Wednesday, November 2, 2016

If You're Looking For Some Penitential Practices

I know Lent is quite some time away, but Advent does have a penitential aspect.  Or you may just want to do some extra reparation for a personal sin or the general state of the world.  Well, I just stumbled across this nightmarish site and think that it would be useful for some mortification - of the ears and musical sensibilities in particular.  It is a throwback site on which the owner waxes lyrical about the halcyon days of "guitar masses" that were the rage in the 1960s and 1970s.  The musicians then were young and chipper.  Fast forward a few decades.  These masses still exist - with the same musicians with a tad more gray hairs and some pot bellies to boot.

The site is: "Folk Mass Music Original Recordings".  On it are featured clips from the original authors.  I suppose the site owner doesn't know (or maybe doesn't care) that Ray Repp is now living in sin with his male accomplice; I sure hope the site owner isn't paying Repp royalties for Catholic recordings when his life is at serious variance with Catholic morality - so much so that he skates quite close to perdition.

By the way, take a look at that picture.  Is the whole kit and kaboodle engaging in an entrance procession?  What is the GIRM guidance on that?

Let's address what the site owner claims was a purpose of the folk music crap: "Surely after almost 50 years we should all be able to appreciate them for what they were trying to do, help young people of the 1960s and 1970s worship in a distinctive way they could relate to."  A personal note: not only was I one of those "young people" to whom he referred, but I actually played that junk at Mass.  I was not only young but woefully ignorant of real music.  Now why did the purveyors of this "folk music" think that the youth of the 1960s and 1970s  needed their own "distinctive way" to worship (assuming that can be called worship)?  Why did we need something different than did previous generations of young people throughout the Church's 2000-year history?  What caused people (including us) to think that the young of the 1960s were such precious prima donnas that the Church's sacred music was just not good enough for us?  In many ways we harbored such attitudes about ourselves, showing just what arrogant louts we truly were.  Apparently some still have not learned, judging from this website that is nothing more than a trip down "awful memory lane".

Anyway, if you'd like to engage in some musical mortification, have at it.  I won't say "enjoy" for that is not the point and that certainly won't happen!

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