About a week before I sat down to write this I was cleaning out a bookshelf and came across my old "Glory & Praise" hymnals.  I thought to myself, "I'm not just going to throw these away.  No, this hideous collection of Barney Songs deserves to be burned!"  Actually, I apologize to the Barney Show.  Their songs are much better.  So we rolled the 55 gallon drum away from the garage, tossed in the old Christmas tree that was laying behind the garage, and set 'er ablaze.  Tearing off a few pages at a time Janet and I read aloud the song titles with exaggerated groans and expressions of disgust as we threw them in to their proper fate.  The "performance notes" were the funniest.  One suggested that, for "movement", the performing ensemble could circle the altar holding hands during the singing of a particular "Lamb of God".  While singing the notes gave a suggested dance step involving sliding one foot and bringing the other over in slow steps while the group circled round the altar.  It was truly a pleasure watching the purging fire consume the scourge of Catholic hymnody worldwide.  Giddy from the experience, we considered raiding the nearest Catholic church, taking all the G & P hymnals there, and having a true bonfire.  But then we said, "Naaah." 

So here, gentle reader, begins the story of the coming of age of a liturgical guitarist.

Off to a Bad Start

"For 30 years now, we Catholics have struggled to worship the Lord against the unholy strains of post-Vatican II sacred music, which falls midway between the sound of an old hootenanny and Barry Manilow before his genius had matured."
  ~Joseph Sobran "Victims of Music"

In 1987 I was formally introduced to the Catholic Church through the woman I would eventually marry.  The parish where I was going through RCIA and attended Mass, St. Mary's in Memphis, had a "folk mass" on Sunday afternoons.  The group consisted of three women, all singing and strumming guitars, and one man who bowed and plucked an upright bass.  Being brand new to the Church I thought, "Hey!  This is cool!"  Right away I got into "the group".  Their repertoire, with few exceptions being old protestant standards, was exclusively the three volume Glory & Praise set.  I was really struck at how easy this stuff was.  Since, at that time, I was strictly a "player" and not a "singer/player" I would improvise constantly during the songs lending a combination country/bluegrass/bluesy feel to them.  The only thing that frustrated me was the hard strumming style that was the trademark of everyone else in "the group".  Although competent singers, none were really comfortable instrumentalists, and no instruments were miked, so volume was in.  Although I should have known that this was strange I was so enthusiastic about playing music in church that I never even considered the possibility that something was wrong.

Another State, Another Hymnal.

In 1993 we packed up and moved to Paducah, KY.  The church we were attending had a really good contemporary "group" that consisted of many vocalists, a keyboardist, and an occasional guitarist.  Introducing myself to the music director one day I mentioned that I was very familiar with the Glory and Praise hymnals.  He kind of grimaced and immediately handed me a "We Celebrate" hymnal (the older blue softcover ones) along with a "Celebration Series" psalm book, told me to spend a little time looking at these and come to choir practice when I was ready.  Well, I was more than ready.  I thought these songs were the cream of the crop.  All these different Mass settings, psalms, and songs that were actually something of a challenge to play gave me a newfound enthusiasm for liturgical music.  I also began to realize just how bad the Glory and Praise hymnals were.  The songs weren't even good folk songs, much less sacred music.  I was truly embarrassed that I ever stood in front of a congregation and led them in a rousing rendition of "Bloom Where You're Planted".  There is truly a special place in purgatory for Carey Landry.

The "Glory Daze"

One year the parish paid for all interested choir members to go to an annual National Pastoral Musicians' convention in St. Louis.  I went to a workshop held by Bobby Fisher and thought I had entered guitar heaven.  I was doing all these new instrumentals with flutes, cellos, and pianos that were actually written for Mass!  I was doing weddings!  We had a reputation as a really, really good liturgical music "group".  We even put on a special "showcase" to a packed house one night allowing members of the group to sing their favorite pieces or perform instrumental solos.   I really thought it couldn't get any better than this.  I had even been introduced to Gregorian Chant.  What is sad is that I had been a Catholic, and in a choir, for almost 8 years before I had even heard of such a thing!  Then our music director left to enter the seminary.  The next music director seemed to prefer older traditional hymns which, until then, I had never really been exposed to.  At that time, to me, it was truly a "down" year.  A year later another music director came in.  This guy was a published composer with some of his songs actually in the newer "We Celebrate" editions that we were using by now.  His background was also in classical guitar.  I really thought things were looking up now.  Unfortunately, our parish was about to move into their new building.  You can find references to it and the " consultant" on our Catholic page.  After much agonizing we had decided to move to another Catholic parish downtown in a much more traditional (architecturally) Church.  The liturgies, however, were anything but traditional.  The music was a throwback to the days in Memphis which was a place I didn't care to return, so participating in their music program was not an option for me.

A while later I ran into a priest in the hospital I worked in at the time who told me he needed someone to do music for Sunday nights at Rosary Chapel, a very small parish in downtown Paducah.  The Sunday night Mass at Rosary was the only one in town so, although it was quite a small parish, the crowd on Sunday nights was fairly large, people mostly from other parishes who hadn't made it to Mass yet.  That went on for a little over a year and was quite rewarding.  I had total control over the musical selections.  I made sure that our psalms were actually psalms and even the right ones for the day.  I made sure that the Gloria and Eucharistic responses were all from the same Mass setting (a pet peeve for me - I liked the uniformity of doing all one Mass setting and not just taking pieces from several different ones for one Liturgy).  I discovered that I actually had a fairly passable tenor for cantoring (I had years of experience singing in public but "church singing" was a new thing for me).  I played intricate instrumentals as meditation pieces; offertory, Communion, preludes, etc.  I was an enthusiastic supporter of the GIA "family of composers".  During this time, however, I had some disturbing realizations.  Many of the contemporary hymns that I had recently been introduced to and really liked had been rewritten in "inclusive language" versions removing all masculine references to God.  Almost all of the older traditional hymns that were part of my repertoire had been changed.  I also began to notice how much of the music is either "God singing to us" or "us singing about ourselves"?  It took me quite a while to realize this but music like that is not worshiping God.  It's actually pretty narcissistic.  Examples of this are:  "I Have Loved You" by Michael Joncas, "Here I am, Lord" by Daniel Schutte (the verses), "Eat This Bread" by Berthier, "Be Not Afraid", by Rob Dufford, "I am the Bread of Life" by Suzanne Toolan... The list goes on and on.  It's also significant to note that all these types of songs appear to have been written by contemporary composers; all later than the mid sixties and seventies.  Somewhere along the line it seems that our composers forgot that we were supposed to be singing songs of worship and adoration.  Of course, we all know that the modernistic liberal thinking that emerged from the wake of Vatican II had nothing to do with it... right?

Yeah, right.

There is an excellent criticism of this "first person" style of hymnody in Thomas Day's book, "Why Catholics Can't Sing".  They were performance pieces and I was beginning to feel acutely sensitive to the fact that I was "performing".  None of the older traditional hymns were like this.  Also, it seemed that almost all these composers I was so fond of either weren't even Catholic or big supporters of dissident organizations like "Call to Action".  After all this I realized that I could no longer do these songs and soon "resigned" from doing liturgical music.

"The best and hilariously devastating sendup of the current state of Catholic worship is Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing. It ought to be mandatory reading for all priests, seminarians, and music directors."
  ~Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

Adoremus to the Rescue

We had heard rumors that there was a young, traditionally minded priest pastoring a Catholic church in Aurora, KY.  One day, while driving around the lakes area we decided to drop in and look around.  The priest wasn't around but the place was unlocked so we went in.  Immediately we noticed that there were none of the ubiquitous Glory and Praise hymnals.  Instead we found one we'd never seen before called "The Adoremus Hymnal".  The hymns and chants in this book were all very traditional and theologically sound.  Right away we decided to come back for Mass.  One Mass was all it took.  Adrift in a sea of sloppy Liturgies, liberal priests, and clueless worship committees and parish councils we were desperate for a Catholic parish that celebrated Mass properly and reverently in a building that was unmistakably a Catholic church.  Even the unaccompanied a capella singing of hymns during Mass was a welcome relief.  It wasn't long before the priest found out I was a guitarist and shared his preference for traditional hymns so I soon found myself playing and singing for Mass again.  Although it was the most personally rewarding of anything liturgically I had done yet, due to having returned to school part time and having a job with changing schedules it was too much to do.  About that same time the church got a great deal on a fantastic church organ.  We also found someone really good to play it so I was perfectly happy to attend Mass "in the pews" and experience great traditional hymns played on a top of the line church organ that would literally tickle your stomach on the low registers.  It's the closest thing to a real pipe organ I've ever heard without the pipes.  I still occasionally cantor in a pinch but my guitar stays at home.

So now that we've experienced the best music in the history of the church played on the instrument for which it was intended, not to mention the sublime beauty of Latin Chant done a capella in the best tradition of the Church, there's no going back.  That's not to say that I'll absolutely never play a guitar in church again but and I have no desire to.  ...and I especially don't care will not hang around to hear somebody else play one in church.  Only once in my life have I heard a true classical guitarist play for Mass; the rest have been They're all terrible, without exception.  Those statistics simply don't make it worth it.

"What we get instead when guitars enter the sanctuary is what seems, to my non-musician's ears, to be an insipid STRUM-a-strumma-strumma-STRUM-a-strumma-strumma that turns the guitar into a low-rent folk rhythm instrument. And overbearing rhythm instruments have no place in any liturgical celebration, in my opinion. This is just another example of how the 'folk' movement in liturgical music has provided shelter to, and an excuse for, wretched composing and substandard musicianship."
  ~The Goliard

22 March 2001

Also Read:

• Confessions of a Folk Mass Guitarist by Rory O'Day.
• The Oxford Declaration - from the 1996 Oxford Liturgy Conference.
• Ritus Narcissus  Why do we Sing Ourselves and Celebrate Ourselves? by Father Paul Scalia.
• From "Tantum Ergo" to "They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love" by the Rev. Robert C. Pasley.