A listener named Lisa asks Father Dave about music during Mass. She says, “I was at a different Catholic Church last weekend, and during communion, the hymn was by an evangelical Christian. Can this happen? I was really disappointed.”
Father Dave begins, “So her question is, essentially, is this allowed? Without knowing specifically the hymn or anything that was really problematic with it, the generic answer is, yes, there are really very wide parameters for what can be chosen for music at Mass.”
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“A lot of latitude is granted to the pastoral staff, meaning the pastor and the people that work with him, but particularly the music ministers. There’s no one document that you can put out that’s good for 30 years that says, ‘here are bad songs and here are good songs,” he says. “It’s up to a bishop or the people that staff the liturgy office in his diocese to make sure that the people that are responsible for music at Mass are properly formed, meaning properly educated and therefore can make prudential judgments.”
Father Dave cites numerous Church documents on this topic and notes that they are intentionally ambiguous. “There have been some U.S. bishops who have indicated that even some hymns that are in our Catholic hymnals, upon their scrutiny, don’t pass muster for their diocese. For one reason or another, they have found some doctrinal or theological liberties with the lyrics,” he says.
“Music, just like any other form of art, is very culturally subjective, especially geographically. If you go to Catholic Mass in some parts of Africa or Asia, it will be a very, very different experience than what we are used to here in North America; not just the song choice, but everything that’s going on. You might be like, Whoa, what’s this?” Father Dave continues. “The Church allows for that and realizes that it’s a big tapestry; we’re always walking a fine line between continuity with tradition, but a universality. The word Catholic means universal.”
He adds, “[Whether] we attend Mass in Kenya or Mass in New York, the Mass itself is fundamentally the same. There will be an opening prayer, readings, and preaching, but many of the things that go with Mass can be appropriately, culturally adapted. Music and art fit very much in that category.”
In addressing Lisa’s question, Father Dave says, “If the lyrics to the song that is played at communion do not support Eucharistic theology…something like, ‘this is only a symbol and it’s not really the body of Christ’ then of course, that would not be appropriate to use at Mass. The people that are in the position to make those choices are trained to spot that, and merely a song authored by someone who is not Catholic does not rule it out from being used at Mass.”
