Just to clarify:
I think the basic question I was posing in my musical posts was not why don't we ditch hymns...not at all. No, it was rather...why hasn't the Church in the U.S. done what the Church asks in terms of music? Why hasn't it prioritized what the Church wants to be prioritized, as indicated in all of the liturgy and music-related documents out there?
Well, I know the answer - the story is told here and there in the comments and at length elsewhere. The past is the past, too, so let's focus on the present. The question for the present would be...
Where are the bishops who are taking the Church's teachings, documents and direction on these matters seriously? Where are the bishops who are saying, "All right. We'll start with the Cathedral liturgies, and they will be the model - not of inclusivity or celebration of the gifts of the community - but of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Missale Romanum and the broader sensibility of the ideal of the Roman Liturgy."
Yeah, I know. Little hope for that in the current climate. But I continue to be puzzled by it, and would like to see the bishops challenged on this - much of the liturgical theology that has produced over the past few decades has been essentially made up, created from thin air, drawing from a scrap of SC here, a big lump of more general, often Protestant-formed theology there, bits and pieces of whatever sociological and psychological theories are popular here. Honestly. Read some of the stuff that everyone was reading and basing their liturgical "thinking" on, even in say, the 1980's. It simply does not age well, and is so completely disconnected from the broader tradition of the Western Church as to be completely puzzling.
Shake it off. Just rub your eyes, send the grads of the Liturgical Summer Schools off to the monastery for a week, and ask...why are we doing this? Why aren't we doing this?
There are places in the liturgical practice of the Roman Catholic Church for a variety of rites, as well as the many cultures that bring such richness of music, in particular, to worship - from African rhythyms to Eastern European harmonies to Latin American music.
But why is the "model" liturgy, the norms of which are written into the documents we all say are at the center of our liturgical thinking almost completely ignored on the diocesan level? Why is there no support for bringing this "model" liturgy to life in every diocese, and letting the priorities laid out by these documents be our priorities?
Confusion reigned after the Council. The liturgical past of the American Church made it ill-equipped to deal with the mandates of the Council, the lack of translations combined with the perceived importance of the vernacular and other noticeable, challenging changes put this issue we're talking about well into the background, and so, the path of least resistance was followed.
(And now, once again, we're waiting, waiting, waiting for translations....)
Well, let's live in the now, shall we? It's not a matter, to me, of turning every parish liturgy upside down tomorrow and pulping Gather. I am most interested, in this point, at what is going on at the top and what is being supported and prioritized there. Most bishops are not liturgists, despite their monikker as "primary liturgist of the diocese." Unless they have any specialized background in it, most of them are not too concerned about it, and are happy to let their planners, MC's and Office of Worship set the tone and plan the Cathedral liturgies and offer the workshops and approve the hymnals - er, worship aids - for the rest of the diocese. Which is sometimes good, and sometimes very bad.
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