Friday, January 29, 2016

A weekend in the country...

...very delightful, with good friends and lots of talk and laughter, delicious meals, catching up on news...

Mass in local church. Oh dear. A lady with a guitar singing  into a microphone, standing to one side of the sanctuary. Why?  Silly hymns. It all had an out-of-date and tired feel to it.

It is sometimes difficult for clergy - busy and overworked and coping with more than one church in a rural area, and so on - to tackle with tact and charity the need to explain to a singer who has dominated for many years that it might be time to move on now.  . There are people in every community who can sing and  who might like to get a choir together..and music often sounds better when it comes from a choir-loft designed for just that purpose...and the Church urges that the faithful be encouraged to sing the parts of the Mass, which is not possible if some one dominates with a microphone and wants everyone to watch...

1 comment:

Pelerin said...

Oh dear indeed! And I thought that the era of the guitar at Mass had come thankfully to an end. I have to admit to being proud many years ago when one of my sons (who is now 47) played the guitar at Mass along with other members of his class in primary school.

I suppose we accepted it as another way of 'participating' and never questioned it at the time.