Good ritual music is a complex package

National Catholic Reporter, May 12, 1995 by Dawn Gibeau

"Roman Catholicism 30 years after the council as experienced in the United States is in a certain sense losing its Catholic heritage and becoming congregationalist," splitting into ideologically based communities rather than gathering people "of every ideological stripe around one ... communion table."

In terms of music, the split means some communities would reject out of hand any chant singing, he said, whereas other communities "would never dream of singing anything except chant. Neither is Catholic. They don't understand that the gospel is supposed to cut through ideological blinders."

"Issues of liturgy and music are unavoidably linked to issues of ecclesiology and the understanding of God," he said. "I'm not sure we know what it is to do a corporate act of worship. I think most people are now coming to liturgy to take care of what they perceive as their expressed spiritual needs."

People will quit attending, Haas said, if they "don't get a payoff out of this liturgy or maybe liturgies over six months." They tend to perceive the liturgy as "something they produce, they have the right to distort in whatever direction they want for ideological purposes," rather than allowing the discipline of the liturgy to "shape the way they perceive the world and act in it."

Haas is "absolutely hopeful in the way the New Testament is, because I know this world is passing away." Now, 30 years after the council, books have been reformed "but we've barely begun to grapple with the renewal issue. ... I think where it goes from here is to begin to do the liturgy as worship."