Periodically I do a youtube search for presentations of orchestral Masses at this parish. I've never found one. Perhaps I'm overlooking something. There should be hundreds available by now. Imagine the evangelistic opportunities here! Just imagine how wonderful it would be to have a full online archive of all the great music at this parish. It would not only help the parish recruit parishioners and choristers. It would promote the use of this music in a liturgical context - a Catholic liturgical context. We could watch and listen see the great legacy of Msgr. Schuler spread all over the world.
Well, what seems to be the problem? The short answer can be reduced to two words: union policies. Thanks to union policies, nothing can be recorded or distributed because they believe that if you do this, the demand for their live performances will go down and their standard of living would fall. That's what the unions believe, based on their zero-sum, take-what-you-can-when-you-can attitudes.
It never seems to dawn on these people that demand for services is not somehow a fix part of nature but rather something that has to be cultivated, marketed, promoted, elicited from within the structure of society through inspiration and persuasion. Of course there is no scientific way to guarantee this (there are no controlled experiments in the social sciences) but a good entrepreneurial instinct would suggest that posting rather than withholding performances would actually help the musicians themselves by drawing attention to their work and the beautiful liturgy here.
Msgr. Schuler believed in paying musicians well. I completely agree. This is a wonderful policy. It should be adopted in every parish. Sadly, as a reflection of his times and his outlook, he tied his goal with a policy of deference to music unions and their demands for salary and terms. This is the core problem at the parish that may eventually harm his legacy, unless there is unlimited money in the budget, which I doubt, and an unlimited tolerance for keeping obscure what should be globally famous, which I also doubt.
It mainly makes me sad that the world is denied any access to the glorious music at St. Agnes and hence a wonderful evangelistic opportunity is lost. I also belief that it is a very short-sighted policy. It would be a terrible thing to see St. Agnes get caught up in some kind of labor struggle here but the parish should really consider recruiting musicians from outside union ranks and also explain to the unions that whether they like it or not, the performance at Mass will be posted online for universal distribution. If the unions boycott or harass any musicians who continue to perform, that might suggest something about their actual dedication to the cause of liturgical excellence and the Christian mission. Print this post
