When it comes to diversifying the Catholic Church needs start singing black spirituals.

The Cincinnati Enquirer ^ | Friday, March 12, 2004 | Valerie Christopher

[yankeedame]

Friday, March 12, 2004

Author says start singing - and diversify the church

By Valerie Christopher
Enquirer contributor

FINNEYTOWN - When it comes to diversifying the Catholic Church, America needs to start singing.

Specifically, black spirituals.

That's what Father Joseph Brown, a Jesuit author and head of the Black American Studies Program at Southern Illinois University, told an audience of about 85 people during a speech titled, "To Sit at the Welcome Table: Black Catholics and the Future of the Church," Tuesday night at St. Xavier High School.

"If you want to diversify your community, hire yourself a black choir director," Brown said. "People will come to your church because he's singing right.

"You don't need to be black to sing, 'Precious Lord, take my hand,'" he said. "You just need to be suffering."

Brown said there are so many different interpretations of black spirituals that one must stick with them until their meaning is clear. He believes that singing spirituals in all churches will save the country because it "brought us out of slavery to freedom."

"If you never have black people in your church," he said, "at least you'll have black presence in your prayers."

Brown is author of A Retreat With Thea Bowman and Bede Abram: Leaning on the Word (St. Anthony Messenger Press; 1997) and To Stand on the Rock: Meditations on Black Identity (Orbis Books; 1998).

According to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, African-Americans make up 8 percent of Greater Cincinnati Catholics and 11 percent of the half-million Catholics in the 19-county region.

Brown doesn't believe there is any true diversity in the Catholic Church in this country because "we are so proud of segregating culture."

"Walk into the church like it's yours, and sit at the welcome table and demand equality," he urged his audience.

Catholic attendee Anne Thomas of Price Hill applauded Brown's message, but questioned whether anyone will take heed.

"His message is invigorating because he challenges those who would like to think that things are going along fine," Thomas said. "It's a speech that is designed to unsettle the complacent."

Father Brown's lecture was the ninth installment of St. Xavier's Diversity Lecture Series, which began in 2001.

E-mail valerie_christop@hotmail.com

[ClearCase_guy]

I would like to see the Black Community diversify by learning Latin and attending Tridentine Masses. Is that under consideration? No? It's just the white Europeans and their institutions that need to change? Why is that? Because we have a long history of success and that needs to end? So we should act more like the people who have a long history of being downtrodden?

Diversity isn't about diversity.

[Sacajaweau]

I like my nice quiet church. I appreciate the organ. Guitars belong on the range under a moonlit sky and handclapping belongs at a hoe down.

[uncbob]

Maybe they ought to read outta the KORAN to attract Muslims to mass

[GraceCoolidge]

Oh, geez, I wish there would be less singing altogether. One reason I like to go to the earliest masses is that they usually tend to have less singing. Unfortunately, so often you get a singer who views the mass like his or her own personal stage. The worst I ever heard of was my mother's old church, where they had a guy (my dad insisted on calling him "Perry Como") who sang everything... the petitions, the names of the deceased and ill of the parish... everything. When did the mass become "entertainment"? Don't even get me started on this topic!!!

[AnAmericanMother]

Funny!

You'll have to import a choir that can sing gospel.

Our choir is singing "As We Are" (by Uzee Brown - choir director at Ebenezer Baptist) this Sunday. Choir practice last night was a hoot! Every so often the director would roll his eyes at us and hold up the thumbs and index fingers of his hands to make a little "square". We WERE a little square. Usual heckler from the back of the choir (that would be me) asks, "You want us to SWAY?" "No, we tried that once."

I have an unfair advantage, having attended church with my nanny for most of my youth . . . but getting a Catholic choir into the black gospel style would require a first-class miracle . . .

[gunnrmike]

Bingo!! White Christian males=extinct species

Gunnrmike

[kittymyrib]

Please don't use the term "hoe down" in an inner-city setting.

[NeoCaveman]

"If you want to diversify your community, hire yourself a black choir director

Got any that can do Gregorian chant?

But seriously aything would be better than the fresh hell that is the OCP hymnals.

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, geez, I wish there would be less singing altogether.

No, what you need is BETTER singing. Good, solid, centered singing of quality traditional church music.

I agree with you 100 percent that the Mass is neither a performance stage nor a cocktail lounge. But good music done well is an aid to worship. And a cantor who knows his or her business can be very, very good. I was taught to cantor in the English style - very clear, very pure, no vibrato and no emotion in the voice at all. You take your personality completely out of it and let the words sing themselves.

[FormerLib]

Actually, my in-laws' parish has put this into practice.

My in-laws absolutely hate the change (they've put up with enough changes in their church, they tell me). Fortunately, the Saturday night Mass and one of the Sunday Masses includes no singing so they go at those times.

Being elderly, sometimes getting there on time is a problem. I can always tell when they attended one of the singing Masses 'cause they're in a bad mood for the whole week.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Black spirituals? C'mon, that's so 60's.

What the Catholic Church needs is Hip-Hop and Hardcore Rap. Yeah, that'll help 'em diversify.

[FITZ]

You should see what goes on in the churches in the SW --- not close to organ music. Here you'll get the matachines doing rain dances inside Catholic Churches --- even during Mass.

[Vinnie_Vidi_Vici]

I used to love the old Hymn "Et in Terra Pax Hominibus" (and on earth peace to men of good will) I guess the fact that it was sung to the tune of "Deutchland deutchland Uber alles" was a contributing factor in its removal.

[AnAmericanMother]

You know, you can overdo the "outreach" stuff . . . really.

We're doing Mozart's Laudate Dominum the following Sunday, just for "balance." :-)

[GraceCoolidge]

"Cantor"... that is the word that I couldn't remember. You may be right, but I would bet you that 90% of American parishes would select the "feelings, whoa, whoa, whoa, feelings" style of singing for mass over what you describe as the English style. It seems that like so much of the mass, the singing has been "dumbed down" to appeal to attendees, often with the opposite result of what is intended. I see it as part of the whole "mass as entertainment" problem. One of our parish priests even opens his homily each week with a joke, that is his little personal signature. I can't tell you how jarring it is... to go from the holy Gospel reading to "now, my joke of the week." I find, though, a pretty wide disparity between parishes. I used to attend one that was much more traditional, but then I moved. I keep hoping our parish will change, or I can find another one to attend...

[The_Outlaw_Josey_Wales]

Father Brown needs to start worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ and stop worshipping diversity.

[AnAmericanMother]

"Glorious things of thee are spoken" is another one set to that tune. Just call it "Austria" - its original name. It's by Papa Haydn anyhow, originally set "Gott erhaltet Franz den Kaiser". What could be wrong with that? :-D

[yankeedame]

Guitars belong on the range under a moonlit sky and handclapping belongs at a hoe down.

Very nicely put,my friend. :o)

[AnAmericanMother]

I am on a one-man (woman) campaign to bring the English choral style into the Catholic church. I had to leave those heretical loons in the Episcopal church behind, but have no intention of leaving the good music back there with the apostates. No letting the Catholics get away with sloppy music!

Fortunately, the choir director in our new church is an excellent musician and my husband and I are 100 percent behind his efforts to raise the standard of music. I have told him several times how pleased I am to hear such good hymns and his choice of anthems. (Many of the hymns on Sunday are also in the Episcopal hymnal - lots are Lutheran or Methodist in origin, it's amazing the reach of the Wesley brothers' contribution to church music!) But he needs encouragement (Catholic congregations are not traditionally very music oriented and do tend to fall into what you call the wo-wo-wo feelings, LOL!)

All I can do as a choir member is (1) sing my very best and (2) ask intelligent questions that instruct the other choir members. Have to be careful not to overdo it, especially as a newbie, but I think that continuing to model "doing it right" is going to influence everybody in the choir over time.

[twas]

Once again, black representatives have it backwards.

What he is proposing is taking a successful system, the Catholic Church, and substituting it with an ineffectual system, a Black Gospel Church.

If black leaders wanted to be successful, they should emulate successful programs, like the Catholic Church, and stop relying on institutions which may make them feel good, but haven’t done a great deal to elevate their communities.

Maybe the solution is not to bring Gospel singing into the Catholic Church but take Gospel singing out of the black church.

[yankeedame]

I used to love the old Hymn "Et in Terra Pax Hominibus" (and on earth peace to men of good will) I guess the fact that it was sung to the tune of "Deutchland deutchland Uber alles" was a contributing factor in its removal.

Even though I'm strictly a pre Vac.II Catholic one of my favorite hymns is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"; folks seem to really pour their heart and soul into that one. The one that always puts a lump in my throat is Handel's "I Know My Redeemer Liveth"

[WKB]

More advice for the CC ping

[steve8714]

The Church that dropped Mozart in favor of Kumbayah is not going to change to anything musically more worthwhile.
Black spirituals are good music, but are they truly Catholic in the larger sense of the word?
Maybe descendents of the millions of white slaves held by black masters from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries could tell us.
This is why a return to old liturgies would be great- the language no one uses could again be the unifying force for the Church.

[RonF]

My Episcopal church choir (I sing bass-baritone) does some black spiritual music. We don't sway or clap or anything, but I think we do the music justice. Mind you, we'll do that one Sunday and do a nice Palestrina motet from the 16th Century in Latin the next Sunday. If the text fits one of the lessons or the Psalm, we'll do any style. And we chant the Psalm every Sunday.

I'd like to see some of these excellent "heritage" choirs try a motet or chant. They'd probably do a wonderful job and it would be powerful to hear. But they would have to take personal expression out of the music, opposite our problem of putting it in. Also, I've been told is that in many such choirs, a high proportion of the singers can't read music. That would make a motet or a Bach chorale a little difficult to learn.

[FITZ]

I don't think black gospel music is any worse than what the churches already have going on --- I think I'd get more out of a black gospel Mass than what I see now. I just don't really get the latino stuff --- the tom-toms and el viejo flirting with some woman dancing or some enactment of an Aztec ceremony complete with fake hearts being cut out. To me it's not a Catholic Mass anymore.

[slouch-no-more]

Amen brother.

[Vinnie_Vidi_Vici]

The hymns now, while the melodies may be the samehave substituted the lyrics with clumsily inserted dogma, making it a very unsatisfying experience.

[NeoCaveman]

This is why a return to old liturgies would be great- the language no one uses could again be the unifying force for the Church.

Amen.

[RonF]

I am on a one-man (woman) campaign to bring the English choral style into the Catholic church. I had to leave those heretical loons in the Episcopal church behind, but have no intention of leaving the good music back there with the apostates. No letting the Catholics get away with sloppy music!

In my Episcopal parish (Anglo-Catholic, leaning conservative but some dissenting liberals), there are a number of people who for one reason or another have had experience with the Catholic liturgy. I have no such experience myself, but I am told with no dissent that Catholic music is horrible, which I find puzzling given how much excellent music that we sing was initially written for the Catholic liturgy (none of which is from the last 50 years). And I would think that much of the music written in English for the Anglican liturgy would be applicable to a Catholic service.

[Desdemona]

Here's an idea. Let's diversify by not using guitar and piano (which are OFFICIALLY not allowed) and sing Gregorian chant from time to time. In a church with a vaulted ceiling and no carpet on the floor, it's a taste of Heaven.

[Desdemona]

The worst I ever heard of was my mother's old church, where they had a guy (my dad insisted on calling him "Perry Como") who sang everything... the petitions, the names of the deceased and ill of the parish... everything.

Technically, that is supposed to be chanted. About the only thing that is really not supposed to be sung is the homily. Nobody does it that way, but according to the rubrics, almost everything is supposed to be sung, including the Creed.

[SoothingDave]

"You don't need to be black to sing, 'Precious Lord, take my hand,'" he said. "You just need to be suffering."

If the Father came to my parish and witnessed what white suburbanites can do to such a song, or "Soon and very soon," he would cease his campaign.

SD

[Sofa King]

When has "reaching out" ever actually attracted black people to your cause? Isn't it even a bit patronizing to say that blacks will convert to your religion if you play their type of music?

[pax_et_bonum]

Anyone who thinks the Catholic Church hasn't "diversified" hasn't attended any of our diocesan masses.

Every possible sub-group is represented by some "art form" or language, EXCEPT my sub-group: those of us who are white and of European/British Isles ancestry.

And don't mention in my diocese that you like Latin, the official language of the Church, or you'll be considered heretical.

There, I feel better.

:-)

[AnAmericanMother]

And I would think that much of the music written in English for the Anglican liturgy would be applicable to a Catholic service.

It is, and it works quite well. I've only been in the church for a couple months, we've already sung Purcell and Howells and Rutter. (Yaaaay!)

I'm getting tired of the "Mass of Creation" already though.

[shhrubbery!]

I like 'quiet' music too. But you know, I think Brown has a good point -- and I'm someone who is a super-traditionalisat and who hates the word, "diversity."

There's something special and awe-inspiring about spirituals and gospel music, which was also mostly inspired by American blacks who had gone through the experience of slavery.

There's nothing that fires me up more than listening to the soundtrack from The Apostle.

The ideal church, to me, would have music ranging from Bach's cantatas to Mozart's Requiem to gospel music.

But we agree about guitars. No guitars or sappy so-called "folk music" allowed!

[AnAmericanMother]

. . . sing Gregorian chant from time to time . . .

Hear, hear!

Our church has great acoustics (what a contrast to my old church, which was one of those awful 60s church-in-the-round things. All the acoustical engineers in the world couldn't make a silk purse out of that sow's ear, although they tried.) It's basically Italian Romanesque, and the hang time of the reverberations is incredible. (That does mean though that you have to over-enunciate everything in order to make it understood . . . )

[Desdemona]

I'm getting tired of the "Mass of Creation" already though.

Well, that didn't take long. Is that the worst phrasing you've heard at church or what? Hopefully, we can retire it soon.

[NeoCaveman]

I'm getting tired of the "Mass of Creation" already though.

What's that?

[reloader]

Amen Brother.
The Sabat Mater has been sung at the Stations of the Cross during Lent all my life.
Everyone knew the words to the First Station "At the Cross her Station keeping
Stood the mournful Mother weeping
Close to Jesus to the last."

The words have been changed now, Why?. Very Disappointing.

[mhking]

substituting it with an ineffectual system, a Black Gospel Church.

While I agree that the music of the black church is not what belongs within the bounds of Catholic Liturgy, what makes black Gospel "ineffectual?"

I would probably be correct in saying that you wouldn't say that about other evangelical Christian denominations. So what makes black Gospels (or more historically, "Negro Spirituals") any less capable of bringing Lord's word to the masses?

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[JoeSixPack1]

Father Brown needs to start worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ and stop worshipping diversity racism.

PC speech that gives racism a pass needs to be outed.

[Desdemona]

The Mass of Creation is a popular mass setting by a protestant, Marty Haugen (who hasn't has a new idea in 26 years). It's sung to death. It's one of the few everybody knows, so it's used a lot.

My parish rarely uses it anymore, but I knew the darn thing by heart when I was in other parishes. The chant is much easier - and the people actually sing it.

[Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh]

I think if the Catholic church really wants to survive, it should not focus on singing black spiritual songs. Instead, it should encourage illiteracy, and head back to the days when the vast majority of its members couldn't read, and were forbidden access to the bible. Ever since literacy took hold, and people were able to read for themselves, its been tough times for the Catholic church.

[dansangel]

One reason I like to go to the earliest masses is that they usually tend to have less singing.

One of the main reasons .45MAN and I attend mass at 7:30 am. Nice to know there are others out there.

:-)

[jwalsh07]

You're asking the wrong guy, my wife and I like Black Gospel music.

We also are of a mind that worshipping the Lord does not require 110% solemnity and 0% fun.

[Desdemona]

Actually, it would be better if we good Catholics would put down the Stephen King novels and start reading the Doctors of the Church and theologians who under the guidance of the Holy Ghost closed the canon of the bible.

And then it would be good to learn a little church history, particularly the heresies that still attract people today.

[cyborg]

You are joking right? I don't know any white people who even THINK about mass in latin.

[Diva]

Our parish performs Mozart and Schubert Masses as part of the liturgy. But then our pastor is a fine muscian. There are few in the parish who do not like the music so they go to the early Mass. The Latin Mass is where you find the Classical Music.

I remember being so shocked when I became a Catholic and found that 2000 years of breath-takingly beautiful music had been tossed out for mediocre "lounge music." But just because a congregation isn't used to hearing good music dosen't mean they will not appreciated being educated to it. Actually, Spirituals would be a big step up from a lot of the music I have heard in parishes over the years. But the best would be to bring back some chant. Even music programs that are very limited could sing chant if they had someone who knew how to teach them.