Impoverising the Sacred Liturgy

Actually, especially given the release of the Fantastic 4 movie, I’d say the title’s neologism evokes more of a blend of “pulverize” and “impoverish.”

Using a broad definition of rap, most Masses are “rap masses”.

Of course, “rap masses” come without the turntables, clever rhymes, percussive/syncopated delivery, bling-bling, and shouting into the microphone generally associated with rap. 🙂

Indeed, your “impoverising” is excellent. Lewis Carroll called these “portmanteau” words – “two meanings packed up into one word” – like “slithy” in the “Jabberwocky” poem in his Through the Looking Glass.

These fortuitous typos can be amusing, and even GKC observed them 99 years ago:

When I was a very young journalist I used to be irritated at a peculiar habit of printers, a habit which most persons of a tendency similar to mine have probably noticed also. It goes along ith the fixed belief of printers that to be a Rationalist is the same thing as to be a Nationalist. I mean the printer’s tendency to turn the word “cosmic” into the word “comic.” It annoyed me at the time. But since then I have come to the conclusion that the printers were right. The democracy is always right. Whatever is cosmic is comic.
[GKC, ILN June 9, 1906 CW27:206]

But is his claim accurate / true? “Style doesn’t matter, only the words.” Huh?

Psalm 24 a la’ Scott Joplin (ragtime)strikes me as rather distracting, to exaggerate for effect. An older friend of mine calls much of the liturgical music we hear these days “git-along songs” or “camp songs.” I’m not convinced that certain melodies / genres of song aren’t better than others, in terms of conveying and illuminating not only the (good)lyrics, but perhaps also the truth into our hearts via non-rational routes.

Imho. 😉