The problem is that modern music has not had time to show which of it is good and which crappy. I bet, hard as it is to imagine, that there was once banal, trite Gregorian chant. If you listen to Salieri and then Mozart, you realize that being a long time ago is/was no guarantee of excellence.
But when the choice of music is based on a bogus ideological misunderstanding of aggiornamento then, well, kum ba yah.
If we just looked for GOOD music with lyrics that managed either Doric simplicity or other excellence, we'd be okay.
As it is, I'm always grateful for awful hymnody. It provides a legitimate outlet for the rhetoric of abuse.
There’s many an old Protestant hymn that’d be suitable for singing in Catholic church as well. Just not anything written after around 1900, for the most part.
When music praises God, there’s no bad music.
It reminds me of a saying I learned when I was in college, poor, and thirty. “There’s no such thing as a bad beer—it’s just that some beers are better than others.” Thank God that I live at an age and wage level that I can afford better beers and really poo poo the lesser ones.
Papa B16 is telling us not to be stingy on our rich talent for praising God.
I have read from post of traditionalist that attend NO parishes that use classical guitar and is well down. Usually playing John Michael Talbot. I think it is as you stated that it the intent not so much the instrument.
A close friend of mine who is a canon lawyer once told me-—some 20 years ago-—that “liturgists are what God sends to his Church so that the laity will have something to suffer for the Faith.”
That being said, I agree with all that you have expressed in this post.