OAKLAND BISHOP'S GOOD IDEA SHOT DOWN

Erie Bishop Shows His True Eerie Colors

Amy Wellborn has the goods over at Open Book. Some good conversation going on there as well (basically seconding what Michael Lawrence said at The New Liturgical Movement).

Now, Oakland's Bishop Vigneron, despite the forthcoming cathedral there being butt ugly (Bp. Vigneron didn't create that mess, btw; he inherited it from his predecessor), has some really good views on sacred music. His proposal was no exception. This from Open Book:
He proposed a process similar to the conformity guidelines for catechetical textbooks. His point was "what we sing at the liturgy is a liturgical text." He said the bishops should take a serious approach to these texts, and proposed a central conformity review process. If something like that didn't happen, he said, he feared that the music directory idea, as proposed, would be inadequate to meet the call of Liturgiam Authenticam.

But of course, Erie's Bishop Trautman and the majority of bishops rejected the idea. But worse is that the eerie Bishop of Erie and pals found it better to just pass the buck to those archbishops whose archdioceses are home to the hottest selling (read: popular, politically correct, not necessarily liturgically correct) publishers in American Catholic worship aids. Forget the St. Louis Archdiocese, home of Adoremus and the Adoremus Hymnal (and forget that Archbishop Burke is one of the best U.S. prelates in terms of liturgical savvy). Forget the St. Cloud Diocese, where the Liturgical Press resides. (OK - I paraphrased part of Todd's comment from Amy's article, but he's right.)

The sad truth is that this: the "core repertoire" that was to be developed was to consist of 200 hymns/songs/whatever. Note the word "core". No parish will be limited to this list. Even if the "core repertoire" consisted of 200 of the most theologically sound hymn texts set to solid tunes, people on the progressive front will interpret that as "it's ok to enter the insipid". My biggest fear at this pace is that the "core repertoire" will consist mainly of "greatest hits". Gerald at The Cafeteria Is Closed, a man fluent in German and of Austrian origin, translates "traut man" as "trust him". However, in the case of the eerie fish person, he rightly states, "Dem traut man nicht", meaning "one trusts him not".

Peace,
BMP