Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Notre Dame -- Defender of Quality Church Music?

For those of you who have bemoaned the state of music in your run-of-the-mill Catholic parishes on these pages in the past:  Here's an interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education with "two of the nation's best-known scholars in medieval church music", Peter Jeffery and Margot Fassler, husband and wife, hired by Notre Dame from Princeton and Yale Universities a few years ago.  Jeffrey's response to the question of whether Vatican II contributed to a "decline in the quality of liturgical music in the Catholic Church":  

The council did say the church valued all true art from any culture. However, what we've had is not so much the adoption of real traditions of music but the assumption that the only way to have congregational singing is to have pop songs written by amateurs. That has not produced a healthy tradition of congregational singing.

Fassler closes the interview with:  "you know, it's right in Our Lady's wheelhouse to try to strengthen the life of the church through worship and music."  I must have missed the wheelhouse when I taught there -- maybe it's down by the Grotto?

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/02/notre-dame-defender-of-quality-church-music.html

Schiltz, Elizabeth | Permalink

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