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Add this to the changes in the last couple of years, and you are going to alienate me, AND I'M ONLY 33!!!! Every mass now is filled with the same "self important" people singing at every possible chance. Now, 10 minutes before mass even starts, there is the singing. Odd places before the 1st reading is filled with four verse songs. In between readings, another complete song. Two other times there are long drawn out songs. It's tooo much. It takes away from the mass, and the worse part of all, the SINGERS wait outside to shake hands like the priests. IS it a mass or amateur night at the Apollo? Distract us with singing why you pay out millions to victims and just transfer the pedophile priests to tiddle again. That is not the best strategy to keep/get people back.

I feel your pain! At our local Catholic-But-Wanna-Be-Protestant church, the organ music is so loud we can't hear ourselves singing. She tones it down when the choir is singing a "special song" that is not in the missal....so we can't sing, but "You Vill LISTEN!"

We call it "The Church of the Living Choir" because, as you said, they'll sing at the drop of a hat! And they act so dramatic, like they're in a production of "Phantom of the Opera"! It's like the whole mass is about them....Father can't talk till they cease.....so, if the song has 7 verses, and the organgrinder likes it.....!

The thing that finally convinced me I was in the wrong church was when I noticed that Christ is not in our church anymore. Yes, there is a cross. But, instead of a statue of Jesus, there is now a piece of fabric draped. There is a statue of a saint in the lobby (yes, I know the entrance to a church is a vestibule, but if the church looks like a conference room at the local Holiday Inn, the entrance is a lobby), and one stained glass window. At Christmas, the creche scene is parked in the back of the church....almost like they don't want to offend anyone with the blantant religiousness of a manger scene. I don't know, maybe they think one of the parishoners will call the ACLU??

I think all these changes are to make the church more catholic (small c, indicates inclusiveness) and thus get Protestants to join. Gotta be the money....

As for me, I figure God doesn't like it when I go to mass and spend the whole time kevchting about the whole thing. So I don't.

Oh Yikes! Perhaps you should try to find a different local parish? If you have never been to your diocese indult Tridentine, you might want to attend there for a week - it's beautiful, it's the Mass of our ancestors and they never, ever innovate! Homilies are good, too. These days you see a much younger crowd and lots of young families with kids. And the music! The closest to heaven we can get on earth. Wish my "local" indult was more local and my family would be a wee bit more receptive to attending more frequently than we do.

Honest to God, I've felt alienated from most of the Masses I've attended since about 1973 or so (and I was only a freshman in HS at the time).

Hey, what's wrong with singing? Okay, I agree with you on one hand, but being a classically trained soprano, I confess to liking a little music and wish it was of a better quality than we seem to get these days. People like me are "too good" to sing at Mass and liturgical types make no bones about stating that.

As for the article, what the bishop did in Cleveland is use all the escape clauses and loopholes. The GIRM, for the most part, says exactly the opposite.