Catholic Sensibility

Most Catholics who have bothered have had two samples so far. A select few are humming along on at least a half-dozen. On the parish administrative side of things, the sensible judgment is to offer a few things, but not so many that staff and core volunteers focus too much on the "servicing" aspect. In the past, our parish used to have its big adult ed push on Wednesdays, and we would draw about 100 for a soup supper, evening prayer, and a handful of talks to suit your tastes. Adoration and Stations more or less alternated on Fridays. An extra half-hour and maybe a confessor might be added on Saturdays. Fr John has been wisely leery about altering too much of the parish landscape his first year here. We tweaked liturgy offerings a bit, keeping the Saturday Mass at 4 (a popular vote overturned the Lenten switch back to 5PM), doing Stations each Friday instead of every other, and adding afternoon-long Adoration on Tuesdays. Generations of Faith captured our adult ed audience, plus some more, so parish evening prayer will be missing from my liturgical Lent for the first time in years. Only a handful of parishioners will miss it. This past Advent, we had smaller crowds than in my 250-family rural parish in Iowa. Scout Sunday was observed yesterday. Ordinarily, it would have been last week, but the NFL, in its corporate wisdom, sees fit to play championship football in February, so what can you do when the calendar dominos fall? The homilies have been good, and the people are singing the music. Nobody on the music committee wanted to add anything new this Lent, so we'll just reinforce the recent additions to the Lent repertoire. (They told me they've never sung "I Heard the Voice of Jesus," which I found amazing.) Last fall, the committee discussed adding a Mass setting. Something plainsong would keep up more or less faithful to the trad reading of the documents. A few people thought Lent would be a good time to use it. I'm not sure I agree. That would give the false notion that plainsong is somehow the product of "giving things up," and I'm not sure that's the message I'd like to send to the pews. If the committee decides to use a plainsong Mass setting, I'm going to argue for an Ordinary Time usage. Modern parish musicians are so attached to the use of instruments--and I certainly include most organists I know in that assessment--it will be a challenge to find the absolute best chant setting, not necessarily the absolute easiest. Of course, the committee might reject the plainsong option altogether. In which case, I'd have to steer them away from a GIA published option. Other publishers have material at least as good or better. One musician suggested I write one. Hmm. The notion of writing a Mass setting hasn't hit me in about twenty years. There are too many good ones around. I've always thought, why bother? Getting back to Lent, how are yours working out?