So bad it hurt

Wow. The music at Mass this morn­ing was eas­i­ly the most uni­form­ly bad col­lec­tion of the worst of Amer­i­can wor­ship music cir­ca 1982 that I have heard in a long, long time. (And that real­ly is say­ing some­thing.) And it was very bad­ly done, to boot. 

I got to watch my wife cringe through the entire ser­vice. Poor thing. I should have warned her before she con­vert­ed that Catholics in this coun­try have giv­en up on beau­ty in favour of the vapid and acces­si­ble. I guess I had for­got­ten that this was some­thing to be not­ed. She had nev­er even heard of a ‘gui­tar Mass’, and I don’t think any­thing I could have said could have pre­pared her for the agony it caused her soul the first time she was sub­ject­ed to one. 

Even three years lat­er, this insipid yet ubiq­ui­tous pap is still almost unbear­ably painful for her, and her suf­fer­ing reminds me how very numb my own soul must now be, that I am not sim­i­lar­ly nau­se­at­ed. I know I used to be; I guess I have sim­ply giv­en up hope at some aes­thet­ic level.

Where does one have to go for a sense of the sacred these days? And even if there was such a place, would we real­ly be able to take a tod­dler there? Can’t we wor­ship in awe anymore?

1 Comment

  1. Write the gui­tar mass scene! I will love it, guaranteed.

    You’ve evoked many of my child­hood Sun­days, please continue!

    (Good ques­tions too, but you’re under­writ­ing them. Let us have it!)

Leave a Reply