The Recovering Choir Director

From Duane L. C. M. Galles comes this dead-on observation:

The problem is not just the music but also the libretto. The English translations proffered by the International Committee on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) have received withering criticism. [Thomas] Day, on page 128 of the work cited in note 4 [Why Catholics Can't Sing], largely credits ICEL’s texts for changing “a serious act of worship [the Mass] into a low-grade variety show.” With its “less is more” approach, ICEL has given us “utility language”—to borrow a phrase from Cardinal Ratzinger. And it is about to abort or, at least, jettison this offspring in favor of a successor already, in the language of the common law, en ventre de sa mere. Surely both “utility language” and “utility music” are linked to the contraceptive mentality. Contraception severs love from life and reduces it to the function of pleasure alone, ensuring that love will result in no enduring expression, no child. Similarly, “utility language” or “utility music” regards only the functional aspects of language or music and eschews the creation of lasting beauty. The link seems to be that both contraception and “utility language” and “utility music” are rooted in a Manichean disdain for created things upon which, at the end of each day of creation, God looked and found to be good.

- Hymns at Mass—Some Observations on What We Sing in Church

One can most certainly add “utility space”—these new or newly barren worship barns devoid of religious artwork, icons, statues, etc.—to that list.