The Recovering Choir Director

Gavin on the MusicaSacra Forum points to an excellent essay posted today by pastor and Catholic blog pioneer Fr. Rob Johansen.

On numerous occasions, in my efforts to explain and promote the authentic vision of Vatican II regarding liturgy and music, I have heard from parishioners and others a response something like this:

Well, Father, you like all that classical music and chant, and the traditional hymns, and that’s fine for you. But I [we] like [insert musical genre here], and, after all, it’s all for God’s praise. One kind of music is just as good as another.

Alasdair McIntyre, in his seminal book After Virtue, described this mode of thinking as emotivism, that is, the collapsing of all moral or qualitative judgments into mere expressions of personal preference. And this kind of thinking is the besetting sin of the post-modern West.

What is missing in the thinking illustrated above is any sense that the liturgy, and the music of the liturgy, has any objective quality whatsoever.

On the overused phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”:

There is certainly an element of truth in the sentiment “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. If someone does not “see” beauty, they don’t see it. But the problem is that the person uttering the sentiment treats it as though that is all there is to be said about the matter. If the “eye of the beholder” doesn’t see it, well, that’s it. The sentiment treats the “eye of the beholder” as though it were an infallible and final arbiter of the matter, and it isn’t.

What if the “eye of the beholder” is blind? What if the ear of the beholder is deaf? What if the eye of the beholder has been perverted and deformed by a constant exposure to disorder and ugliness? What if the ear of the beholder has been corrupted by a steady diet of noise and chaos? In such cases, the beholder’s ability to apprehend beauty is severely compromised, and his judgment is not to be relied upon. What we must be willing to say, and what the Church has not shied away from saying dowm through the ages, is that sometimes the eye of the beholder is wrong.

And finally, on the topic of sacred art and music:

…Have we, as Church, been forming our Catholic people according to the mind of the Church to understand and apprehend the objective nature of the liturgy? Have we been giving them a liturgical formation which takes the texts and actions of the liturgy, as lived in continuity thorough the ages, as the primary source of our music and art in the post-conciliar period? I would have to say, “No.”

No, what has happened in large part is that extra-liturgical forms and even sometimes texts, many of which come from the dominant mass culture, have been imposed on the liturgy from without. And this has obscured the meaning and nature of the liturgy. It has led to confusion and a weakening of faith. A people that has been led to believe that the liturgy is whatever Father Feelgood or Sister Liturgist make it this week is not a people who will necessarily be able to properly apprehend truth or beauty when they encounter it. The moral equipment that they need to do this has been damaged, and it needs to be repaired.

And how is this repair to be effected? Slowly, firmly, and with great patience and charity. Pope Benedict has led the way to re-building the culture. Priests, musicians, and those of us who love and treasure the Church’s great liturgical patrimony must engage in the work of leading people, often one by one, to a re-appropriation of what the Church offers us. And, first and foremost, we must give an example of joy and love, so that all will see that Beauty does indeed lead to God.

The essay is well worth reading in its entirety.