The New Liturgical Movement has an interesting article about a 500 teenagers from across the United States on the topic of the appropriateness of music for the church. The results are not exactly what the proponents of contemporary church services would claim. The results are more inline with my own opinion on the subject.
One study I would like to see if the effectiveness of so-called youth Masses such as Lifeteen and whether people who attend them are more likely to be still attending Mass five years later. Now as a middle aged headbanger I certainly enjoy rock music, but don’t ever want it to be ever used as sacred music for the Mass. I also think it is a prudential mistake to try to use a type of contemporary music in Mass to attract young people. In later years doesn’t this make an expectation that the music at Mass should always conform to their secular tastes. Plus where does it end? There are so-many genres and sub-genres of music now with lots of crossover between them. Few would think Death Metal would be appropriate for Mass, even a Christianized version that I guess would be called Life after death metal.
And if the idea of young people being evangelized by the type of music used is such a productive idea then why isn’t it being used for other age groups. If this idea works so well why is there no LifeThirtySomething or LifeCodger to attract people in other age groups? There is of course plenty of room for evangelization with contemporary music outside of Mass. People like Fr. Stan Fortuna are a good example of this. Now many deride most contemporary Christian music as being bad. Though I am reminded of Theodore Sturgeon’s reply to a professor that said "90% of this Science Fiction is crap." He replied "90% of everything is crap."
Many regard the idea of sacred music as purely subjective. I don’t think this is true. The purpose of sacred music should be to make you want to bend your knee in worship, not tap your foot in syncopation to the beat.
Judging by all the blogs by young Catholics in favor of more access to the Tridentine Rite, why don’t any diocese have a LifeTridenteen?
I think a LifeTridenteen with Gregorian Change would be a success. I remember an article four years ago about a Church in England that said:
Another speaker recalled that his cathedral ran a rave in the nave for young people and a service in a side chapel featuring Gregorian chant for older people. But, he said, the older people ended up in the nave and the youngsters in the side chapel.
15 comments
So… this survey is telling us that Sister Act is a work of fiction?
I know of plenty of of youth who love Gregorian and sacred polyphonic music.
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Check out these sites:
http://www.heralds.ca
or
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These people are the best thing in years.
Jews don’t speak Hebrew in the streets – it’s reserved for worship. Anglicans use Elizabethian English for their worship services. Why is it that Catholics have a problem with Latin? Also, Gregorian chant is an inspiring form of music that transcends culture and time. Both Latin and Gregorian chant lift the thoughts to God – get this- PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY AREN’T ORDINARY AND BANAL.
Yes, Jesus came to be one of us. He is there with us in th eordinary things we do each day. However, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we aren’t engaging in humdrum activities. We are engaging in the most sacred act a human being can EVER participate in.
Shouldn’t our music, our language, and our churches mirror this reality?
Re “LifeCodger”:
There is such a thing. It’s any Mass which uses “Gather” or the OCP throwaways…
I’m not young but I do appreciate the more solemn music during mass. I appriciate silence as well, like during communion. They have played this song about being liftedf up on eagles wing and what ever. I wish they would just shut up. The sappy seudo-spritual music thats supposed to be nice(?) actually frustrates my prayer efforts.
I’m with Josephine. Some silence would be nice every so often, but we’re too afraid of being alone with ourselves and our God.
The nice thing about the local LifeTeen Mass, other than the fact that it’s at 5pm Sunday and you can get to it after driving five hours home from the kids’ grandparents’ house, is that the music is so rockish that I can completely block it out of my head during Communion and effectively achieve silence inside.
I do have to say in LifeTeen’s defense, though, that whenever I’ve been there, I have not seen young adults wearing low-cut jeans with the thong underwear visible above the waistband, nor bras visible through shirts, nor crop-tops, nor flip-flops. Someone got the message through that it wasn’t actually a rock concert and you need to dress appropriately, unlike my regular parish where no one has addressed the issue and I got to look at a young lady’s thong through most of Easter Mass.
So where are they going to put the Mosh Pits ???!!!
I’m waiting for the companion piece to Sister Act where Aristotle Eseguarra is forced to hide out in a megachurch and teaches everyone Palestrina.
For what it is worth, Jews and others do speak Hebrew on the streets — at least in Israel. They do use Yiddish (and maybe Hebrew too) in stores and on the streets in New York City in the Diamond section around 47th Street. And they do it elsewhere too. Most Anglicans no longer use the Prayer Book of the 16th or even the 17th centuries — so no longer the Elizabethan or Jacobean English (but we do still listen to Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrites). Latin is still a spoken language in some university circumstances and perhaps in the depths of the Vatican — and in most of these cases it is “kitchen Latin” — not at all classical or even medieval Latin. Up till about the time of St. Jerome (who put the Bible into Latin) the worship was mostly in Greek. But even most Greeks nowadays do not understand ‘Church or liturgical or Patristic Greek’ as it is spoken during the liturgy. So why not use a language which is understood (mostly) by the congregation when listening to God (the Scriptures etc) and speaking to the Holy Trinity — as we pray to “Our Father”. Anything else is ‘false nostalgia’ something rejected by the Church, East and West, multiple times over the centuries. Latin Chants are beautiful and wonderful if one (which are increasingly fewer) understands Latin, but most Christians do not understand (so Chant etc becomes like ‘enjoying operas in original languages’ a mainly aesthetic experience)– so why deprive them of ‘the riches old and new’ they have a right to as Baptised members of the Holy Trinity’s adopted family?
LifeTeen has done some great work, but I, too, wonder whether LifeTeeners ever integrate into the normal parish Sunday Masses, of if they become a clique that see LifeTeen as “their” personal property. Is there any maximum age to LifeTeen? Do they take their enthusiasm and bring it to the 8am Sunday Mass? Will the usual crowd of “permanent” lectors, ushers, and ministers of Holy Communion (that every parish has) allow newcomers take their “jobs” away from them?
I finally heard a good contemporary christian song at mass during communion and it was even at an event co-sponsored by spiritandsong. of course the lyrics came directly from the liturgy of the eucharist and the bible and were actually relevant to the eucharist. I guess it’s just proof at what good catechesis can do.
I have to say that I deplore LifeTeen. I think that it amounts to dumbing down the mass and the faith to attract young people. At the Church I attend the LifeTeen mass(unfortunately the one that I normally attend due to its time) is characterized by awful music amplifed so loud I can’t even begin to pray, lectors wearing jeans and t-shirts, a sign of peace that lasts for five minutes and many other odd deviations from the general instruction.
Another example of what at least this Church’s program encourages is this: A saturday night praise and worship(?) time was packed with teens from the group, but at the evening mass for the Assumption, there were only one or two of them in attendance. These things lead me to wonder what the effectiveness of this program is.
PS I am not an old codger(just turned 23).
My wife and I have been to two Lifeteen Masses this past month (because of family issues it’s the only Mass at 6:00 PM on Sundays at our local church. My view is that 1) the music was played very loud. Loud to the point where you had trouble focusing your thoughts on anything other than the music. 2)It also seemed as if the Mass was all about the music. Some were holding their hands up and swaying to the music. I’m sure they were sincere, but my wish would be that the Mass itself would “move them” in that way. Some of the songs I would be happy to listen to in my car rather than regular radio, but I’m just not sure it works for me at Mass.
Like some of the others here, my concern for the teenagers is that if they go back to a “regular” Mass-Will they think it is less “exciting”?
The sample size is quite small, though. 5000 would have been better than 500.
I’m only just too old. But I’d love to get it started! Ha! That’s awesome and hilarious!
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