Spleen—Ecclesiastical, Music Edition

I've been meaning to write this post for quite a while. Almost every Sunday afternoon I come back from the 11:00 am mass in, at the best, a mood of resigned unhappiness and, at the worst, a simmering rage. Many's the time I've vowed never again to darken the door of the local chapel-of-ease where we usually go on Sunday mornings. So far, I've thought better of it. The congregation is made up (mostly) of people from our neighborhood, and it's good to be able to greet people on the sidewalk or in the subway with whom you've worshiped on Sunday; the kids are used to it, and besides, it's impractical to schlep them around town on Sunday morning (been there, done that); and we usually aren't scandalized by what we hear from the clergy. This Sunday, though, was different. I won't go into much detail because (1) I don't want to embarrass anyone, and (2) I'm not sure I entirely followed what was being said. But suffice it to say that Father's take on the mystery (or, to use his word, "legend") of the Epiphany was somewhat out of the ordinary.

So, in order to purge my choler, I'm presenting an omnium-gatherum of the things that have grated on me through the years. I'll start today with music. Here are my first three rocks of stumbling. I know many others have been bothered by these or similar things for years, but, hey, it's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

1. Sing along with Ms. Mitch. Complaining about Catholic church music goes back a long way. I'd hoped that Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing, twenty years old this year, would make a difference, but in these parts, at least, things haven't changed. A cantrix looks out meaningfully over the congregation, tells us that the melody of the psalm refrain isn't the one in the book (often with an unnecessary explanation) and goes on to warble a tune that makes Milton Babbitt sound like Gounod. She instructs us (twice) on where to find the hymn (or "worship song"), and which two out of five verses we're going to sing. (Why do Catholics assume that only as much of a hymn should be sung as is necessary to get the priest to and from the altar? Aren't we singing to worship God?) I reached my limit last Sunday when her instruction on singing the acclamation broke through the midst of the Eucharistic Prayer, taking with it whatever recollection I'd managed to attain. Has it never occurred to anyone that having someone standing in front of you singing at you through a microphone is not the best way to encourage your participation? And our parish is by no means the worst. At least there's no arm-waving, and the gain isn't pushed up to ear-bleed levels.

2. Gather Me Out. Let's face facts, people: No one has written a good hymn since Ralph Vaughan Williams. What passes for hymnody today are ersatz folk songs, campfire favorites, pseudo-Broadway showstoppers, and Las Vegas lounge numbers. Every time our organist sits down at the piano to tickle the ivories for a David Haas classic, I always look to see if there's a brandy snifter set out for tips. And in addition to the inappropriate-to-worship and unsingable melodies (the funereal accompaniment and wandering cantorial pitch don't help), there are the words.Why do we spend so much time telling the Lord who we are and what we're doing/going to do? Why do we exhort and/or congratulate ourselves in persona dei? Why do we ask for unintelligible things ("Give us the courage to enter the song")? Why are even the old standbys defaced with politically correct maunderings and awkward changes in diction. I can picture the offices of OCP, WLP, GIA, etc., with row upon row of eagle-eyed former nuns in Birkenstocks, blue pencils in hand, ruthlessly removing masculine pronouns from the church's hymnary (sorry, I mean personary).

3. Cue the Applause. Our parish is overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking and working class. e have two choirs, one for the Spanish masses and one for the English masses. It is very difficult to recruit people for the English choir, and most of the singers have had little musical training. The choir sings on alternate Sundays in our chapel and in the parish church. It has a limited repertory; besides the hymns, the choir usually sings one of its four or five pieces (which range from "I Come to the Garden Alone" to "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring") after communion. Aside from the fact that a choir piece is better placed during Communion, with a hymn after Communion when people can look at their "worship aids," the singing is more performance than prayer. As such, it's usually followed by applause. Now, my Much Much Better Half likes to cite Miss Manners on the impropriety of applause in church: Everything in church is done for God, and He'll applaud if He wants to. (Sorry. Make that "Everything in church is done for God, and God will applaud if God wants to." Feel better now?)

To be continued.

The Conscience of a Post-Conservative

I came to political consciousness in 1960; undazzled by the light from Camelot, I worked in the local Republican storefront stuffing envelopes for ol' Tricky Dick. (Now there's someone who's also looking better—if only he hadn't been a criminal.) Four years later, having read The Conscience of a Conservative and now addicted to National Review, I was sitting in Madison Square Garden, a not-quite-fourteen-year-old, giving Murray Kempton dirty looks and singing, to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic,"

Comes a man from Arizona destined to be president,

And he's dedicated to the cause of better government,

Sworn to bring back law and order and restore democracy,

So all men shall be free.

Let's put Barry in the White House,

Let's put Barry in the White House,

Let's put Barry in the White House,

Let Barry carry on!

I quote from memory; even Google has no knowledge of this campaign classic.

In high school and the first couple of years of college, I was a big-government libertarian—national defense was one of the few permissible activities of the state, and I wanted a lot of it. A taste for T.S. Eliot, conversion to Christianity (at an Episcopal Church—this was thirty-one years ago) and the influence of college friends led me to traditionalism, mostly semi-serious: Booing Cromwell in the movie of the same name; waving a Union Jack at Queen Elizabeth II's bicentennial visit to New York; reading the Manifesto of Las Palmas at the annual Franco Day picnic; attending Panikhidas for the as-yet-uncanonized Russian imperial family. It was a relief to self-identify as a monarchist; it disarmed leftist acquaintances and allowed me to indulge an above-all-that cynicism about the party politics of the day. It was satisfying to talk about the necessary alliance of throne and altar, and the social reign of Christ the King. But behind the traditional gesturing was still the National Review paradigm: keep markets free and carry a big stick.

I may have kept the paradigm, but around about this time I stopped reading National Review. I couldn't work up much interest in its economic enthusiasms or its concentration on electoral politics. (For a while I switched to The New Republic, which at least had a robust and well-written book review section.) I still voted reliably Republican: Reagan, Bush I, Dole, Bush II (mea culpa). But I did so increasingly out of a sort of conditioned reflex, without enthusiasm. More and more, the level of political discussion was being set by radio call-in shows and snarky television panels. I stopped watching TV; I switched my radio listening to sports talk; I stopped reading the newspaper, except for (occasionally) the sports section. Even my online reading, when the net became the medium du jour, steered clear of news and political commentary. Party-political discourse seemed utterly predictable and hollow, devised to appeal to core constituencies obsessed with self-interest and/or single issues, consisting of vacuous slogans, trash-talking, and my-didn't-that-feel-good hyperbole flung at the opposition.

Now, I know that politics has always been a clash of interests in which nothing is too low if you can get away with it. But along with the hoopla went serious thinking and serious debate about fundamental issues. I suppose television is to blame, both for its reduction of thinking to sound bites and campaigns to horse races decided by gaffes, and for the cost of using it, which has made politics a game only the rich can play.

Well, all this is not news; everyone seems to complain about it, but like life in the Grand Hotel, nothing ever happens. But now we find ourselves in a global economic crisis, a seemingly endless series of short wars abroad, a "war" at home that has us willing to surrender more and more of our liberties for a no doubt false sense of security, and most troubling of all, an accelerating concentration of wealth in the hands of a few with a concomitant shrinking of the white-collar equivalent of the yeoman class and a loss of social solidarity. And all this is in the context of an increasingly intrusive and nanny state that seems equal parts Oprah and Nurse Ratched.

And so here we are,with a field of presidential candidates who shouldn't be running for president of the senior class and with the "most intelligent president ever," who has faded faster than the Cheshire cat (he has a charming smile, though) and seems almost completely ineffectual. And look around at the Congress. Are there any statesmen lurking there? And I'm not talking about Clay, Calhoun, and Webster; I'd settle for Bob Dole, Hubert Humphrey, and Sam Ervin.

And the "conservative movement"? What's left of that? The Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, and the NRA? Frankly, these days I don't care.

Just put me down as a post-conservative. I'm not a liberal in the contemporary sense, which seems to mean a libertine socialist; while I must admit that I'm inclined to re-read a little Marx these days, I'm not moving that far to the left. Neocon? No, I've never had the hots for Woodrow Wilson. Libertarian? Whoever John Galt is, he's not me. Traditionalist? Not lately; I know something about history, and besides, I'm not that insecure. Fascism? That increasingly seems to be what we have now.

Here's my political credo in a nutshell: "O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them."

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.