The Folk Mass

 

In my youth, in the wake of Vatican II, the Church decided to jettison all the liturgical music of the past two millennia, The Beethoven and the Bach and the like, generally written for choir and organ, in favour of the “folk mass,” with guitar, up in the front of the church. Folk, after all, was what all the youngsters were listening to. The church was going to be hep.

Except—I was one of those youngsters, who adored folk music. A tradition is rich with deeply religious songs. Indeed, rock itself is only secularized gospel music. “Go Tell It on the Mountain”; “We Shall Not Be Moved”; “We Shall Overcome”; “Turn! Turn! Turn!”; “Children, Go Where I Send Thee”; and the like, were on the radio every day.

But the church did not go to real folk music. Instead, they had a small group of St. Louis Jesuits compose almost the entire new hymn book, with songs presumably in the folk tradition; but soulless and trite. Hallmark Card stuff. To anyone who loved either folk music, or true religion, it was offensive.

The low point, for me, was when I passed a Catholic Church in grad school days, and the carillon was playing the notes of John Denver’s “Sunshine on my Shoulders.” 

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high”

Why didn’t the church use true folk music? I suspect a need to control, a Pharisaic fear of the Holy Spirit. But probably also because, in the English world, the folk music other than that substantial body out of Ireland was mostly going to be written by Protestants, and express Protestant theology. For example, “The Old Rugged Cross”:

“And exchange it one day for a crown.”

That easy conviction that one is going to heaven would be, to Catholicism, the sin of pride, and a likely ticket in the opposite direction.

Still, there was a ready alternative, a better road not taken. There is a rich Catholic folk tradition in non-English-speaking countries. The lyrics need only be translated. My wife and I were the choir back in Athabasca, and the priest allowed us to sing the English version of the Spanish song “Pescador de Hombres.” Not included I the regulation hymn book, but he had pasted it inside the back cover. A visitor came up to us afterward and said it wax the most beautiful thing he had ever heard in a church.

“O Lord, with a glance you embraced me:
Then you smiled and whispered my name.
I’ve abandoned my boat in the harbour;
Close to You I will seek other shores.”

For that matter, the good old Protestant hymns could be adapted.

“So I'll cherish the old rugged Cross
Till my trophies, at last, I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And wear every thorn like a crown.”

Some day, I pray, the Church will come to its senses on liturgical music. 

But how long, O Lord, how long?

The Folk Mass Fraud

 

Many lament that, in possession of the world’s richest musical heritage, the Catholic Church has since the 1970s insisted instead on the “folk mass.”

I love folk music. I resent the term being misapplied here. A folk mass would be great. The music of the modern mass is not folk music.

It is supposed to be. Musicam Sacram, issued in 1967 in the wake of Vatican II, called for “adapting sacred music for those regions which possess a musical tradition of their own.” That was the charter from which this has emerged. And there is a rich North American tradition of sacred music. There is a rich European tradition of sacred music. There is a rich African, African-American, and Caribbean tradition of sacred music. Real folk music is religious. Just pull out any old folk album: the religious element is obvious, and must be a puzzlement or an embarrassment to all the modern lefties who are also folkies. “By the Rivers of Babylon”; “Wayfaring Stranger”; “Go Tell It on the Mountain”; “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” It’s all either overtly religious or conveys a moral lesson. 

But instead of drawing on this tradition directly, new songs were composed hastily by a small body of men, the St. Louis Jesuits. This is by definition the opposite of folk music.

While real folk music is generally emotionally profound, these new songs were Tin Pan Alley superficial. 

O city of gladness, now lift up your voice.

Proclaim the good tidings that all may rejoice!

 

I guess I experienced the height of it when, walking past a church in Syracuse in 1978 or so, I heard the carillon chime out the tune to John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders.”

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry

Sunshine on the water looks so lovely

Sunshine almost always makes me high

 

It is all so blandly cheerful. Compare any real folk or gospel song:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? 

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? 

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. 

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

 

Or:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger

Travelling through this land of woe.

And there's no sickness, toil or danger

In that bright world to which I go.

 

Why are we stuck with music at the level of The Archies singing “Sugar, Sugar” in the very presence of the great mystery of the ages? Why did we deliberately reject existing beauty, even against the Vatican recommendation, for mediocrity?

I look up the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ official Guidelines for Liturgical Music. It quotes, in turn, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to say “singing is the sign of the heart’s joy.” 

Aha. Is it? Anyone who is familiar with folk music, is your typical folk song unrelentingly cheerful? Isn’t there a reason why “the blues” is called “the blues”? For that matter, is your typical piece of classical music? Mendelssohn is generally consigned to the second tier of classical composers precisely because his music is too cheerful.

The bishops continue: “It arises from joy and, if we look closer at it, from love. Singing and making music belong to lovers.” The General Instructions vaguely cites St. Augustine as their authority here, but without quoting him to that effect; and the writings they do cite seem to say nothing like this.

People who see art as no more than entertainment are people who are spiritually shallow. A blues musician would say that they have no soul.

 “The foremost reason for all song during the liturgy,” the document goes on to maintain, “is to give praise and thanks to God.” The idea is enshrined in the title of the common Catholic hymnal, Glory and Praise. Happy, happy, joy, joy. 

But wasn’t there something in the mass about dying on a cross, about mea maxima culpa, about mercy, about prayers and petitions, about turning from sin, about drinking blood and eating flesh? If the bishops as a body really think the mass is a celebration of all creation as it is, we have a deeper problem than the music.

To be satisfied with the world as it is, with sunshine on your shoulder, to say that we are right now in “the city of gladness,” is the opposite of the Christian message. It is a surrender to the first of the three great temptations, “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” I suspect it is a surrender to all three: what the hallelujah chorus attitude wants most, I suspect, is to deny the existence of sin.

It is a message that would appeal to Dives, not Lazarus.