Knights of Divine Mercy Schola Cantorum: Our Bishops Call for Chant

By an even modest estimation, there are perhaps hundreds of blogs, websites and chat groups dedicated to the discussion of liturgical music. They range from the wildly progressive to the soberingly Orthodox, encompassing every style from Contemporary Christian Rock music to Gregorian Chant and Renaissance Polyphony. The debate about what music is most appropriate in the liturgy began long before the promulgation of the New missal in 1970 and has continued up to this day unabated. Recently however, the debate has heated up, prompted in part by recent liturgical reforms originating from the Holy See, and by the emergence of a grass-roots movement to re-establish the musical tradition of the Catholic Church within the context of these reforms.

With the USCCB document Sing To The Lord, the issue of re-introducing Latin Chant (and other forms of traditional liturgical music) to the liturgy has come suddenly to the foreground, with two camps dominating the debate. Their positions are predictably in line with their views on other aspects of liturgy, centering around what has been perhaps one of the most misunderstood platforms of Vatican II, the call for “full, active and conscious participation of the faithful”. Their respective positions could be summarized as follows:

Pro:– “Gregorian Chant is the music best suited for use in the Roman liturgy. It’s superiority has been re-affirmed by every Pope up to and including the present Holy Father, and it is the music proclaimed as the best suited to the liturgy by the documents of Vatican II, which asked that it be given “pride of place” in the liturgy, taking precedence over other forms of music even though they may be suitable as well. The reason for this suitability is that Gregorian Chant is the actual texts of the Mass itself set to music, expressing eloquently the depth and subtlety of the Catholic faith in a way that substitute “songs” and hymns cannot do. As such, the Chant is an indispensible part of the Roman liturgy, the absence of which has created a serious break with tradition and caused a deterioration of the liturgical form more generally.”

Con: ”Gregorian Chant, while a beautiful and important part of the tradition of the Catholic Church, is unsuitable for a modern liturgy which emphasizes the “full, active and conscious participation of the faithful”. The musical sensibilities of Chant are unfamiliar and alien to all but the elite who study it, and the fact that few if any of the faithful understand Latin means that even if they were able to sing Chant, they wouldn’t be able to understand what they are singing. While the documents of Vatican II re-affirmed the important place of Chant in the traditions of the Church, they also foresaw the creation of new music to better express the call for the participation of the faithful in the liturgy, and likely did not foresee the success of contemporary music in this regard. As such, the prominence of vernacular language contemporary liturgical songs is keeping with the “Spirit of the Council”, allowing the faithful to understand what they are singing and engage more fully in the meaning of the liturgy.”

There are, of course, many other points that can be made either in favor of Chant or against it, but the two above expressions contain, I think, all of the salient points of the positions that are currently engaged in debate. We need to begin by saying that neither side is necessarily right, in the sense that there is a definitive right or wrong to be found, but there are very clearly some assumptions about the liturgy that have led to the acceptance of a flawed premise for the debate in general, and for the adoption of the “con” position specifically. These assumptions might be best described as accepting “too vague a notion of cognition and understanding as they apply to liturgical form.”