Poetry and music—how the schools and churches fail us

Although this is a challenge for Catholic schools and churches, it applies to all worship leaders and educators: poetry and music. Even when I was in school 60 years ago, my mother complained that we didn't have enough poetry in our curriculum.

"First, get rid of the lousy poetry and lousy music. Stupidity is always a vice, says Maritain. Nobody says, “It doesn’t matter what movies my child watches, so long as he watches movies,” or, “It doesn’t matter what my husband drinks, so long as he drinks.” Get rid of it. Nobody but the church performers enjoys it anyway. Replace it with real hymns. Don’t think you can get those from the big presses, OCP and GIA and such, because they have mangled the texts and dragged them through the mud. Sing the poems, as they were composed.

Second, return to poetry. The time is short, and the reward immense. Fifty lines of Tennyson can be committed to memory; five hundred pages of Dickens, not so fast. Have every student in your schools learn, say, twenty poems by heart. And their elders, too, might join in – have a Poetry Night in your parish, with the stipulation that every poem be written in meter.

We are suffering from cultural dementia, muddied and dulled by the strokes of the modern. It is time, little by little, for recovery."

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/02/23/recovering-from-cultural-dementia/?

Not being Catholic, or even musical, I didn't know what OCP and GIA were, so I looked it up. The comments from the musical directors are hilarious.

https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/8615/what-is-your-favorite-gia-or-ocp-hymnal-/p1

What are you hearing in sermons and homilies?

Howard Kainz, a Catholic, observes, “I was surprised in the last couple months to hear two homilies – one on the abuse crisis and cover-ups, the other on abortion. My surprise is based on the fact that I have never heard these two topics discussed at any Sunday Mass since Vatican II. And I have attended Masses in quite a few states.”

I’ve noticed the same thing at our church.  In over 40 years at UALC, I’ve heard one sermon on marriage and nothing about abortion, homosexuality, same sex marriage, war, poverty, immigration, and just a smidgen on finances, etc. It is up to small groups or social ministries to address those concerns—without a pastor and usually without Biblical leadership.

Forty years ago I was relieved not to hear about the culture and day to day drama from the pulpit, as we had transferred from First Community Church and that seemed the primary topic of the day, but with no gospel.  The preacher there in the 1970s was a fabulous speaker, impassioned, poetic, with sermons that read like the front page of the Washington Post;  and he was also unfaithful to his wife and children leaving in disgrace. Maybe he just had pent up energy or guilt.

But there are times I feel we conservatives Christians are drowning in a culture of hate, bias, misinformation, and scripture twisting. I understand the pastor has to speak to everyone, but it does seem we just quietly go out to coffee in the narthex to struggle on our own while munching blueberry donut holes.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/11/12/homilies-on-hot-topics/

Fortieth Day after Easter Sunday, Ascension Day

Ascension Day occurs ten days before Pentecost and it always falls on a Thursday. However, some churches, particularly in the United States, celebrate it on the following Sunday.*

"The observance of this feast is of great antiquity. Although no documentary evidence of it exists prior to the beginning of the fifth century, St. Augustine says that it is of Apostolic origin, and he speaks of it in a way that shows it was the universal observance of the Church long before his time. Frequent mention of it is made in the writings of St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in the Constitution of the Apostles. The Pilgrimage of Sylvia (Peregrinatio Etheriae) speaks of the vigil of this feast and of the feast itself, as they were kept in the church built over the grotto in Bethlehem in which Christ was born (Duchesne, Christian Worship, 491-515). It may be that prior to the fifth century the fact narrated in the Gospels was commemorated in conjunction with the feast of Easter or Pentecost. Some believe that the much-disputed forty-third decree of the Council of Elvira (c. 300) condemning the practice of observing a feast on the fortieth day after Easter and neglecting to keep Pentecost on the fiftieth day, implies that the proper usage of the time was to commemorate the Ascension along with Pentecost. Representations of the mystery are found in diptychs and frescoes dating as early as the fifth century." (Catholic Encyclopedia)

I watched this observance on Canadian TV.  I believe the President of the network is the priest. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hV5_oJ8uo
  This service includes "spiritual communion."

It takes a long time for a Protestant (at least for me) to become accustomed to a Catholic mass because all the focus is on the Bible readings and on Jesus, instead of the preacher's sermon (brief) or the music style. However, there is more continuity among these services all over the world than those in our Lutheran church in one location.

*I also watched the Sydney, Australia and Toronto mass. They apparently will be celebrating this on May 8.