God love the musicians

I'm a musician, well,... a singer anyway. So, choir practice was last night and there is a new guitar player there, the pianist and another singer. A light night. Others had family issues come up. So, I get pegged to cantor this Sunday.

Well, the new guitarist starts talking about how he thought this was listed as a contemporary Mass and he wanted it more contemporary and we should be pushing the congregation more in that direction and the pianist was agreeing with him. He goes into his version of the story about the parish he used to play at. They called it the "Rock Mass" and had "FULL AMPLIFICATION" and they did this for 10 years without anyone complaining and the new priest had come in and kicked them out and "he was mean about it." I have a feeling that there is more to the story than just a mean priest kicking out the choir.

It is kind of funny that earlier yesterday, I was looking for something else and came across the 88 page document "Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship" released by the USCCB 2 years ago. I held my toungue during practice (I especially didn't bring up the fact that we are supposed to be throwing in Latin every once in a while). I didn't want to excite anyone too much inside the church building. When we were leaving, and he mentioned a couple of more things about his former situation, I did say something about there being a time and place for everthing. I figured I wouldn't say anything at the time, but prayerfully consider the words to use and maybe bring up the topic and the document next week.

I've been out of parish work for awhile now and doing volunteer work like choir, youth group, catechist, lector, etc. It just reminded me of all the other stuff that priests have to go through. I guess it is a good test to see if I can pastorally make an impression that as musicians we should be assisting worship and not trying to entertain or especially be trying to "push" anyone. I would be more than happy to go to the pastor to try to convice him to open the hall for a praise and worship service outside of the Mass if that is what this person feels called to do.

Dominus Vobiscum