I was away visiting family at Pentecost and attended Mass as a visitor.
While visiting the same city on Easter Sunday I entered some sort of portal and went to a church that was still in the early seventies – very old school Roman Catholic, songs from the old blue book, fairly dull organ music, little singing except from the priest and the least joyful celebration of Easter I have experienced – and remember I used to be a Presbyterian.
So this time we went to a Catholic church not five minutes drive from the last one. This time the time travel went back to the mid 1990s. They had progressed to AOV Volume One, which was nice. They spruiked for a Charismatic Catholic service coming up and Mass started with extemporaneous prayer that sounded very Protestant. The church was decorated for Pentecost, which was also nice, but the Mass parts were not sung. Four songs were sung to organ accompaniment that really had no relationship to Pentecost at all (AOV1 71, 16, 129, 76) and I swear they had transposed one of the songs up to suit the singer, which was no help for participation from us groaners. There was little singing and what there was got swallowed in the thick carpets. The 1990s, however, was a much more welcoming era and it was certainly somewhere I could feel at home. I remember the priest gave a lively homily, but with my porous brain I forget the substance and the readers of the Word were especially good.
I suspect that these adjacent parishes are operating less parochially and more as a liturgical choice for the residents, based on the nature of the parish priest. In the cities we are spoiled for choice and can avoid difficult priests or jarring liturgies. It can’t help with building communities however, as a change of priest means a community may shatter and with so few resources available to Bishops they have little leeway to take such things into account.
I enjoy going to mass at other parishes, because there is a learning experience added to the celebration. I have heard songs played properly for the first time that I had been playing with the wrong feel for years and some hymns suddenly make musical sense. Frequently, however, I note just how far we have to go with supporting musicians, singers and liturgists, all volunteers of course, and I strongly suspect visitors to our parish when I play would think the same thing sometimes. I’m not sure what era they wind up in when they attend our liturgies.
It’s more than just when the songs were written, it really feels like some parishes just hit the wall and cease to change and I suspect something is lost then. We are supposed to sing a new song. In the music liturgies people have been kind enough to post here, there is obvious thought and relevance to each celebration. There are parishes that mix the most traditional with the most recent, others that are mostly AOV like us, and others that have good choices from traditional repertoires. If they are allowing the people to participate by singing then their liturgies are enfleshed in the present moment no matter when the songs were written.