Welcome, and remember the purpose of this space. I hope that you have stories to share. I’m not so much interested in discussion of theories, but more simply – stories: stories related to that first decade and a half after the Council. Here are two background posts at my regular blog:
I was born not-quite-a-decade after you, near your college town, so our experiences with the Mass are probably very similar. Growing up and going to a Catholic school, I didn't think very much about pre or post Vatican II music because that was just it. But even as a child, I had an aversion to hippies, and things like the album cover of Godspell terrified me (as did the Mamas and the Papas in the swimming pool drinking out of a hat). Jesus Christ Superstar was one extended nightmare, and I still cringe when I hear it sung. As I am a parishioner at a Paulist parish, that happens more often than not, although only a cappella during a homily (and I'm okay with that! The Paulist predilection for singing in the pulpit is endearing). But I digress. As a child, standing in the hot sun for the May Crowing, and looking down at the purple type of the mimeographed lyrics, we sang a collection of Marian hymns that I still love. Immaculate Mary, Salve Regina, inter alia. Those songs, for some reason, are excluded for my general antipathy toward the liturgical music of my youth.
In our Church we had an organist who was an ex-nun. She was also the music teacher at the school. She was, as I would realize later in life, a wonderful woman. But she had a temper and did not suffer fools gladly, and I was a fool. I believe there was a minor dust-up concerning some well-deserved violence against my fellow students, and that put an end to her musical instruction, though not to her work as organist. When she wasn't there in the choir-loft at that organ, there was instead an excellent guitarist, with long blonde hair, who was one of a large family that was well regarded in the parish. It is only now, in reminiscence, that I realize that I never considered him a hippie, and I will have to explore the meaning behind this inconsistency. In any case, guitar-Mass was the order of the day, and although I am also a guitarist, I have never felt that it was an appropriate instrument for reverence. It is tied up, along with the hippies, with sitting in various basements or a corner of the cafeteria, where rolling panels segregated a corner of the room, each with obligatory rainbow colors and post-modern artistic renderings of doves, Johnathan Livingston Seagull style, and "Morning Has Broken" playing from a tinny tape recorder while a slide projector displayed those ubiquitous birds silhouetted against a red sky, or images of smiling happy teenagers in tight T-shirts with sweat rings darkening their armpits and acne lighting up their faces.
By the time I emerged from this Purgatorio and into the high-school CYO of the early 80's, there was an infusion of Amy Grant and Tom Franzak and the non-liturgical music that served as the soundtrack to our own version of Breakfast Club. SEARCH introduced this, and again, like the Marian songs of my youth, the sappy ditties, like Friends are Friends Forever, and Live On In My Love, get a pass and bring back fond memories of my fellow students. But, again, this was not in the liturgy. No... in the liturgy there was Eagle's Wings and Gather Us In and the execrable Lord of the Dance.
On a side note, in the wake of cancer, I began to discuss with my wife the details of my funeral mass. As an effort to give me will to live (and it has worked brilliantly!), she swore that she would have Lord of the Dance prominently featured, rather than my request for Zbigniew Priesner's Lacrimosa. I in turn have promised to haunt her if she does so, my particular ghostly manifestation being a poltergeist who destroys her collection of expensive shoes.
I associate all of the Haugen & Haas music with silliness, with clay goblets and bits of whole-wheat leavened bread, dispensed by well-meaning Eucharistic ministers. It all represents a "horizontal" church that emerged from Vatican II had had its brief Age of Aquarius flare.
Carrying a sincere but shallow faith to the Marianist University of Dayton, I found more of the same in the sad theater-in-the-round wreckovation of UD's once beautiful chapel, in the semicircle of metal chairs facing a plain table, with the baroque glory of the old chapel still visible and unused, and the tabernacle of that marble altar crouching to the side like a visible representation of the Tridentine Mass, there in shadow but not yet exorcised. It was not long before I stopped attending Mass and liturgical music meant nothing any more.
As might be expected, my later reversion, prompted by St. Augustine and the efforts of my wife and brother, burst into a pharisaical disdain for the music of my youth, and a turn toward Palestrina and chant, and I spent an other-than-healthy effort on the internet engaging in polemic. Somewhere there was a Society for the Banning of Haugen & Haas, or something like that, which had some nice parodies of Gather Us In... I can only remember "Here in this place, a bad song is starting, now will the altar turn into a stage, all we hold dear is slowly departing, making its way for the coming new age."
Well, my reminiscence has carried me into the 1990's, which is well beyond the "post-Vatican II" years you referenced above. I apologize and will try to keep any future stories more focused. Thank you for encouraging this discussion!
I don’t recall anything liturgically prior to the “reforms” (born 1963) but a few things stand out from grade school. One was a nun who, previously a missionary to China and then missionary to barbarians (us), said that any sermon or song that doesn’t appeal to us may be because it was for another person. That was thinking outside my selfish box.
I recall the same ‘set list’ as you, i.e. Godspell, Morning Has Broken, ... Another star attraction song was “Good Morning Starshine” (“the earth says ‘hello!’, you twinkle above us, we twinkle below”)... Yeah I’ll never get that ear worm out. Our 7th grade teacher had a thing for Donovan and played us “Jennifer, Juniper” which left a lasting impression, ha.
High school was led by a sensitive and popular priest who turned out to be an abuser. Another priest at our Catholic high school had a thing for boa constrictor snakes and he’d have one in the class room a lot. He turned out to be gay too. We didn’t win the lottery as far as priests in our school but it was ground zero in some respects under the poor leadership of the Cincy diocese in the ‘70s.
A lot of the Haagen-Dass songs, deservedly pilloried, but I really liked the one (don’t know tune’s author) that went, “Take our bread / we ask you take our hearts / we love you take our lives..” I have said it off and on for years as a prayer and then it occurred to me - after decades! - that it could be said the other way around, Christ saying it to me, “Take My bread / I ask you take My heart / I love you take My life...” So that was cool.
Big focus book-wise was on the works of Fr. John Powell, like “Why Am I Afraid to Love?”. He was just huge but then he fell off the map, or at least I haven’t heard of him for a billion years and I used to read a ton of Catholic blogs. I probably should read him again just to see what I was ingesting and how well he stands up to time. Or get your opinion. Nouwen-like? I'll never forget him using the term that he felt like a "public utility" as priest and it turned me off. Who wants to be a public utility? (But then Jesus saying "carry your cross" isn't the most attractive image to most of us.)
I’ll never forget one cringeworthy moment. Our high school religion teacher (married man) was telling us that as red-blooded boys (co-ed school btw) we can’t expect to just go right up to the line of intercourse and be able to stop. I took it upon myself to counsel him afterward, concerned that he’d sent the wrong message in that it would encourage us to go all the way if we find ourselves in that circumstance. He was very kind and thought my idea had merit but now I look back and find it hilarious that a virgin who had never made it past second base was opining on that subject.
I wasn't born until 1971, so the changes had already happened by the time I remember things. I don't have too much to compare to.
What I remember about the music, though.
The first hymnals we had were small, tan, three-ring-binder type. They had the Order of the Mass in there (I didn't know that's what it was called, I just knew it had all of the prayers and responses in the first section). I just realized as I typed this that the binder system was probably to allow for changes--practical, if nothing else; at that point, who knew when or if there would be more changes? I don't remember those hymnals having the music, either; just the lyrics.
At some point, we got additional song books--Glory and Praise, Volume 1; later we got Volume 2 as well, but I don't remember using that one much. Volume 1, though, probably got used equally with the little tan binders.
Our parish had five Masses when I was young: Saturday at 5:30pm, and Sunday at 8:30, 10, 11:30, and 1. The few times we went to the Saturday Mass, I remember there were guitars. I have nothing concrete to point to but I have the distinct memory that my dad did not care for that at all. We usually went to 10am, which had the choir during the school year (they got summers off). It was a true choir who sang in four parts--the Gloria was absolutely glorious, and I have never heard it anywhere else.
I remember singing Be Not Afraid, Sing to the Mountains, Lord of the Dance, Gather Us In. All I can really say is, I didn't know any better.
As an adult, though... I got to know our former organist because my children wanted to know where the stair went. I figured if I followed the child, it wouldn't be a big deal, and it wasn't. At least until he played Gather Us In as an opening hymn. I climbed those stairs and had five words: "Gather Us In, Curtis? Really?" I tried not to sound snarky or angry, just to have the tone that we both knew he could do better. He never played it again.
I was born in 1967. My first memories of Mass, in our old, standard midwestern gothic church, were of that combination of old hymns on the organ and a cluster of guitarists centered around Sr. Nancy on the autoharp. There was, to my infant mind, a real energy and joy about it all. I am not sure if I later became jaded, or if the music and the musicians became tired - did reality change, or merely my perception of reality.
As an adult, I can see that the sort of effervescent joy is impossible to sustain over a long period of time for most of us. The mix of human emotions is real and when we try to suppress the sadness, the loneliness, the ache, the angst behind a mask of a broad smile and upbeat melody, we damage ourselves. I think there was - at least some - real joy in the beginning of the liturgical reform as it was implemented in my home parish.
One change that I noted as a child was that in my earliest years in school, the nuns (only one wore a veil, the rest had already ditched the habit in favor of, first sundresses, and later pantsuits) always talked about Jesus. Stories from the Gospel about Jesus. Personal stories about encounters with Jesus. Songs about Jesus (Jesus built His Church upon the rock of Peter, His banner over me is love). Later, by about 4th grade (at which time our old gothic church was torn down and replaced by a suburban church-in-the round with orange carpet and plastic chairs) the topic changed. Jesus was replaced by the Church. The Church - this gathering of people who were going to change the world by coming together, breaking down barriers, loving everyone and singing a lot of contemporary songs that had almost-sacred lyrics (Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Leaving on a Jetplane). By the time I was junior high age, we no longer talked about the Church even, but about Justice - what were we going to do to change the world so that poor people could own lots of material things to make them happy like we do? The music shifted from pop songs to antiquated folk songs (If I Had a Hammer). By high school, in the early 80's, the St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk were rising and, although the focus was shifting more towards scripture texts in lyrics, the emphasis (to my mind) seemed more self-focused. (Here I Am Lord, I Have Called You With an Everlasting Love, Earthen Vessels).
That overarching trajectory - from Jesus to the Church to Justice to Self-Fulfillment seemed to me to be headed in the wrong direction. From those earliest years and earliest stories, I had fallen in love with Jesus. I wanted more of Him. I eagerly consumed the chunky, distasteful, homemade bread which may or may not have been valid matter for the Eucharist (as a canonist, I suspect it wasn't, but I also realize that God's grace filled up in my young soul what was lacking in the physical matter I received) because I wanted Jesus to be a part of me, to heal me and strengthen me and comfort me when the world seemed to be getting scarier and scarier.
It wasn't until college, when I walked into an orchestral High Mass at St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minnesota (Beethoven's Mass in C Major) with incense, priests and deacons vested, silence, reverence, beauty - that I realized what I had been deprived of during my childhood. I wept, for there, in that white host held aloft by the priest as the bells rang and everything else was silent - there was Jesus, the one the nuns helped me to fall in love with as a child. I was surrounded by people loving Him just as much as I did - adoring Him, desiring Him.
I was born in 1953. When I was in grade school we used the Gregorian Hymnal, which had a lot of Songs in Latin and around 12 different musical settings for Tantum Ergo, of which we learned only the usual 2. The early new music was mostly English versions of the old Latin hymns. The Dies Irae was quickly dropped once people learned what it really said, although the tune was beautiful.
We got these People's Hymnals and sang Jesus Christ is Risen Today for the first time when I was in fifth grade. I really loved that song, which I had never heard before.
In high school the music got stranger. One of the favorites for Mass was I Know I'll Never Find Another You with the word dear replaced by Lord. Truly dreadful. We also did a fair amount of Simon and Garfunkel. I dropped out of the Church in 1970 although I was still attending Catholic high school. I stopped attending the school Masses as well as Sunday Mass, except for the Mass that was part of our graduation. Instead of Pomp and Circumstance, we walked in to Jesus Christ Superstar.
When I rejoined the Church in 1980, it was all St. Louis Jesuits, and I really liked most of the music, although not all of it.
What a trip down memory lane. I can still sing lots of those, too. My guilty pleasure is Of My Hands. The song that to my mind should be banned forever, has in fact disappeared: Joy is Like the Rain, although Let There Be Peace on Earth is right up there with Hosea and Gather Us In as candidates for banning.
Like you, Amy, I was an unhappy camper at mass from age 2 til 5. The church was nearby, so my parents often split masses. Once I started CCD in grade 1, religion became interesting, and I spent more of the mass trying to listen, understand, and even attempt to follow the words in the paperback missal, so I can tell you for sure that by 1965--four years before the Novus Ordo was introduced--the mass was already done mostly in the vernacular. The Eucharistic prayer at least was still Latin--I know this because suddenly at that point the words I was trying to follow made no sense. As I understand things, it was the TLM minus the "L". The music I first noticed and learned were standards such as Immaculate Mary, Praise to the Lord, O Most Holy Trinity. Then the folk mass was introduced in '67 or '68. By 1973, I was strumming those 5 or 6 chords at school masses in 8th grade. But I soon outgrew this stuff and began to love the sacred classical tradition, mostly thanks to the material we learned in my public high school concert choir! But you know, listening to some of those youtube recordings made me realize that early folk mass music often had more scriptural and even doctrinal content than what came later via Schutte, Haugen, and Haas. It's good that guitars are gone, but to hear the sappy, God-as-therapist stuff from late 70s early 80s, even with organ accompaniment, is no improvement.
We Rowed that Boat Ashore after Blowing in the Wind all over the Diocese of Memphis in the early 70's. My parish had a vibrant Youth Group that could field 24 reasonably competent voices, so we "went on tour" as the folk mass group for several seasons. Objectively awful as some of it was, both musically and theologically, it remains a beloved and important part of my formation as a well functioning adult Catholic.
A few months ago, I saw that Jesus Christ Superstar was making a 50th anniversary comeback. I thought long and hard about spending the coin to relive that experience. Ultimately I concluded that I have brushed and burnished away the bad parts and created a whole new thing by touching it in my memory so often. Meeting the thing as it actually was would not be happy making. ... there is a Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate Deo that I might have to hunt up again though. It was FUN to sing.
Born in the 70s in a progressive diocese. We had every selection from Glory and Praise, which later morphed into Haugen and Haas. We had songs I wish I could find now - my mom said “Happy the Man” was her father’s favorite. We also had a good-sized men’s choir about once a month at my home parish and for special occasions. They STILL sing “Why Can’t Every Day Be Like Christmas” at one of the Christmas Masses every year so far as I know.
One of my campus parishes used “Jesus Christ, Superstar” as part of the Palm Sunday Passion readings instead of the Gospel for quite a while, and that was fun to realize later I might not known what we see doing.
It didn’t really catch up with me that any of that music was kitschy or less than helpful til I reclaimed my faith in late 1999. I try to appreciate as much good as comes from what I have now. I’ve since moved dioceses and I am grateful for our music at our home parish.
I will, say, my most “are you even kidding me?” moment came out of Easter vigil one year - completely unexpected. And for the life of me I will never, ever, ever get that tune out of my head as a memory at Easter vigil. I probably ruined it for you, too, once you hear it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3SSjtqwERDM
Nov 18, 2022·edited Nov 18, 2022Liked by Amy Welborn
I was born in 1956, into a family which had been Catholic on both sides for many, many generations.
I have a picture of my great, great grandfather who came with his parents and 5 other brothers from Germany in the 1850’s. I love a picture I have of him in his 80’s standing beside his wife and holding a rosary in his hand.
I don’t have many memories of the Latin Mass before Vatican II, but I do remember my grandmother complaining about changes as they were made.
At my small, clapboard Catholic Church in rural central Nebraska (closed now for more than 20 years 😢), the beautiful white high altar was covered up with a partition wall and a plain table altar was installed in front of it.
I made my First Communion before the changes, but was Confirmed afterwards.
As a teenager attending CCD, we literally sang Kum-Ba-Ya and we made collages, both of which have come to be symbolic for the loosy-goosy silliness that went on during that time.
As a child, you just accept what is happening.
I’m not a musician, and not really knowledgeable about music, probably like most typical Catholics. I did like to hear and sing songs like “Be Not Afraid” and “Lead Me Lord.” But I did think that songs like “Lord of the Dance” were just weird. And later when I heard someone ask about these songs, “Where is God, where is Jesus, where is anything Catholic in these songs?” that really resonated with me. Yes, where?!
Such a lack of formation, of catechesis, even of evangelization for my whole generation.
I think of my parents (RIP Mom and Dad) who both grew up in Catholic enclaves where everything was Catholic, all the family, friends, the schools they attended, the social events, everything. I think they learned their faith in many ways, but especially through osmosis.
I grew up in a very Protestant area of the state. We didn’t even have a Catholic Church in my small town, but had to drive to the next town, which, of course, we did. According to my Dad, we had to be on our deathbed to miss Mass.
The Protestantism around me effected me, though, as I later realized. I remember thinking that it doesn’t really matter where you go to church because we all love Jesus.
In my 40’s with a husband and 4 children, I was finally evangelized because the Carmelite sisters running the nursing home where my mother was living asked me to take a Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration, which I did to help them out. Ha! Those sisters were doing it for me even though I thought I was doing this for them.
And Mother Angelica and EWTN catechized me, especially the show “The Journey Home,” which my dear Catholic aunt kept bugging me to watch.
A real “come to Jesus moment” (notice the Protestant influence?!) was when I heard someone on EWTN explain the Church’s teaching on contraception. I was shocked when I realized that birth control pills can act as an abortifacient. What?!
This “protestor” who didn’t know she was one until that day, became a convicted Catholic and disciple of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I'm not from that era; I graduated college in 2014. I attended a university attached to a Benedictine monestary (since closed down, though the monestary is still there).
The choir director, a Benedictine monk, was from that era. Day By Day was sung at school masses, by a trained choir and accompanied by an organ. It still lives (or at least, did ten years ago).
I was born in 64. My parents took us to Mass every Sunday, but I don't remember it. Late 70s I remember all the guitar upbeat music. From the "great amen" on I called it Mass' greatest hits because it was pretty much lively music until the end. Even during Communion. I vaguely remember people clapping in rhythm with the Ordinaries. I really had no clue what Mass was all about except that I had to go. Our family operated on faith being one hour on Sundays. We did say grace and prayers before bed. By His Grace I remained Catholic. I really had no reason not to be since it was mostly harmless in my mind. I prefer the TLM now, however, my closest friend grew up very charismatic and attended Franciscan back in the day. He is one of the most solid Catholic men I know. There are many paths to Our Lord.
My experience is rather different as a child of Anglican converts (I was born in 1975, we became Catholic in 1980), who were so allergic to that type of music that we always found somewhere to go to avoid it. I only heard the stuff you link here at school Masses, which didn't happen all that often. I do have pretty vivid memories, though, of a very unskilled organist who always played "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" at Communion. I can still hear her wailing out those Al - le -LOOO -ia's in her quavery old-lady voice.
Anyway, much of my childhood we attended what must have been one of the earliest indult Tridentine Masses, largely because of my godparents, who were leaders in the early "Trad" movement (although I don't remember that word ever being used). Unlike many Trads today, they had nothing against the dialogue Mass, congregational singing, or women singing in the Schola (actually we just called it a choir). We worked to sing the simple chant Mass parts as best we could, but we also sang processional and recessional hymns - these were permitted because they were technically before and after Mass. I think there was sometimes a song at communion too, on the principle that the people's communion wasn't so much part of the liturgy itself as a private moment.
The point is, these were first-generation trads, who actually remembered the old days, and I infer that it hadn't been crystal-clear in the years leading up to Vatican II exactly how music fit into Mass, particularly hymns. It seems Catholics had picked up some vague idea there ought to be hymns at Mass (perhaps from living among Protestants?), but they fit in uneasily, pretty much as interruptions. And frankly, the hymns we sang weren't that great.
"Immaculate Mary" and "Sing of Mary Pure and Lowly," while devout, are musically pretty dreary (why do most Marian hymns have such repetitive tunes?) and lyrically saccharine. Is "Let There be Peace on Earth" any kitchier than "Oh Mary We Crown Thee with Blossoms Today"? My guess is that our hymns tended to sentimentality because they were written for private or at least informal devotional use, whereas Protestant hymnody was more formal and theological, since it was written for use in liturgy.
As a former parish music director, hymn parody became one of my favorite pastimes. My favorite is a parody on "Gather Us In" which, in my version, begins thus: "We are the young, our socks are a mystery. We are the old, we burp in your face." Good times… Now as a deacon, I get to sit in the sanctuary and hear all the stuff from the other side. Mostly, I just sing along for the fun of it.
I was born in 1966. I grew up in a country parish on a gravel road surrounded by corn fields and sheep pastures. It was on the edge of a large archdiocese. So close to the edge, in fact, that the hospital I was born in, 10 miles away, was in another, notoriously progressive diocese. The "spirit" of the Council arrived more slowly. I remember being a small child and singing the Kyrie in Greek. Relative to the topic of music. I noticed it first in the songs related to weddings. Morning Has Broken. There is Love. That, and sometimes there was a guitar played at the wedding. My dad hated guitars at Mass so we thought they were weird.
I don't think Day by Day was ever played, thank goodness. We did have Let There Be Peace on Earth. The other more modern song was Go Tell it on the Mountain played during the Christmas season. The kids, me included, loved that song and belted it out every chance we got. I cringe when I hear it now.
Other more modern songs came into play in the early 1980s, then came in full force when the priest who arrived a week after my baptism retired when I was 23 years old and was replaced by someone not very likeable and also more progressive.
Then I went to college in the mid-1980s and went to the Catholic church on campus my first weekend there. Oh boy. Let's say it was so different from my previous experience that as I left Mass and walked back to the dorm, I turned around, looking at the building. It said "Catholic Church of St. Mary." I pointed at it and yelled, "I don't care what that says. That's not a Catholic Church!" The only progressive thing it didn't have was liturgical dancers. Only guitars used. Words to the songs were on overhead projectors. Kneelers had been taken out. Pews rearranged around the portal altar to the side of the architectural liturgical center. Kumbaya type songs for Communion. I didn't know then, but the matter for the Eucharistic bread was baked in homes and invalid (I have since seen the recipe used for years). I went back perhaps two or three times in the next four years.
I could only make it through the first four bars of your link to « Let There Be Peace on Earth. » Banned forever would be too kind. I feel the same way about « They Will Know We Are Christians. » I was born into a Protestant family that was deeply suspicious of Catholics and I longed for the day I could convert. Unfortunately, that day coincided with the rise of the 3-chord guitar-playing teenage girls, Blowing in the Wind, As Tears Go By, and If I Had A Hammer. My response - 20 years in the Russian Orthodox Church.
I was born not-quite-a-decade after you, near your college town, so our experiences with the Mass are probably very similar. Growing up and going to a Catholic school, I didn't think very much about pre or post Vatican II music because that was just it. But even as a child, I had an aversion to hippies, and things like the album cover of Godspell terrified me (as did the Mamas and the Papas in the swimming pool drinking out of a hat). Jesus Christ Superstar was one extended nightmare, and I still cringe when I hear it sung. As I am a parishioner at a Paulist parish, that happens more often than not, although only a cappella during a homily (and I'm okay with that! The Paulist predilection for singing in the pulpit is endearing). But I digress. As a child, standing in the hot sun for the May Crowing, and looking down at the purple type of the mimeographed lyrics, we sang a collection of Marian hymns that I still love. Immaculate Mary, Salve Regina, inter alia. Those songs, for some reason, are excluded for my general antipathy toward the liturgical music of my youth.
In our Church we had an organist who was an ex-nun. She was also the music teacher at the school. She was, as I would realize later in life, a wonderful woman. But she had a temper and did not suffer fools gladly, and I was a fool. I believe there was a minor dust-up concerning some well-deserved violence against my fellow students, and that put an end to her musical instruction, though not to her work as organist. When she wasn't there in the choir-loft at that organ, there was instead an excellent guitarist, with long blonde hair, who was one of a large family that was well regarded in the parish. It is only now, in reminiscence, that I realize that I never considered him a hippie, and I will have to explore the meaning behind this inconsistency. In any case, guitar-Mass was the order of the day, and although I am also a guitarist, I have never felt that it was an appropriate instrument for reverence. It is tied up, along with the hippies, with sitting in various basements or a corner of the cafeteria, where rolling panels segregated a corner of the room, each with obligatory rainbow colors and post-modern artistic renderings of doves, Johnathan Livingston Seagull style, and "Morning Has Broken" playing from a tinny tape recorder while a slide projector displayed those ubiquitous birds silhouetted against a red sky, or images of smiling happy teenagers in tight T-shirts with sweat rings darkening their armpits and acne lighting up their faces.
By the time I emerged from this Purgatorio and into the high-school CYO of the early 80's, there was an infusion of Amy Grant and Tom Franzak and the non-liturgical music that served as the soundtrack to our own version of Breakfast Club. SEARCH introduced this, and again, like the Marian songs of my youth, the sappy ditties, like Friends are Friends Forever, and Live On In My Love, get a pass and bring back fond memories of my fellow students. But, again, this was not in the liturgy. No... in the liturgy there was Eagle's Wings and Gather Us In and the execrable Lord of the Dance.
On a side note, in the wake of cancer, I began to discuss with my wife the details of my funeral mass. As an effort to give me will to live (and it has worked brilliantly!), she swore that she would have Lord of the Dance prominently featured, rather than my request for Zbigniew Priesner's Lacrimosa. I in turn have promised to haunt her if she does so, my particular ghostly manifestation being a poltergeist who destroys her collection of expensive shoes.
I associate all of the Haugen & Haas music with silliness, with clay goblets and bits of whole-wheat leavened bread, dispensed by well-meaning Eucharistic ministers. It all represents a "horizontal" church that emerged from Vatican II had had its brief Age of Aquarius flare.
Carrying a sincere but shallow faith to the Marianist University of Dayton, I found more of the same in the sad theater-in-the-round wreckovation of UD's once beautiful chapel, in the semicircle of metal chairs facing a plain table, with the baroque glory of the old chapel still visible and unused, and the tabernacle of that marble altar crouching to the side like a visible representation of the Tridentine Mass, there in shadow but not yet exorcised. It was not long before I stopped attending Mass and liturgical music meant nothing any more.
As might be expected, my later reversion, prompted by St. Augustine and the efforts of my wife and brother, burst into a pharisaical disdain for the music of my youth, and a turn toward Palestrina and chant, and I spent an other-than-healthy effort on the internet engaging in polemic. Somewhere there was a Society for the Banning of Haugen & Haas, or something like that, which had some nice parodies of Gather Us In... I can only remember "Here in this place, a bad song is starting, now will the altar turn into a stage, all we hold dear is slowly departing, making its way for the coming new age."
Well, my reminiscence has carried me into the 1990's, which is well beyond the "post-Vatican II" years you referenced above. I apologize and will try to keep any future stories more focused. Thank you for encouraging this discussion!
I don’t recall anything liturgically prior to the “reforms” (born 1963) but a few things stand out from grade school. One was a nun who, previously a missionary to China and then missionary to barbarians (us), said that any sermon or song that doesn’t appeal to us may be because it was for another person. That was thinking outside my selfish box.
I recall the same ‘set list’ as you, i.e. Godspell, Morning Has Broken, ... Another star attraction song was “Good Morning Starshine” (“the earth says ‘hello!’, you twinkle above us, we twinkle below”)... Yeah I’ll never get that ear worm out. Our 7th grade teacher had a thing for Donovan and played us “Jennifer, Juniper” which left a lasting impression, ha.
High school was led by a sensitive and popular priest who turned out to be an abuser. Another priest at our Catholic high school had a thing for boa constrictor snakes and he’d have one in the class room a lot. He turned out to be gay too. We didn’t win the lottery as far as priests in our school but it was ground zero in some respects under the poor leadership of the Cincy diocese in the ‘70s.
A lot of the Haagen-Dass songs, deservedly pilloried, but I really liked the one (don’t know tune’s author) that went, “Take our bread / we ask you take our hearts / we love you take our lives..” I have said it off and on for years as a prayer and then it occurred to me - after decades! - that it could be said the other way around, Christ saying it to me, “Take My bread / I ask you take My heart / I love you take My life...” So that was cool.
Big focus book-wise was on the works of Fr. John Powell, like “Why Am I Afraid to Love?”. He was just huge but then he fell off the map, or at least I haven’t heard of him for a billion years and I used to read a ton of Catholic blogs. I probably should read him again just to see what I was ingesting and how well he stands up to time. Or get your opinion. Nouwen-like? I'll never forget him using the term that he felt like a "public utility" as priest and it turned me off. Who wants to be a public utility? (But then Jesus saying "carry your cross" isn't the most attractive image to most of us.)
I’ll never forget one cringeworthy moment. Our high school religion teacher (married man) was telling us that as red-blooded boys (co-ed school btw) we can’t expect to just go right up to the line of intercourse and be able to stop. I took it upon myself to counsel him afterward, concerned that he’d sent the wrong message in that it would encourage us to go all the way if we find ourselves in that circumstance. He was very kind and thought my idea had merit but now I look back and find it hilarious that a virgin who had never made it past second base was opining on that subject.
I wasn't born until 1971, so the changes had already happened by the time I remember things. I don't have too much to compare to.
What I remember about the music, though.
The first hymnals we had were small, tan, three-ring-binder type. They had the Order of the Mass in there (I didn't know that's what it was called, I just knew it had all of the prayers and responses in the first section). I just realized as I typed this that the binder system was probably to allow for changes--practical, if nothing else; at that point, who knew when or if there would be more changes? I don't remember those hymnals having the music, either; just the lyrics.
At some point, we got additional song books--Glory and Praise, Volume 1; later we got Volume 2 as well, but I don't remember using that one much. Volume 1, though, probably got used equally with the little tan binders.
Our parish had five Masses when I was young: Saturday at 5:30pm, and Sunday at 8:30, 10, 11:30, and 1. The few times we went to the Saturday Mass, I remember there were guitars. I have nothing concrete to point to but I have the distinct memory that my dad did not care for that at all. We usually went to 10am, which had the choir during the school year (they got summers off). It was a true choir who sang in four parts--the Gloria was absolutely glorious, and I have never heard it anywhere else.
I remember singing Be Not Afraid, Sing to the Mountains, Lord of the Dance, Gather Us In. All I can really say is, I didn't know any better.
As an adult, though... I got to know our former organist because my children wanted to know where the stair went. I figured if I followed the child, it wouldn't be a big deal, and it wasn't. At least until he played Gather Us In as an opening hymn. I climbed those stairs and had five words: "Gather Us In, Curtis? Really?" I tried not to sound snarky or angry, just to have the tone that we both knew he could do better. He never played it again.
I was born in 1967. My first memories of Mass, in our old, standard midwestern gothic church, were of that combination of old hymns on the organ and a cluster of guitarists centered around Sr. Nancy on the autoharp. There was, to my infant mind, a real energy and joy about it all. I am not sure if I later became jaded, or if the music and the musicians became tired - did reality change, or merely my perception of reality.
As an adult, I can see that the sort of effervescent joy is impossible to sustain over a long period of time for most of us. The mix of human emotions is real and when we try to suppress the sadness, the loneliness, the ache, the angst behind a mask of a broad smile and upbeat melody, we damage ourselves. I think there was - at least some - real joy in the beginning of the liturgical reform as it was implemented in my home parish.
One change that I noted as a child was that in my earliest years in school, the nuns (only one wore a veil, the rest had already ditched the habit in favor of, first sundresses, and later pantsuits) always talked about Jesus. Stories from the Gospel about Jesus. Personal stories about encounters with Jesus. Songs about Jesus (Jesus built His Church upon the rock of Peter, His banner over me is love). Later, by about 4th grade (at which time our old gothic church was torn down and replaced by a suburban church-in-the round with orange carpet and plastic chairs) the topic changed. Jesus was replaced by the Church. The Church - this gathering of people who were going to change the world by coming together, breaking down barriers, loving everyone and singing a lot of contemporary songs that had almost-sacred lyrics (Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Leaving on a Jetplane). By the time I was junior high age, we no longer talked about the Church even, but about Justice - what were we going to do to change the world so that poor people could own lots of material things to make them happy like we do? The music shifted from pop songs to antiquated folk songs (If I Had a Hammer). By high school, in the early 80's, the St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk were rising and, although the focus was shifting more towards scripture texts in lyrics, the emphasis (to my mind) seemed more self-focused. (Here I Am Lord, I Have Called You With an Everlasting Love, Earthen Vessels).
That overarching trajectory - from Jesus to the Church to Justice to Self-Fulfillment seemed to me to be headed in the wrong direction. From those earliest years and earliest stories, I had fallen in love with Jesus. I wanted more of Him. I eagerly consumed the chunky, distasteful, homemade bread which may or may not have been valid matter for the Eucharist (as a canonist, I suspect it wasn't, but I also realize that God's grace filled up in my young soul what was lacking in the physical matter I received) because I wanted Jesus to be a part of me, to heal me and strengthen me and comfort me when the world seemed to be getting scarier and scarier.
It wasn't until college, when I walked into an orchestral High Mass at St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minnesota (Beethoven's Mass in C Major) with incense, priests and deacons vested, silence, reverence, beauty - that I realized what I had been deprived of during my childhood. I wept, for there, in that white host held aloft by the priest as the bells rang and everything else was silent - there was Jesus, the one the nuns helped me to fall in love with as a child. I was surrounded by people loving Him just as much as I did - adoring Him, desiring Him.
I was born in 1953. When I was in grade school we used the Gregorian Hymnal, which had a lot of Songs in Latin and around 12 different musical settings for Tantum Ergo, of which we learned only the usual 2. The early new music was mostly English versions of the old Latin hymns. The Dies Irae was quickly dropped once people learned what it really said, although the tune was beautiful.
We got these People's Hymnals and sang Jesus Christ is Risen Today for the first time when I was in fifth grade. I really loved that song, which I had never heard before.
In high school the music got stranger. One of the favorites for Mass was I Know I'll Never Find Another You with the word dear replaced by Lord. Truly dreadful. We also did a fair amount of Simon and Garfunkel. I dropped out of the Church in 1970 although I was still attending Catholic high school. I stopped attending the school Masses as well as Sunday Mass, except for the Mass that was part of our graduation. Instead of Pomp and Circumstance, we walked in to Jesus Christ Superstar.
When I rejoined the Church in 1980, it was all St. Louis Jesuits, and I really liked most of the music, although not all of it.
What a trip down memory lane. I can still sing lots of those, too. My guilty pleasure is Of My Hands. The song that to my mind should be banned forever, has in fact disappeared: Joy is Like the Rain, although Let There Be Peace on Earth is right up there with Hosea and Gather Us In as candidates for banning.
Like you, Amy, I was an unhappy camper at mass from age 2 til 5. The church was nearby, so my parents often split masses. Once I started CCD in grade 1, religion became interesting, and I spent more of the mass trying to listen, understand, and even attempt to follow the words in the paperback missal, so I can tell you for sure that by 1965--four years before the Novus Ordo was introduced--the mass was already done mostly in the vernacular. The Eucharistic prayer at least was still Latin--I know this because suddenly at that point the words I was trying to follow made no sense. As I understand things, it was the TLM minus the "L". The music I first noticed and learned were standards such as Immaculate Mary, Praise to the Lord, O Most Holy Trinity. Then the folk mass was introduced in '67 or '68. By 1973, I was strumming those 5 or 6 chords at school masses in 8th grade. But I soon outgrew this stuff and began to love the sacred classical tradition, mostly thanks to the material we learned in my public high school concert choir! But you know, listening to some of those youtube recordings made me realize that early folk mass music often had more scriptural and even doctrinal content than what came later via Schutte, Haugen, and Haas. It's good that guitars are gone, but to hear the sappy, God-as-therapist stuff from late 70s early 80s, even with organ accompaniment, is no improvement.
We Rowed that Boat Ashore after Blowing in the Wind all over the Diocese of Memphis in the early 70's. My parish had a vibrant Youth Group that could field 24 reasonably competent voices, so we "went on tour" as the folk mass group for several seasons. Objectively awful as some of it was, both musically and theologically, it remains a beloved and important part of my formation as a well functioning adult Catholic.
A few months ago, I saw that Jesus Christ Superstar was making a 50th anniversary comeback. I thought long and hard about spending the coin to relive that experience. Ultimately I concluded that I have brushed and burnished away the bad parts and created a whole new thing by touching it in my memory so often. Meeting the thing as it actually was would not be happy making. ... there is a Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate Deo that I might have to hunt up again though. It was FUN to sing.
Born in the 70s in a progressive diocese. We had every selection from Glory and Praise, which later morphed into Haugen and Haas. We had songs I wish I could find now - my mom said “Happy the Man” was her father’s favorite. We also had a good-sized men’s choir about once a month at my home parish and for special occasions. They STILL sing “Why Can’t Every Day Be Like Christmas” at one of the Christmas Masses every year so far as I know.
One of my campus parishes used “Jesus Christ, Superstar” as part of the Palm Sunday Passion readings instead of the Gospel for quite a while, and that was fun to realize later I might not known what we see doing.
It didn’t really catch up with me that any of that music was kitschy or less than helpful til I reclaimed my faith in late 1999. I try to appreciate as much good as comes from what I have now. I’ve since moved dioceses and I am grateful for our music at our home parish.
I will, say, my most “are you even kidding me?” moment came out of Easter vigil one year - completely unexpected. And for the life of me I will never, ever, ever get that tune out of my head as a memory at Easter vigil. I probably ruined it for you, too, once you hear it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3SSjtqwERDM
I was born in 1956, into a family which had been Catholic on both sides for many, many generations.
I have a picture of my great, great grandfather who came with his parents and 5 other brothers from Germany in the 1850’s. I love a picture I have of him in his 80’s standing beside his wife and holding a rosary in his hand.
I don’t have many memories of the Latin Mass before Vatican II, but I do remember my grandmother complaining about changes as they were made.
At my small, clapboard Catholic Church in rural central Nebraska (closed now for more than 20 years 😢), the beautiful white high altar was covered up with a partition wall and a plain table altar was installed in front of it.
I made my First Communion before the changes, but was Confirmed afterwards.
As a teenager attending CCD, we literally sang Kum-Ba-Ya and we made collages, both of which have come to be symbolic for the loosy-goosy silliness that went on during that time.
As a child, you just accept what is happening.
I’m not a musician, and not really knowledgeable about music, probably like most typical Catholics. I did like to hear and sing songs like “Be Not Afraid” and “Lead Me Lord.” But I did think that songs like “Lord of the Dance” were just weird. And later when I heard someone ask about these songs, “Where is God, where is Jesus, where is anything Catholic in these songs?” that really resonated with me. Yes, where?!
Such a lack of formation, of catechesis, even of evangelization for my whole generation.
I think of my parents (RIP Mom and Dad) who both grew up in Catholic enclaves where everything was Catholic, all the family, friends, the schools they attended, the social events, everything. I think they learned their faith in many ways, but especially through osmosis.
I grew up in a very Protestant area of the state. We didn’t even have a Catholic Church in my small town, but had to drive to the next town, which, of course, we did. According to my Dad, we had to be on our deathbed to miss Mass.
The Protestantism around me effected me, though, as I later realized. I remember thinking that it doesn’t really matter where you go to church because we all love Jesus.
In my 40’s with a husband and 4 children, I was finally evangelized because the Carmelite sisters running the nursing home where my mother was living asked me to take a Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration, which I did to help them out. Ha! Those sisters were doing it for me even though I thought I was doing this for them.
And Mother Angelica and EWTN catechized me, especially the show “The Journey Home,” which my dear Catholic aunt kept bugging me to watch.
A real “come to Jesus moment” (notice the Protestant influence?!) was when I heard someone on EWTN explain the Church’s teaching on contraception. I was shocked when I realized that birth control pills can act as an abortifacient. What?!
This “protestor” who didn’t know she was one until that day, became a convicted Catholic and disciple of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Thank you, Lord. You never give up on us.
I'm not from that era; I graduated college in 2014. I attended a university attached to a Benedictine monestary (since closed down, though the monestary is still there).
The choir director, a Benedictine monk, was from that era. Day By Day was sung at school masses, by a trained choir and accompanied by an organ. It still lives (or at least, did ten years ago).
I was born in 64. My parents took us to Mass every Sunday, but I don't remember it. Late 70s I remember all the guitar upbeat music. From the "great amen" on I called it Mass' greatest hits because it was pretty much lively music until the end. Even during Communion. I vaguely remember people clapping in rhythm with the Ordinaries. I really had no clue what Mass was all about except that I had to go. Our family operated on faith being one hour on Sundays. We did say grace and prayers before bed. By His Grace I remained Catholic. I really had no reason not to be since it was mostly harmless in my mind. I prefer the TLM now, however, my closest friend grew up very charismatic and attended Franciscan back in the day. He is one of the most solid Catholic men I know. There are many paths to Our Lord.
My experience is rather different as a child of Anglican converts (I was born in 1975, we became Catholic in 1980), who were so allergic to that type of music that we always found somewhere to go to avoid it. I only heard the stuff you link here at school Masses, which didn't happen all that often. I do have pretty vivid memories, though, of a very unskilled organist who always played "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" at Communion. I can still hear her wailing out those Al - le -LOOO -ia's in her quavery old-lady voice.
Anyway, much of my childhood we attended what must have been one of the earliest indult Tridentine Masses, largely because of my godparents, who were leaders in the early "Trad" movement (although I don't remember that word ever being used). Unlike many Trads today, they had nothing against the dialogue Mass, congregational singing, or women singing in the Schola (actually we just called it a choir). We worked to sing the simple chant Mass parts as best we could, but we also sang processional and recessional hymns - these were permitted because they were technically before and after Mass. I think there was sometimes a song at communion too, on the principle that the people's communion wasn't so much part of the liturgy itself as a private moment.
The point is, these were first-generation trads, who actually remembered the old days, and I infer that it hadn't been crystal-clear in the years leading up to Vatican II exactly how music fit into Mass, particularly hymns. It seems Catholics had picked up some vague idea there ought to be hymns at Mass (perhaps from living among Protestants?), but they fit in uneasily, pretty much as interruptions. And frankly, the hymns we sang weren't that great.
"Immaculate Mary" and "Sing of Mary Pure and Lowly," while devout, are musically pretty dreary (why do most Marian hymns have such repetitive tunes?) and lyrically saccharine. Is "Let There be Peace on Earth" any kitchier than "Oh Mary We Crown Thee with Blossoms Today"? My guess is that our hymns tended to sentimentality because they were written for private or at least informal devotional use, whereas Protestant hymnody was more formal and theological, since it was written for use in liturgy.
As a former parish music director, hymn parody became one of my favorite pastimes. My favorite is a parody on "Gather Us In" which, in my version, begins thus: "We are the young, our socks are a mystery. We are the old, we burp in your face." Good times… Now as a deacon, I get to sit in the sanctuary and hear all the stuff from the other side. Mostly, I just sing along for the fun of it.
I was born in 1966. I grew up in a country parish on a gravel road surrounded by corn fields and sheep pastures. It was on the edge of a large archdiocese. So close to the edge, in fact, that the hospital I was born in, 10 miles away, was in another, notoriously progressive diocese. The "spirit" of the Council arrived more slowly. I remember being a small child and singing the Kyrie in Greek. Relative to the topic of music. I noticed it first in the songs related to weddings. Morning Has Broken. There is Love. That, and sometimes there was a guitar played at the wedding. My dad hated guitars at Mass so we thought they were weird.
I don't think Day by Day was ever played, thank goodness. We did have Let There Be Peace on Earth. The other more modern song was Go Tell it on the Mountain played during the Christmas season. The kids, me included, loved that song and belted it out every chance we got. I cringe when I hear it now.
Other more modern songs came into play in the early 1980s, then came in full force when the priest who arrived a week after my baptism retired when I was 23 years old and was replaced by someone not very likeable and also more progressive.
Then I went to college in the mid-1980s and went to the Catholic church on campus my first weekend there. Oh boy. Let's say it was so different from my previous experience that as I left Mass and walked back to the dorm, I turned around, looking at the building. It said "Catholic Church of St. Mary." I pointed at it and yelled, "I don't care what that says. That's not a Catholic Church!" The only progressive thing it didn't have was liturgical dancers. Only guitars used. Words to the songs were on overhead projectors. Kneelers had been taken out. Pews rearranged around the portal altar to the side of the architectural liturgical center. Kumbaya type songs for Communion. I didn't know then, but the matter for the Eucharistic bread was baked in homes and invalid (I have since seen the recipe used for years). I went back perhaps two or three times in the next four years.
I could only make it through the first four bars of your link to « Let There Be Peace on Earth. » Banned forever would be too kind. I feel the same way about « They Will Know We Are Christians. » I was born into a Protestant family that was deeply suspicious of Catholics and I longed for the day I could convert. Unfortunately, that day coincided with the rise of the 3-chord guitar-playing teenage girls, Blowing in the Wind, As Tears Go By, and If I Had A Hammer. My response - 20 years in the Russian Orthodox Church.