Um, but still within that,
37:00
you know, if he wants more contemporary music, you know, there's a, um,
37:04
you know, you can play— I mean, part of it, I guess, you know,
37:08
you can break it down into the planning side of things and into the,
37:11
the execution side of things, right? You know, just at the level of planning,
37:15
you know, there are contemporary songs that have— that are good,
37:19
that are worth doing. You know, um, O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament
37:24
Divine, right? It's, you know, that it's good Eucharistic theology.
37:27
It's a contemporary hymn. No one's going to be offended by it,
37:31
and it's a thousand times better than something like Spirit and Grace, you know?
37:34
Yes. So there are options like that. Right.
37:38
There are also, you know, in terms of the way
37:42
that you present that itself, you know, just because it's
37:45
more contemporary, you know, doesn't mean that you have to play it
37:49
like it's in a cabaret. You know? Right. You can
37:53
play it in a more, you know, like when I have to play piano,
37:56
you know, the kind of operative principle for me is like, what would George Winston
37:59
do? You know, I'm trying to keep it as subdued, as inoffensive,
38:04
as non-rhythmic, as nondescript. You know, how can I make the
38:07
piano sound as much like an organ as possible? You know, the enemy, I don't
38:11
think, is so much the piano as it is like syncopation, you know, because usually
38:14
when people choose to play the piano, it's because they want to play it as
38:17
though it's like a cabaret show about what happened in the '70s
38:21
in the Catholic Church and not, you know, accompanying chant.
38:26
You know, the other, um, sort of craft trade side
38:30
of things, you know, is really having the priorities straight about what what matters
38:34
for it, right? And that's, you know, the clarity of the vocal line, the pacing,
38:38
and, you know, not hitting wrong notes, you know? Right. You can
38:42
do those 3 things, right, then it won't be positively distracting
38:46
to anyone, right? Like, for in my own case, you know, I usually
38:51
will use the piano not because I like or want to use the piano,
38:55
but because I'm a bad organist, you know? And I think it would be positively
38:59
distracting to hear me fumbling around on the organ. When I could get the
39:02
pacing and everything right, right? And if
39:06
you're playing the piano in church, you don't have to make it sound like Mass:
39:09
The Effeminate High School Musical. And I think there are,
39:13
there are a lot of frustrated theater majors, just like, you know,
39:16
you, you've got, you know, Little League parents who
39:20
are trying to carry on their athletic careers through their kids. There are some frustrated
39:24
theater kids who are now adults, and the only time they do they can
39:28
do cabaret is when they're in church. And that
39:32
is— yeah, that's absolutely wrong. So pastors,
39:36
you need to learn and you need to step up. Josh Long,
39:39
thank you for a fascinating conversation. God bless your very good work,
39:43
and I hope we can do this again before long. Yeah, thanks for having me.
39:47
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host every day of The Catholic Current.
39:50
You want to stay with us for the rest of the hour because coming up
39:53
next on this Timely Tuesday is timely thoughts, uh, you and me sharing reflections
39:57
of what we've heard today. And believe me, I have a lot to say.
40:02
Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on
40:06
Gab. That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic Current.
40:09
You can influence the conversation. You can contact us at thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:16
Comments, questions, objections recommendations.
40:20
We read everything that you send us. Let's do this good work together.
40:24
It's thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:28
Pass this around. Let's start— let's get a conversation started.
40:31
Let's strive to be so much more than merely relevant. Back in just
40:35
2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic?
41:07
Go to thestationofthecross.com/contact.
41:12
.com/askfather and help influence the conversation.
41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTigue of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:31
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
41:34
We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:38
Hey friends, here we are at Timely Tuesday, last segment. You know
41:41
what that means— you and me sharing timely thoughts, reflecting what we've heard
41:45
today. I was interviewing musician Josh Long about what he called vaguely
41:49
pious noises, and that's not what liturgical
41:54
music, music at worship, should be about.
41:57
Now I said in that interview with him that you
42:02
know you're going to go down a blind alley when someone asks
42:06
you this question, what kind of music do you like at Mass? Because that
42:09
absolutely doesn't matter. It doesn't.
42:14
The proper question is, is there a form of
42:18
music that is especially suitable for worship
42:22
in the Roman Rite? And the answer
42:26
to that is yes. It's objective
42:29
rather than subjective. And it's not about preference.
42:34
Give you a hint, spoiler alert, it's got something to do with
42:37
chant and polyphony and L-A-T-I-N.
42:43
Yeah, it's not— that's not all of it, but it's a
42:46
great big chunk of it. But I thought what we would do instead is,
42:50
uh, take a look at a book that came out some years ago called— by
42:54
Thomas Day called Why Catholics Can't Sing. And there
42:58
is a new edition. I admit I haven't looked at the new edition,
43:01
but the old edition had a subtitle, something like The Triumph of
43:05
Bad Taste. And he said, well, why is it that Catholics
43:10
can't sing? And he called something called The Triumph
43:14
of Mr. Caruso, when Caruso was the— he was
43:18
Mr. Opera. So we went from congregational
43:23
singing and singing aided by a choir
43:27
to the star, the cantor,
43:31
the soloist. And suddenly he wasn't
43:35
just singing at Mass. He had a ministry
43:40
with a capital M.
43:44
And my friend Father Fessio tells a story
43:47
about a priest who was named pastor at a parish,
43:51
and over the years the man with
43:55
the music ministry, had very nearly displaced
44:00
the altar with his piano in the sanctuary.
44:03
And this was some guy who was just a frustrated
44:06
high school musical kid, uh, finally got— was
44:10
the center of attention and got the limelight he craved all these years.
44:14
And Father had asked him to dial it back.
44:17
And he said, Father, don't you know people come from miles around
44:21
for my Mass, and he was fired,
44:25
and rightly so. So you find yourself
44:30
frustrated and exhausted because, you know,
44:33
you've got someone with too much microphone. I remember
44:38
visiting some beautiful old wooden country
44:42
churches in rural Texas a few years ago. I was visiting
44:46
a friend, and these were built by 19th century
44:50
immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe. They were charming little churches And
44:55
they all had very serviceable choir lofts, and in every single
44:58
one of them, a quarter of the pews were removed so
45:03
that there could be a piano and a little stage
45:07
and a drum set. What does that suggest?
45:10
Well, not only that the congregation is shrinking, but there was an emphasis on
45:15
entertainment rather than worship and
45:19
on performance rather than congregational singing. And then Thomas
45:24
Day also talks about the cult of enthusiasm.
45:28
We've got to energize the people because Participation
45:34
with a capital P, and Participation means somebody
45:38
has to be doing something all the time.
45:44
What if you needed a moment? What if you
45:48
just wanted to sit still? What if you wanted
45:52
to let the hymn just wash over you?
45:56
But now, you know, and, and then for younger people,
46:00
I, I remember a friend was telling when she was in high school,
46:04
Mass was delayed because, you know, they were going to sing
46:07
the favorite song for their gathering hymn,
46:11
but they couldn't. They had to find someone who knew all the hand gestures.
46:16
For it because you can't have the song without
46:20
the hand gestures because, you know, participation. And some
46:24
local ordinaries who have won membership in the Senior
46:28
Catholic Hard Race of People Who Should Really Know Better Club now want, you know,
46:31
basically Jumbotron screens put into the sanctuary so
46:36
that people can get excited singing because
46:40
enthusiasm. And so on the one hand, we are absolutely
46:44
manic about participation. And then Thomas
46:48
Day points out what he calls the unsingable repertoire.
46:52
You've got these complex, non-hymn-like compositions.
46:57
The rhythm is clumsy. A lot
47:01
of these things are melodically erratic. They're written more for soloists than
47:05
for ordinary human beings.
47:08
Whereas, you know, if you sing Holy God, We Praise Thy Name,
47:12
people know it, and it's singable.
47:16
He also talks about what he calls a cultural identity crisis,
47:22
and what does he mean by that? Well,
47:26
we don't have a sense of having a
47:29
heritage. We think of music
47:32
primarily as a form of entertainment,
47:38
or as a way of rescuing us from silence.
47:43
When there was a time we grew up and everybody knew the same songs
47:46
and they would sing them together, and there was a sense of
47:50
identity. And I remember a priest I knew
47:55
who was very proud that at his first Mass, the one
47:58
of the songs they sang was Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress.
48:03
And I thought to myself, okay, but why though?
48:07
You know, and if you're going to pick Martin Luther, why not Hello, Dolly!?
48:11
Is there nothing in Catholic identity that might appeal?
48:16
Uh, and that leads us to, um,
48:19
again, that, that loss of common frame of reference.
48:25
I mean, so many Catholics don't know what they don't
48:29
know. And they don't know that,
48:32
uh, that worship isn't just me showing
48:36
up as an individual renewing my weekly
48:40
subscription to anti-hell insurance,
48:44
but rather it's something that we do together specifically
48:50
as Catholics with a heritage
48:54
over which we exercise not ownership but stewardship.
49:00
But if we're just there to check the box, doesn't the no music
49:04
option mean you get out faster?
49:07
I think that would be a bigger sell. Ask Father who uses
49:11
Eucharistic Prayer Number 2 because it's the shortest,
49:15
you know. And some of them try to be clever and say that's the oldest,
49:19
which means they really don't know what they're talking about. Don't get me started on
49:22
that. But here's the moral of the story: It is truly
49:25
right and just always and everywhere to offer our
49:29
best in worship. In the course of 2,000 years,
49:34
the Catholic Church has generated glorious
49:39
art and music and gesture and
49:43
ritual. It's all there.
49:48
This is the best efforts of the best saints.
49:52
And our first question seems to be, is this going to take long?
49:57
Think on these things today, take them to prayer, talk about it with those you
50:00
love. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic
50:04
Current. Join us tomorrow with The Catholic Current for another lively episode of
50:08
The Catholic Current. Great guest, great topic, great conversation, because that's how
50:11
we roll here at The Catholic Current and The Station of the Cross, where every
50:15
day we strive to be so very much more than merely
50:20
relevant. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
50:24
get our resources list, download our audio as podcasts,
50:27
take us to your family and friends. Together we'll take it to the whole world.
50:30
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you,
50:34
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do pray for
50:38
me, for I am a sinner.