Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30 (Vigil) Nuala Christie, (Anniv).
11.00: John O'Connor, (Anniv).
6.30: John Murray, (Month's Mind).

As I Was Saying...

When Israeli war planes attacked Qana this week, at least 51 civilians, including at least 22 children, were killed. It is the deadliest single strike since Israel unleashed its war on Lebanon. Later, a spokesperson for the Israeli army had something startling to say on radio. When asked the identity of the individuals they had snatched in another attack deep inside Lebanon, she replied: 'We do not take individuals, we take terrorists.'

Her meaning was clear enough: their raids weren't indiscriminate, but targeted, precise - if only, we might think, a similar precision could have been claimed for the rockets of both sides which have made children prime casualties of this conflict. But her words were revealing.

Is someone considered a terrorist no longer an individual? Does the application of a label rob them of their humanity, permit them to be regarded as another form of being?

It's easy enough to see how any perceived enemy might be. Bombs blow apart families on a shopping trip, grandmothers and babies cowering in a basement, boys playing football. Those who do such things deliberately have allowed their philosophy or theology or political intent to blind them to the suffering they cause, we say. They've denied their humanity.

We expose ourselves to great danger, however, if we refuse to regard them as individual human beings. We leave ourselves open to the very forces which enable them to treat others as objects to be disposed of. Their values become ours.

It's been argued that when the Pinochet regime in Chile inflicted unspeakable torments on those seen as enemies of the state, it didn't consider that it was torturing human beings. It thought it was torturing Marxists - sometimes revealingly referred to as humanoids.

Slap on the label - class enemy, religious fundamentalist, extremist militant - and the person with his own unique story, with his hopes, dreams, worries, is hidden. Make that a literal label, a star of David, and every conceivable variation on horror is opened up.

The Bible speaks of God creating human beings in his image. He begins not with a mass population programme, but with one man and one woman. We don't need to take this story literally to accept that it implies that every person shares something of God. While we need other people, because it's through relationships that we discover who we are, it's as unique individuals that we respond to our Maker.

Christians believe that Jesus gave his life both for the world, and for every particular individual: 'God loves us all as though there were only one of us to love.' It's a double-edged truth, though. If it reassures me that whatever happens I have immense value, it forbids me from treating anyone else in ways which deny that they too share a dignity given by God.

Uncomfortable though it may be, there really is no distinction between terrorists and other individuals. We all answer to him.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Great Interest (to some)

Congregational Singing

The author, Gerard Gillen, is Professor of Music at NUI, Maynooth, and Chair of the Advisory Committee on Church Music to the Episcopal Commission on Liturgy. This article appeared in The Irish Times on Monday last.

Congregational singing deserves a more prominent role in worship. The reluctance of Irish Catholics to sing with the same vigour as Protestants is often noted. Indeed, in 1991, American writer Thomas Day wrote a book ('Why Catholics Can't Sing') on the subject. His central thesis is that the musical deficiencies of the (American) Catholic Church can be attributed to the baleful influence of the Irish who colonised American Catholicism in the 19th and 20th centuries, bringing to it their own 'silent forms' of worship.

The causes of Catholic reluctance to sing liturgically lie deep in the Irish psyche. From the early 19th century, when once again they could worship publicly, Irish Catholics emerged as from a prolonged liturgical slumber to suffer immediate "re-entry" shock.

After years of associating liturgy with silence, music was now expected to be an element of liturgical celebration. And Cardinal Cullen of Dublin was determined that musical development in liturgy was to be an agent for Romanising the Irish Catholic Church.

"During solemn Masses, nothing but Latin may be sung; neither is anything to be found outside of Mass in churches unless it is contained in the approved Ecclesiastical books" - thundered Article 39 of the 1850 Synod of Thurles.

So vernacular hymns were off the liturgical menu, although they did develop in a curious way with the growth of 'Catholic devotions' later in the 19th century. Requirements for these services resulted in especially composed vernacular hymns - of cloying sentimentality and banality for the most part - becoming part of the fabric of pre-Conciliar Irish Catholic worship.

This was the situation until Vatican II. Vernacular music moved from the devotional margins to a central liturgical requirement with the Council's demand demand for "congregational participation".

But from where were the required hymns to come? Immediately the limitations of Irish liturgical practice became apparent: all we had was a basically non-singing congregation and a limited repertory of not very suitable vernacular hymns.

In the spirit of growing ecumenism, Protestant hymnals were raided for appropriate material. Thus 'The Lord is my Shepherd', 'Praise, my Soul', and seasonal carols such as 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing', 'While Shepherds Watched' etc., became stalwarts of the new Catholic hymn repertoire.

The mention of "hymnal" brings us to the core of the question as to why Irish Catholics do not sing hymns as well as their Protestant neighbours. The idea of a hymnal in the hand is one quite foreign to Irish Catholic congregations. And the idea of a service or "participation" leaflet is only very partially in currency in Catholic churches.

An exasperated member of a Christmas congregation commented to me last year on how frustrating it was to be expected to join in the singing of carols when words were not provided. The use of a central Hymn Book is a long established practice in Protestant worship. In the United States, where studies on these matters have taken place, it has been found that congregational singing is always stronger in churches which use hymnals than in those which do not.

To quote Thomas Day: "Good congregational singing begins with a sense of beloved familiarity and the best way to develop that familiarity is with an outstanding hymn book that will stay in the pews for more than a generation."

Until we embrace this idea of a book with core congregational repertory, and give it time to take root in our communities, we will continue to find that Catholics will not sing as robustly as their Protestant friends. And while they may not do so, it is not to say that they cannot do so: it is simply that they are not culturally conditioned to do so alone.

When deprived of the doughty vocal support of their hymn-loving fellow Christians, Catholic hymn-singing can indeed be pathetic.

-Gerard Gillen

A Musical Note

On behalf of the members of Galway's ConTempo Quartet and its board of management, I wish to thank you for so generously allowing the quartet to perform at the Augustinian during this year's Galway Arts Festival.

The sound in the Church was beautiful, and we had full houses on all four nights. Our great musicians -from Canada, Argentina, and here in Ireland- truly enjoyed the experience.

Please convey our gratitude to your Church staff and parishioners. Thank you.

Sincerely,
-Mary Dooley (Board Chairperson).

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