Commentary: Singing theology

WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) -- One of the many things lost in sober contemporary church life are the enchanting Latin names of the Sundays between Easter and Holy Trinity.

First there was Quasimodogeniti (as newborn babes), then Misericordias Domini (mercy of the Lord), which was followed by Jubilate (rejoice). Now Cantate is coming up. It's an imperative -- sing! -- taken from Psalm 98:

"O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things."

These are names liturgical denominations such as the Anglicans and Lutherans have inherited from the Catholic Church, which at least in much of the United States seems to have lost the art of congregational singing.

Belting out hymns -- theology set to music, as Luther called it -- seems to have become a specialty of Protestants. It's the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Calvinists, the Lutherans, the Methodists and the Moravians, whose songs congregations intone around the globe.

What happened to the church that has given us a Palestrina or Gregorian chants? "A great many people in Catholic churches do not even open their mouths to sing -- ever," observed Thomas Day more than a decade ago in his witty book, "Why Catholics Can't Sing," which is still in print (New York: Crossroads Books, 1991, 183 pp., $12.57).

A Catholic musicologist of note, Day observed that bad taste had triumphed in his church. "If the volume of singing measures the strength or weakness of the faith, then American Catholicism is spiritually bankrupt," he stated cruelly.

"I have heard a congregation of 50 elderly Episcopalians produce more volume than 300 Roman Catholics," wrote Day. The Rev. Jay C. Rochelle, a retired Lutheran pastor from Allentown, Pa., agreed: "It always baffled me that 1,000 Romans in nearby Cathedral made less noise than my own 150 parishioners."

Of course, continued Day, this is by no means a global phenomenon: "In the German-speaking areas of Europe I heard Catholic congregations sing so powerfully that the floor seemed to shake."

Yet among American Catholics he discerned an almost hostile attitude to singing. Wrote Day, "This stands out as the most curious development in the history of Christianity."

However, this liturgical abstinence can hardly be attributed to a lack of faith. Most observers of the religious scene in the United States agree that the religious fervor of America's Catholics exceeds that of the ever-dwindling flock of Episcopalians by far.

So why is it that U.S. Catholics find it so difficult to agree with Luther's insight that music ranks next to theology. After all, they agree with him at least officially on most other things, especially on how man is justified before God -- by grace through faith.

"I am not satisfied with him who despises music, as all fanatics do; for music is an endowment and a gift from God ... It drives away the devil and makes people cheerful," said Luther, Protestantism's most prolific hymn writer.

So why are Americans often so cheerless during Mass?

Thomas Day came up with a surprising answer: It's all the fault of the Irish and the British. The Irish are the ones who dominate American Catholicism, he argued, and their nasty history with the British had immunized them against singing at Mass.

"During the worst years of British domination, the Catholic Irish were ... reduced to abject poverty, taxed heavily, and given no room for private initiative. They were also cut off from artistic and cultural developments in the Roman Catholic parts of Europe," Day explained.

"A Bavarian farmer saw nothing unusual about worshipping in an ornate Rococo church; he thought it perfectly normal that the choir would sing a Mozart Mass occasionally."

In the opinion of the oppressed Irish, Day concluded, "the courageous and the strong kept the faith, while the weak, lured away by music and other niceties, became apostates."

If this is so, the awareness seems to be growing among American Catholics that something is not quite right about a worship disdaining music, a gift of the Holy Spirit.

With ecumenism and Christians flip-flopping freely between denominations, congregational hymns have long become a common good, The very anthem of the Reformation, Luther's "Mighty Fortress," has long become part of Catholic hymnals in most countries of the world.

Where Catholics have learned to open their mouths again in church, they cheerfully sing the doxology, "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," by Louis Bourgeois, Calvinism's premier hymn writer.

To be sure, one occasionally can't avoid sighing, as did James Nuechterlein, editor of the journal First Things: "Where did the Catholics find their songs?" He meant of course the banal praise music they have borrowed from the ear-tickling variety of low Protestantism.

But it is one of the beauties of today's inter-confessional mobility that Christians from different denominations inspire each other with their traditions.

Protestant converts to Catholicism and Orthodoxy are often frustrated with their new church's dearth of congregational music. "So they introduce hymn-singing services," said Rochelle, who has himself switched from the Lutheran to the Antioch Orthodox Church.

"And guess what? It's catching on."

That Catholicism in America is currently going through tough times may actually further the cause of good singing in worship. Church history shows that such times have often produced the most powerful hymns.

One can of course resist oppression by not singing -- as the Irish did, according to Day. But one can also defy it by praising God in tunes and rhymes of utmost splendor.

Just after the Thirty Year War (1618-48), which laid waste to Germany and wiped out two-thirds of its population, a pastor by the name of Paul Gerhardt wrote a hymn that marvels in 15 verses of breathtaking beauty at God's creation.

It's called "Geh' aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud" (Go seek, my heart, the joys of life). It is rarely sung in America, but it should be -- especially the eighth stanza, which so aptly addresses the theme of the Sunday named "Cantate":

"Nor silent can my own tongue be,/ I'll tell what God has done for me,/ His mighty deeds reviewing;/ I'll sing how his love sought and found,/ I'll sing how he is faith's strong ground,/ My heart with grace renewing."