Amy Welborn has cornucopius thoughts and links on the liturgical music debate going on in Rome and, next week, at the bishops' meeting Baltimore. She links to a post by Jeffrey Tucker at the New Liturgical Movement site titled Top Ten Unknown Truths About Sacred Music. Tucker and Amy clearly have their POVs on the topic, and don't finesse them. But they seem to point toward a Roman liturgy more along the lines of an Eastern Orthodox celebration, in which a mass is sung, and that's it, musically speaking. As Tucker argues:

"Vatican II hoped to see that vernacular hymnody would decrease and the sung Mass would increase. Full, conscience, active participation in the Mass means: it is up to the people to do their part to sing the parts of the Mass that belong to the people."

Or, as Amy Welborn puts it:

"Its what the movers, shakers and futurists like to call a paradigm shift. Youve heard of it, I presume. Can we have one, please?

Not sing at Mass.sing the Mass."

Maybe, if every church were St. Peter's. But I think even John Paul allowed "profane" music--that is, more than an organ and human voices--to be used once during a Mass. Perhaps it was conducted by Van Karajan. Anyway, this is not my field by any stretch, so perhaps others can explain where Welborn/Tucker et al stand on the spectrum.  

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

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