A ghastly discovery today: plans to subject Pope Benedict XVI to trendy musical tripe when he celebrates the Beatification Mass for Cardinal Newman at Coventry Airport on September 19. According to Nick Baty, a supporter of the little gang of composers who have liturgical commissions sewn up in this country, the music for the Mass will include...Since all that crap sounds alike, it's pointless to list it. Thompson continues,
Oh, and there’s a brief motet by Elgar and a couple of rousing Newman-based hymns; but basically it’s game set and match to the Society of St Gregory (SSG), the mafia of the mediocre who ensure that most music at Mass in most dioceses reeks of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. This stuff didn’t sound either beautiful or cutting-edge when it was performed for Pope John Paul; how will it sound to the ears of a genuine music lover, Pope Benedict XVI? And young Catholics, especially, loathe it.Good for those young Catholics. They, like baby boomers of the past, rebel against hoary and hidebound conservatism but unlike in my generation, the conservatives are the liberals these days. The Holy Father's advocacy of the Catholic Church's glorious musical and liturgical legacy is well known and he has fought mightily to have them restored to their rightful place in the mass. The ploy of larding up up Newman's beatification mass with post-Vatican II sludge can only be interpreted as an effrontery, a temper tantrum to let the mean old Pope know just what the liberal English Catholic hierarchy thinks of him.
They're getting so old, these people; what a shame they won't grow up.
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