Preamble (or is that pre-ramble?):
I have been intrigued by a discussion that has been taking place over on Jonny Baker's blog about worship. I find, on my travels through the blogosphere that the is a significant amount of discontent around the whole issue of worship, though I think what we are really talking about is communal worship. I can engage up to a point with this debate, as a bog-standard worshipper ... but the debate is largely based in protestant circles, and well, I'm ... a Catholic. I am very conscious of the fact that whenever I interact with blogs my comments tend to have me saying in almost apologetic tones, "I'm a Roman Catholic". No, I'm not embarrassed about it, I have had many opportunities to jump ship, I've even had invitations to do just that, but in spite of my own personal frustrations I remain, for the time at least, at home. I'm also aware that I started this blog to share the trials and tribulations of being an average worshipper in the Catholic church and I rarely, if ever mention it here. So today, I am going to look at 'The State of Worship in the Universal Church from an Offbeat Catholic's Perspective.
Disclaimer: I ain't no scholar and these are just rambling personal opinions, many of which are in a constant state of flux anyhow. So don't expect much in the way of wisdom here, more a working through of thoughts.
Big bones of contention 1: Singing as the main focus of worship
My exploration of the Protestant denominations will largely be based upon my forays into Anglicanism as that is where most of my journeying has taken me but brief excursions into the Methodist church and free Evangelical setups have also influenced me. I remember first attending an Anglican church in 2000. I was amazed by the use of such things as electric guitars and microphones in the service. They had songs which, OK, a fair proportion of them were embarrassingly sh*te, but some of them wouldn't have sounded out of place in the pop charts. And when I listened, they were like love songs - WOW! love songs to God, now there's a novelty. These are now spoken of somewhat disparagingly as 'Jesus is my boyfriend' songs, but for someone like me who had spent all her teen years listening to soppy soul classics in her bedroom, yearning for something other than unrequited love from the spotty lad on the No. 11 bus, it seriously spoke my language. And as an added bonus, it added a more spiritual flavour to my shower repertoire of Memories (Gladys Knight) and the theme from Mahogany (Diana Ross). But it seems that the church's reliance upon the sugary worship song is beginning to wear a bit and some folk (good Anglican word) are becoming quite vocal in their desire for a change in direction, worship-wise. Charges of cosiness and lack of engagement with pain abound.
The Catholic church can be categorised into 3 main types: The real progressives who sing 'modern' folk hymns from such recent times as the 1970s, though a rogue one or two Graham Kendrick numbers may have crept in there; the traditional hymn lovers to whom the accoustic guitar is anathema and only the good ole organ will do; those who don't like any music at all. These three groups can be accommodated in most parishes by just having a mass in each of the styles. The mass is the mass, that is a non-negotiable but we can mess about with the music bit. As we can be a bit insular, we haven't yet discovered modern worship songs so haven't had the opportunity to tire of them. Perhaps I am being a little unfair - I gather there are one or two Catholic churches in the country where the modern worship genre is the way but I have yet to encounter one myself. They are the stuff of legend, like the unicorn and the Holy Grail. If there is one thing that bugs me, it's that we have some really fantastic stuff going on in our Catholic secondary schools and yet none of it filters through to the churches. And we wonder why the teens lose interest. A lot of the adults lost interest long ago but are too set in their ways to do anything about it.
