Discussion on Liturgical music used during the papal visit

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Few thoughts. 1. The prevalence of a lot of bad music in liturgy in the US is definitely indicative of bad music education in the US. If people never hear music that transcends, then how can they want it? Certainly this goes both ways - the church needs to lead in presenting the world with good music. In my town, there are churches that perform a Bach Cantata or hosts an organ recital every single Sunday. It is wonderful, but I am told that no one attends these events. What can we do? It may be a catch-22, but music ministers work with very limited resources in many parishes, including people who are willing to volunteer in making liturgical music.

2. Personally, I am not too keen on the 18-19th century 16-bar hymns that come initially from the Protestant tradition, that we consider "traditional Catholic hymns." We don't have a good excuse not to adopt "Shout to the Lord" and the like based on that argument. Many folksongs have become hymn tunes (Kingsford, O Waly Waly for instance) people now consider "traditional," but I imagine they were people objecting to their use back then. There are good music from other periods, both before, and those from this decade that are equally worthy of liturgical use (Pinkham, P, Bainton). Also, if we should only use music "tried and true" how could we have picked up the 4-part hymn tunes in that last few centuries for liturgical use, which we now consider "traditional"?

3. I am curious as to why people object to the use of a pianoforte during liturgy. Good piano-playing can be just a beautiful as a good organ-playing.

4. Mr. Reilly mentions the liturgy in London. They have a big "advantage" over American Catholics, in that the Anglican musical tradition has kept up some of our solemn liturgical traditions much better than we.

5. There should be more effort made to beautify (or "juice-up"?) novus ordo liturgy - why do not enough of us ever celebrate novus ordo liturgy in Latin, with Latin hymns and all, after all, that sounds like the orginal intent. The celebration of the extraordinary form ("Tridentine") is beautiful, but for many of us who never grew up with it, it feels as foreign as attending Byzantine liturgy (although it is much easier for a newcomer to follow Byzantine or Maronite liturgy than the old Latin rite from my experience). The celebration of Novus ordo in Latin that incorporates all the beauty of old Latin rite may be much more accessible to us young'ens.