The Recovering Choir Director

Opening: Ashes (Conry)

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!

Psalm: Taste and See (Becker?)

Don’t know it, but Becker is worth a look.

Offertory: I Have Loved You (Joncas)

Insipid.

Communion: Shepherd Me, O God (Haugen)

Well, at least people don’t pretend it is a psalm, anymore.

Closing: Companions on the Journey, vv. 1-2 (Landry)

DON’T know it, but Landry is NOT, I repeat, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT worth a look.

I have never decided whether I think this insistence on using music aimed at children, the Directory for Masses with Children, the Chrildren’s lectionary, etc. when dealing with adults is, as traditionalist conspiracy-theorists would have it,an insidious attempt to introduce illicit practices into the liturgy by an end-run around rubrics and tradition, — or just a perfect example of the sheer BONE-HEADEDNESS of too many people in the Church.
It is bad enough subjecting the middle-aged or elderly to puerile songs, and a manner and ritual best aimed at “Barney” fans, but it is parochial suicide to use it with older children and young adults.

The practicing Catholic is at his absolute most vulnerable in late adolescence, early 20s, it is the time when he is MOST likely to leave the faith, fall away from church-going, etc., and what better way to hurry his exit than to first have taught him that the liturgy is for his entertainment and then provide him, and the moment when he most wishes to be an adult, with puerile entertainment?

RCIA leaders with pre-school teaching methods seem to be very common.

Chris Durang’s hateful, “Adult Catholics? I don’t think I know any adult Catholics,” line seems to have told a bitter truth.