Music check

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Among the votes the U.S. bishops took at their fall meeting last month, one will probably affect Catholics most often. That was the one to accept new norms for liturgical music.

The norms aim to ensure that hymns for Mass are "doctrinally correct" and based on Scripture and liturgical texts. The norms are part of a "Directory for Music and the Liturgy" the bishops approved 195-21, with five abstentions. The norms and directory need Vatican approval to take effect.

The 2001 Vatican instruction "Liturgiam Authenticam" ("The Authentic Liturgy") directed each bishops' conference around the world to come up with such a directory.

Within the next years, the bishops' liturgy committee will have to propose a common repertoire of liturgical songs for all Latin-rite Masses celebrated in the United States.

The norms charge the bishop in the diocese where a song is published with approving it, assisted by a review committee of theologians, liturgists and musicians. That means many decisions will be made in Chicago, home of GIA and World Library Publications, and Portland, Ore., home of Oregon Catholic Press, the nation's leading publishers of liturgical music.

The norms give bishops three principles in making decisions: Songs must be doctrinally correct, based in Scripture and liturgical texts, and "relatively fixed" in number.

The document praises the work of composers over the last 40 years and urges them "to continue to seek ways in which liturgical song can grow organically from the tradition that the voice of the church might sing the ancient hymn with new conviction in our own time."

So what are some doctrinal problem areas? The directory doesn't name hymns, but it cautions against any "statements about the faith which are untrue"; compromising the doctrine of the Trinity by "consistent replacement of masculine pronominal references to the three divine persons"; emphasizing "the work of the members of the church" without recognizing "the doctrine of grace and our complete dependence on the grace of God to accomplish anything"; dropping "archaic language" in favor of words that "alter the meaning and essential theological structure of a venerable liturgical song."

The eventual development of a common repertoire for liturgical music could be a welcome development. It could mean that in major celebrations Catholics from across the country would know and be able to sing the same music, an excellent way to live out our common faith.

Over the next few years expect some fireworks over what songs are acceptable and what aren't. Also expect to see the retirement of some dreadful, sentimental pre-Vatican II music. That can't come anytime too soon.