Reviewing Mass

The movie reviewer for SFgate.com reviews a recent Easter mass he attended, and this paragraph jumped out at me (yes, because I’m in favor of traditonal liturgy and liberal theology):

Mick LaSalle

I was talking to a former Episcopal pastor yesterday, and he told me that if he were to do it all over again, he’d go entirely the other way. Bring in organ music. Incense. Choirs. Maybe choirs singing in foreign languages. Things to make people feel that they’ve entered another world — a mysterious place where God dwells. Instead what you get in church these days feels 30 years out of date, a throwback to the 1970s, and completely devoid of mystery or emotional power. There’s nothing visceral about it, and this is what this priest was saying: You have to make church a visceral experience — reach them through the emotions — and then, with the sermon, start trying to reach them through the mind.

That’s how I feel about it – modern music, unless very carefully chosen, just doesn’t tip me over into the realm of the sublime. And sometimes, it sounds distressingly like the Brady Bunch theme.  Is that church, I ask you? NO, Socrates, it is not.

At Holy Moly / St Nick’s, we seem not to be differentiating the two services music-wise. But there’s been some muttering from me and a couple of other choir members, and the choir mistress is coming around to the idea that we could have a choir that could sing trad hymns in one service, and the Gahhhtherrrr hymns in the other service, with no problems.

I’m personally not a fan of Gather, which is a Catholic 70’s-era hymnal that is in use at St Nick’s. To me, it’s like having to sit and listen to Muzak while trapped in an elevator with a proselytizing dentist eager to convince me that flossing will save my teeth AND my soul.