Masses with a “theme”

Well, school has started up again, which means that in one area of many parishes the music director has little say in the quality of the liturgy.

The School Mass.

In many places, Masses are assigned to a class or grade, which means that the teacher of the class, who may or may not be a practicing Catholic, who almost certainly does not have any liturgical training, is responsible for training lectors, writing petitions, and “choosing the hymns.”

Often the teacher runs forward gamely with this responsibility under the illusion that Masses can have a “theme,” which specifies the appropriate songs for the Mass. Hopefully there are not too many Halloween hymns around, but in many programs undoubtedly the hip, modern, forty-seven year old Make Me a Channel of Your Peace will make a brand new splash this October.

I feel the school Mass is a huge issue in any parish beginning to reform its liturgy. In addition to the children and their teachers, all of whom are having bad liturgical instincts reinforced and your positive Sunday instincts undone, often these Masses are also attended by the most devout parishioners, often parish leaders. So the retired parish leaders and daily Communicants, the salt of the earth, but accustomed to grooving at Mass to the greatest hits of the 70s and 80s, will have all your good Sunday work undermined.

The best kind of theme–still mistaken–is the homiletic theme. This kind of thematic Mass, enshrined in some hymnals that abound in “hymns of the day,” takes its cue from the readings of the day.

One of the many huge benefits of the use of the Proper texts at Mass is how they carry us out of the idea that we can master the Mass, making it small enough that anyone can fill in the blanks of a liturgy planning sheet as though it were a religious game of Mad Libs.

There is no theme. Or rather there is one theme. We cannot tame it; it should master us. We cannot confine it on our property, like a pond. But if we’re willing, we can swim in the depths of its ocean, subject to its tides.

As with almost all of our liturgical tragedies, this one can be solved by focusing on the young. Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he will not depart from it. Let’s teach the children to sing the song of the Church, and soon enough, all will be well.

13 Replies to “Masses with a “theme””

  1. If you're in Phoenix, Arizona, I would invite you to come to the Cathedral of SS Simon and Jude where the school Masses are celebrated ad orientem each week (Friday at 8:30am) with chanted propers in English and Latin, Latin chanted Ordinary, and (mostly) solid vernacular hymnody.

  2. Kathy, you must be doing remarkably well if they are singing Make Me a Channel of Your Peace at school Masses. Down under, it is my experience that the typical parish school considers it inappropriate to have regular school Masses – they are only held once or twice a term, and if there's music, tracks from a Celine Dion CD or the like have been known to be used. There are significant .exceptions to this, such as the excellent program at Sydney's cathedral, so I don't want to label all schools this bad. Our only national songbook for kids, a joint production with the Lutherans, is "As One Voice for Kids" – it doesn't contain a single Mass setting and only a handful of songs that might be used at a Sunday Mass. That old saying "there's always someone worse off than yourself" is true in this case!

  3. I heartily agree. I worked for many years in a Catholic School and while it was the practice when I started to have the classroom teachers "plan the masses" , the pastor changed that and put me in charge. There was much complaining mostly from teachers and sometimes from children but we pressed on. I don't know if there is any noticable "fruit" from my efforts but I don't see any fruits from the other method either.
    I was given lists of "songs the children like" because "if they don't like the song, they won't sing." Other teachers wanted the old songs, namely the songs from the 70's and 80's.
    It's a tough world out there. But do what you believe. Remember in the 70's and 80's there were books published to guide planning for masses with children, everyone a theme mass. There is only one theme for the mass and that is the Paschal Sacrifice. You may have to define that for people but it's worth it. Worth listening to is a talk by Archbishop Alexander Sample on the meaning of the Mass. He says: There are only two reasons a person could be bored at mass. One is they don't understand what is happening or two that they don't believe it.

  4. People should give kids more credit. I could chant by heart, 5 Latin Ordinaries by the time I was time. These "theme" Masses are an abomination.

  5. I was advised this week that chant is not appropriate for children and that i needed to find a mass setting that all the children and adult visitors could "participate in." In that there is no universal modern/contemporary setting and we have no books what might that be?

    How about the chants from the Roman Missal in the vernacular???

    Chant isn't good for children. They NEED something peppy.

    I wasn't aware that "peppy" was a sacred music standard.

    Why these "old" hymns?

    Well, how old is old? and how old is "too old"?

    We need something upbeat and, well, (a little embarrassed) fun.

    Fun is not a sacred music or theological standard.

    The children can't participate when they sing the psalm things (read Proper for Communion).

    Hmm I can hear them singing (not at the top of their lungs so as to be close to screaming).

    Latin is not good for children. Don't sing that.

    I wasn't aware that Latin was damaging to contemporary children. Do you have research that shows the detrimental effects on children?

    ad naseum.

    BTW….. several years ago before I dug into the chant and the sacred music patrimony of the Church, I was on my diocesan board to prepare music standards for our Diocese. I scoured the web in religion and music both and found absolutely NO standards of any kind for liturgical/sacred music. I was much more ignorant in those days and hopefully are more informed now. Our diocese was adopting hook, line and sinker the state standards. End of story.

    Fortunately the administrator and chair for this fine arts project was not happy to be assigned this task. I said that I had looked and there were no Catholic Music standards and that this was a severe omission, therefore I was requesting permission to write some Catholic Music standards for our diocese. I was given the go ahead and so proceeded.

    They were accepted (probably because they were not read) and published as the official document of our [liberal] diocese. When I have been questioned about what I am actually teaching my students in class and beginning to implement at Mass I now have official published (if not inadequate) standards of the Diocese to point to and now most of the administrators will back down because all of education today is standards driven.

    Part of the fruit of this is as I engage with children from other parish schools now they tell me that they chant Latin at their school and I ask where they are. It is evident that they are doing this because those school principals take all the standards very seriously and they tell their classroom music specialists that they must include the Catholic Music standards as well.

    These standards sorely need to rewritten and I don't feel up to the task to doing this without some expert advice and input. I have asked several people about this and it seems like a non-issue. So if anyone would like to collaborate I would welcome the contributions.

  6. From the introduction to the Lectionary for Masses with Children:

    (28.) "In addition to the readings for Sunday, this Lectionary provides thirty-six sets of readings for the weekdays in Ordinary Time… Each set of readings has a heading which points out the dominant theme of the readings."

  7. Thank you for pointing to this document, Fr. Chepponis.

    The thematic unity of the readings is not the same as a thematic unity of the Mass, I think. Would you agree?

    I'm interested to see #15: "The hearers of the word for whom this work is primarily intended are children of elementary grades [preadolescents]."

    One of the reasons I feel this particular type of Mass must be reformed is the evident boredom of the 6th grade and older students at almost every school Mass I've attended. I can't say I blame them. But it is an earlier tune-out than one often sees on Sundays. It's almost as though we were purposely trying to age young teens out of the Liturgy.

  8. Keep on pressing forward, and never give up.

    As the comments indicate, it is not the children, but a certain type of lukewarm adult, often seen in parish school settings, who prefer "themes" and "the 70s."

    Children still prefer great stories to the kind of programmed therapeutic mush often seen in the contemporary "main stream" establishment.

    The "greatest story ever told" is the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of the Son of God. That's the story that captures the imagination of a child – and children of all ages.

    Keep on!

  9. The Roman Missal includes dozens of Masses for "Various Needs and Occasions." Themes, by any name, are approved liturgical practice.

  10. A fair point. The texts of these Masses are united by their intercession for one or another particular need or occasion.

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