Rock music

[johnquinn39]

(See Bishop Sample's letter over at Pray Tell ...)

Could we have Rock music at Mass?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHqm7uW7iJA

Yes, for example, are very 'churchy', with Herbert Howells style harmonies.

What is not sacred about Rock? -- Why can we not use it in the liturgy?

[johnquinn39]

See also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHLPOUCaMtY

[johnquinn39]

And:

http://www.johnyoungband.com/fr_home.cfm

[musicus]

I am sure that all those of us who have no idea what rock music is are grateful for your three examples, John ( ). Bishop Sample's letter is worth a read, not least because he will head the board of directors at Oregon Catholic Press, where he will find much material to challenge his teaching. This passage from section 2 is pertinent to your question:

One often gets the impression that, as long as the written text of the music or song speaks about God, then it qualifies as “sacred music.” Given what has been articulated here, this is clearly not the case. As an example, the Gloria of the Mass set to a Polka beat or in the style of rock music is not sacred music. Why not? Because such styles of music, as delightful as they might be for the dance hall or a concert, do not possess all three of the intrinsic qualities of sanctity, artistic goodness (beauty) and universality proper to sacred music.

Those for whom OCP and GIA evoke the St Thomas More Group style of the 80s might be surprised at the degree to which contemporary popular music now permeates much of American church music, as represented in their catalogues - to a far greater extent than in the UK. Over here it is a nice (I might almost say hypothetical) debating point; in the States it is a very real issue. Bishop Sample's arguments are perhaps not as sharply developed and expressed as they might be (and Fr Ruff at PrayTell is not averse to implying that), but he makes some fair points.

[JW]

These were the then Cardinal Ratzinger's views on the subject in 1985, and, apart from his church credentials he is no mean musician.

In many forms of religion, music is associated with frenzy and ecstasy. The free expansion of human existence, toward which man’s own hunger for the Infinite is directed, is supposed to be achieved through sacred delirium induced by frenzied instrumental rhythms. Such music lowers the barriers of individuality and personality, and in it man liberates himself from the burden of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy, liberation from the ego, amalgamation with the universe. Today we experience the secularized variation of this type in rock and pop music, whose festivals are an anti-cult with the same tendency: desire for destruction, repealing the limitations of the everyday, and the illusion of salvation in liberation from the ego, in the wild ecstasy of a tumultuous crowd. These are measures which involve a form of release related to that achieved through drugs. It is the complete antithesis of Christian faith in the Redemption.

In a way which we could not imagine thirty years ago, music has become the decisive vehicle of a counter-religion and thus calls for a parting of the ways. Since rock music seeks release through liberation from the personality and its responsibility, it can be on the one hand precisely classified among the anarchic ideas of freedom which today predominate more openly in the West than in the East. But that is precisely why rock music is so completely antithetical to the Christian concept of redemption and freedom, indeed its exact opposite. Hence, music of this type must be excluded from the Church on principle, and not merely for aesthetic reasons, or because of restorative crankiness or historical inflexibility.

Personally I dare to disagree with him - I don't believe the purpose of rock music is to seek "release through liberation from the personality and its responsibility." In fact I disagree with so much church teaching it's amazing I'm a Catholic - but there you go! If Rock music is capable of speaking spriritually to people, then surely it may be considered sacred to that extent.

[contrabordun]

Bishop Sample's Letter is here: http://www.dioceseofmarquette.org/UserFiles/Bishop/PastoralLetter-RejoiceInTheLordAlways.pdf

[Peter Jones]

Bishop Sample's Letter is here: http://www.dioceseofmarquette.org/UserFiles/Bishop/PastoralLetter-RejoiceInTheLordAlways.pdf

For a commentary on the letter - the Bishop's bias - and his selective use of paragraphs of documents (without understanding underlying principles, according to some commentators) see here:

http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2013/02/13/bishop-samples-pastoral-letter-on-sacred-music-in-divine-worship/