[dsc]

"They're only code words if YOU make them so."

Not so. They are code words if the writer intended them so, or if men who suffer from SSAD are using them as such.

One bit of knowledge that I could have done without is that men who suffer from SSAD do use code words to identify themselves and each other.

As I recall, I became aware of that back in the 60s after a thoroughly puzzling (and short) conversation with a stranger about Judy Garland. "What the heck was he talking about?" I asked. He was checking to see if we also suffered from his disorder.

We may wish we were still in Kansas, but the Wicked Witch straddles his broomstick in the sky, ruby loafers never touching the ground, and peregrinates in a never-ending search for victims to drag into "the life."

"and they can be convinced to sing other BETTER music later on."

You know, there are a lot of us who bitterly resent this insistance on everybody singing. It's like the Church was highjacked by John Denver or the New Christy Minstrels gone tone-deaf.

And we had far superior music *before,* so how come we're now waiting for some pie-in-the-sky, as-yet unwritten "better music?"

[sinkspur]

You know, there are a lot of us who bitterly resent this insistance on everybody singing

So, don't sing. Really. If you're going to be bitter about, just zip it.

[SuziQ]

And we had far superior music *before,* so how come we're now waiting for some pie-in-the-sky, as-yet unwritten "better music?"

I didn't say I was waiting for better music to be written, only for the congregations to be open to better music when they are finally introduced to it.
I'm partial to the Oxford Hymnal and Renaissance polyphony, myself.

[sneakers]

"You know, there are a lot of us who bitterly resent this insistance on everybody singing. It's like the Church was highjacked by John Denver or the New Christy Minstrels gone tone-deaf."

Boy! Is that ever the truth! We just recently got a new music director (she and her family have been members of our parish for many years) and, since she took over, we almost exclusively sing the "new" songs. I hate it. At least the old music director included old standards - including Latin sung during communion and sometimes other parts of the massas well. I notice many folks, like my husband and I, don't sing the new songs. I even went to the earliest Sunday Mass hoping for no music at all. But, even then, with a different organist, we had the new stuff.

It is all a symptom of far our church has fallen.