Morning Worship Sunday 6th September - St Therese

[johnquinn39]

Oh dear! Didn't they have an organ available...... I feel I'm losing the battle for good church music. There's plenty of acceptable French stuff around if they didn't want to keep to the English tradition. I'm a founder member of the B.A.G.I.C. society - (ban all guitars in church) so think I'll go into a quiet room with Tallis and spem in alium in an attempt to recover my sanity. Angela.

Why ban guitars?

[monty]

That is unfair Angela - I have heard some wonderful guitar playing in church. Have also heard some dreadful organ playing.

Is the 'reluctant organist' an asset or a problem? He/she may feel or know they are not good enough for public performance but will be pressured into helping out and will be praised. But along comes somebody who could play the organ if they were asked and they deem that organist to be rubbish - is that just?

Back on topic, I don't like the strumming style of guitar playing and that is what we seemed to be given in that broadcast. I could also picture the musician taking centre stage and performing - I never like that at Mass.

[Mithras]

IIRC, Soul of my Saviour also received a make-over in Praise the Lord Revised

I don't think anyone uses that one today.

Indeed, and I wionder if anyone ever did? I asked recently how that arrangement slipped through but haven't had an answer.Yet.

M

[old barmaid]

Has anyone seen Melanie McDonagh's pertinent comments on this service? Daily Telegraph of Monday,

September 7th. Comment page opposite letters. I happened to hear most of this service and agree with her

every word.

[johnquinn39]

Has anyone seen Melanie McDonagh's pertinent comments on this service? Daily Telegraph of Monday,

September 7th. Comment page opposite letters. I happened to hear most of this service and agree with her

every word.

What did she say?

[Nick Baty]

She said:

There is not much that can get me out of bed early on a Sunday morning but the Radio 4 Sunday worship slot usually does the trick. It's like The Archers: you sense half the nation running, not walking, for the off switch. Yesterday the genre was at its worst, from the Church of Sacred Heart and St Theresa in Birmingham. The priest sounded lovely, but it was grim in a uniquely Roman Catholic way: a folk mass with guitars and readers with breaks in their voices.
If there were a conspiracy by the BBC's religion department to put the uncommitted majority off Christian worship, this is how it might sound. Especially given the contrast with Sir David Attenborough afterwards, talking like a good preacher about evolution. There is fine liturgy on the radio: choral evensong on Radio 3. Any chance of getting choral matins instead?

Could I just stress that I only read this bit of the Torygraph for research papers. Will I still have to confess this failing?

[keitha]

Melanie McDonagh wrote:

Yesterday the genre was at its worst, from the Church of Sacred Heart and St Theresa in Birmingham. The priest sounded lovely, but it was grim in a uniquely Roman Catholic way: a folk mass with guitars and readers with breaks in their voices.

If there were a conspiracy by the BBC's religion department to put the uncommitted majority off Christian worship, this is how it might sound. Especially given the contrast with Sir David Attenborough afterwards, talking like a good preacher about evolution. There is fine liturgy on the radio: choral evensong on Radio 3. Any chance of getting choral matins instead?

But (i) it wasn't a mass ('folk' or otherwise), (ii) nor, really, was it the rite of morning prayer as per the Daily Office. It was really a service of morning prayer with St Therese, her life and the approaching visit of her relics as the theme.

ps fired up with enthusiasm and the feeling that I should know more I went off researching St Therese; I rather wished that I hadn't when I read that the remains are divided between two caskets, one of which travels the world, whilst the other remains at the Basilica in Lisieu. It didn't feel 'seemly' to me, but then we have a very 'British' way of looking at these things.

[presbyter]

She said:

but it was grim in a uniquely Roman Catholic way: a folk mass with guitars........

That's hardly a dispassionate appraisal of the broadcast. It's just a rant by someone displaying remarkable ignorance in describing the broadcast as a Mass. Did she really listen?

[presbyter]

I went off researching St Therese; I rather wished that I hadn't when I read that the remains are divided between two caskets, one of which travels the world, whilst the other remains at the Basilica in Lisieu. It didn't feel 'seemly' to me, but then we have a very 'British' way of looking at these things.

LOL. next time you visit Rome, venerate St Catherine of Siena (most of her) in Santa Maria sopra Minerva - then go to Termini station (with foreknowledge of the intricacies of the Italian railway timetable and its branch lines) - catch train to Siena - go to San Domenico and venerate her head and a finger. Actually, this is better done over two days rather than one and an overnight stop in Orvieto allows indulgence in a tincture of Classico and some good dining. Anyone want to see the bit of Margaret Mary Alacoque that I possess? It's very tiny.

[presbyter]

Will I still have to confess this failing?

If/when he is beatified, shall I have to confess to putting a third class relic of John Paul II in a skip? The threadbare and ill-fitting holy carpet upon which he walked at Coventry used to cover the much more attractive herring-bone parquet flooring in my sacristy.

If there were a conspiracy by the BBC's religion department to put the uncommitted majority off Christian worship, this is how it might sound


I could also give an example of a parish that's "gone choral" and the congregation has halved in number because of that. Let's leave Melanie to vote with her feet and attend her radio 3 worship where she wills.

[Southern Comfort]

She said:

but it was grim in a uniquely Roman Catholic way: a folk mass with guitars........

That's hardly a dispassionate appraisal of the broadcast. It's just a rant by someone displaying remarkable ignorance in describing the broadcast as a Mass. Did she really listen?

Not exactly. Most non-RCs can't tell the difference between Mass and anything else. If it's Catholic, it must be Mass. The

it was grim in a uniquely Roman Catholic way

bit is what we should be taking notice of. That tells us how some, or even much, of the world sees us, whether Mass is involved or not. Yes, I know that it's not true, but that may be how this and other broadcasts tend to typify us, whether our broadcasts reflect what goes on in our best churches or (much more often) not. Without wanting to resurrect the arguments we had in older threads about broadcast Sunday Worship, some of this is about the Beeb's desire to promote the "entertaining" (as they see it) style of CJM and others like them.

I have not listened to the broadcast ─ doing so may be an occasion of sin ─ but I suggest, despite the "choral matins" bit, that we should be thinking about how we present ourselves to the world. There are other forms of "folk" music than CJM, and with a broadcast which was more concerned with worship than with music dear Melanie's reaction might have been rather different. We really have no idea how much power the music we use has to move people. Someone (presbyter?) did mention the power of some of the "testimony" in the broadcast, but it was in fact the music that struck Melanie. A lesson for us there, I feel.

PS:

Anyone want to see the bit of Margaret Mary Alacoque that I possess? It's very tiny.

No thanks!

[Southern Comfort]

Well, I eventually did listen to it (actually I'm listening as I type this), and it was/is indeed an occasion of sin.

The spoken content was OK, though the timing was a little crowded. John Udris was fine, but then he's a great priest who will no doubt be a bishop one day (thank God).

The musical content is what we have all been describing. I particularly disliked
(a) the swimming-bath acoustic added to the guitars throughout. This removes all definition from what is going on.
(b) the distortion of vowel sounds into diphthongs by the solo singers (you know who they were) throughout.

And as for praise/grace rhyming with = Thérèse ─ well........ no worse than Agnus Dei, you take away-ee (earlier this year), I suppose. It's just amazing that people don't know that you're not supposed to do that.

A terribly lah-di-dah moralising lady in the middle, but most of those spoke were otherwise fine.

Couldn't make out what the second congregational response in the litany was, even after playing it a number of times over.

I think the most obvious failing was the lack of any obvious structure ─ just a succession of elements following, one after the other. Hmmm. Liturgy as a peg to hang music on?

[contrabordun]

Liturgy as a peg to hang music on?

To be fair, you could say the same about Choral Evensong.

[keitha]

And I often do!

[Southern Comfort]

Point taken, but what I was talking about was the "oh, let's have another song now" impression that one always gets with this kind of thing. No sense of shape or progression to the service at all, just a series of bits with songs interpolated.

At least Cranmer's combination of Vespers and Compline in the evensong service has a clearly discernible structure based on existing liturgical practice.