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.