SACRED MUSIC
                    Volume 117, Number 4, Winter 1990


          LITURGICAL AND MUSICAL REFORMS: AN HONEST ASSESSMENT
                        Monsignor Richard J. Schuler

In all honesty one must make a judgement at various times in life when 
reviewing a project or development. The building inspector must judge 
whether the plans of the architect have been carefully and rightly carried 
out; the music critic must judge if the performers have artistically 
reproduced the intentions of the composer; the dressmaker, the cook, the 
barber and the teacher must all judge if their products are in conformity 
with the pattern or recipe or prospectus or order that was the model for 
working. 

The judgement must be honest, or else we are like the emperor who had no 
clothes. One cannot fool all the people all the time. The truth must be 
acknowledged. The blueprint, the pattern, the plan and the directions 
remain and the product must be compared to them. Humility, which is truth, 
must admit to conformity or lack of it.

For twenty-five years, we have had a pattern, a set of directions for 
reforming the liturgy and its music. The Second Vatican Council, under the 
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and with the full authority of the 
Magisterium of the Catholic Church, has clearly indicated its will, and the 
Holy See has given the world the authentic manner in which these decrees 
are to be implemented. The pattern is certain and clear. How well does the 
product measure up? Can the inspector approve of the results? Are we 
fooling ourselves when we proclaim the reform to be a great success?

Evidence continually is making it clear that the decrees of the Vatican 
Council have not been successfully implemented in the United States, and 
this failure has, in fact, led to many unfortunate results harmful to 
religion and Catholic life. Studies of Mass attendance reveal a drastic 
drop in attendance at Sunday worship; decrease in vocations to the 
priesthood and religious life continues; school children know less about 
their faith than ever before; knowledge of right and wrong, no longer 
learned through sermons at Sunday Mass, has become confused; the artistic 
quality of liturgy and music has fallen to an incredible level in the 
majority of churches, even those which before the council had fitting 
worship; ignorance of liturgy in its history or in the demands of the 
present reform, even in so-called professional liturgists, musicians and 
composers, exceeds all bounds.

How can the Church in our country extracate itself from the mire into 
which its liturgy has fallen? Who can clean the Agean stables? Roman 
decrees will not accomplish it, since we have had decrees for twenty-five 
years which have been ignored and deliberately disobeyed. Those decrees 
depend on the bishops to implement. But the bishops give their obligations 
over to their "experts" who put into operation what they have learned in 
the propagandizing centers of liturgical study.

The process of reversal is an educational one. It must begin with the 
schools. This means that bishops must demand graduate centers for true 
liturgical studies and seminaries where the future clergy are will be 
correctly instructed about the intentions of the Church given by the 
council and the documents that followed.

Bishops must seek competent and true teachers for their institutions and 
seminaries. Pastors must hire only those who have been correctly and 
competently trained and who exhibit a willingness to "think with the 
Church." The unfortunate performers, the inferior compositions, the lack of 
reverence and open violations of liturgical law and spirit must all be 
removed from our churches. It will be a long path to implementation of the 
conciliar decrees, because we are beginning now from a position that is 
farther removed from the true goal than we were before the calling of the 
council. The last twenty-five years have witnessed an almost total collapse 
of the sacred liturgy, causing the problems cited above.

The regulation of the liturgy on the local level is the immediate task of 
the bishop. Especially in the seminary and the cathedral, but also in his 
parishes he must see to it that the requirements of the council and the 
documents following the council be put into careful observance. He may be 
assisted by properly trained musicians and liturgists. But therein lies the 
cause of the present debacle. Too many occupying posts in diocesan and 
seminary musical and liturgical establishments are poorly trained, victims 
of propaganda peddled by centers of liturgical studies and some 
periodicals, ignorant of the regulations called for by the Church for its 
liturgy. Until that situation is rectified, our liturgy will continue to 
disintegrate and with the liturgy, the practice of the faith.			
	   									R.J.S.