It must have been our 50th viewing of “Aladdin” with our three small children. Aladdin had just been tossed off a cliff and into the water when, forgetting myself, I stood up and protested to my wife, “this guy has been under that water too long. No way he would have survived this!” she immediately cocked her head and with a patronizing chuckle responded “my love, you have been watching a cartoon about a teenage boy who rubs a magic lamp and discovers a genie, and the point at which you can’t suspend your disbelief is when he can’t hold his breath as long as you feel he should?”
There is something of this unprincipled kind of pragmatism that occurs when, week after week, we choose the same unsuited standards that insist “all are welcome.” that we ought to “come dance in the forest, come play in the field,” or that the Eucharist is “one cup of blessing which we bless.” All good Catholics have this innate sense that praying through a Mass should be like entering a forest of signs and symbols, an experience that leaves us with the undeniable impression that even if I have not understood totally what I have seen and heard, something more important than myself, someone “ever-ancient, ever-new” has come to meet me. Why does it often feel as though we forget that music is one of the most important trees in that forest, that it is also a symbol? There is a practical answer and perhaps a theological one.
The practical answer is that in a great many of our parishes, the people who are in charge of music are volunteering their time week after week and have limited resources and time. They are the unsung heroes of our parishes. When that is the case, it is easy to pop “City of God” in the rotation just to make it to next week. Then there is the case of the liturgical musician who perhaps has been doing this for 20 years and rejects, even as a starting point, that Gregorian Chant, Polyphony, and the Organ are properly suited to the Sunday liturgy, and should be heard. Nevermind that the documents of Vatican II, the USCCB, and the Holy See have all affirmed that these styles and instruments have pride of place in the Roman liturgy. “For the sake of the people,” they might say, “we ought to only play what the people know and can sing.” And they might say this without the slightest recognition that they have just asserted that unprincipled pragmatism into their decision making. Either it is all a forest of symbols or none of it is.
But perhaps there is a better way. I would venture to guess that even the musical veterans I have just described don’t often discern this way out of malice. It is more likely that they received these opinions as part of their formation and never had the time or tools to theologically question the assertion. Maybe it is time to recover a sense of what, or who, the music veils. Maybe it is time to ask what a liturgy is, who it is for. Maybe it is time to inquire why the Council Fathers insisted that chant, polyphony, hymnody and the organ all functioned as proper veils to the sacred mysteries on every altar. Before we reject them we should understand what it is about these forms that make their resonance in our souls undeniable when they are done well. My friends, it is time to recover a theology of music.
There will most certainly be a fear that what I have just said above means that every Sunday Mass must only use Gregorian Chant and that nothing that came after 1962 is worthy of the liturgy. I mean nothing of the sort. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the reason we continue to choose music that is often less suited to the mysticism of the liturgy is that we have gotten used to making liturgical decisions according to that unprincipled pragmatism that makes us reach for “Here I am Lord” or “Pescador de Hombres” for the third time this month, rather than being as bold and as strange as the liturgy to encourage the congregation to “let all mortal flesh keep silence” when they stand to receive the Living God at Communion. Let this article be the first of a mutli-part series that explores the theology and role of liturgical music. Let us learn to love what is so breath-taking about chant, the organ, and hymnody so that even when we do not use them, we bring to the liturgy what we have learned from them. There may be some readers who might not be on board with what I have even suggested above. It certainly flies in the face of what has been the normative position for the last 30 years. I understand. What I ask over the next few articles is that you be open enough to explore the theological reasons why your fathers and mothers in faith planted certain trees in that forest of symbols. Maybe, over time, we might be encouraged to build the City of God and return to some of that music that properly veils the presence of the Lord whose love for us is everything but pragmatic.
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Ruben M. Gilbert is an Associate Director in the Diocesan Office of Divine Worship.