The
following is not an excerpt but, rather, a preview. This is from the book proposal that I wrote to shop around
Keep the Fire Burning to various publishers. This preview will give you a taste of
what to expect in this first-ever complete history of the Folk Mass.
===
In
1968 the world was a mess. The
spring assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Bobby Kennedy were
followed by urban unrest and a violent Democratic convention in Chicago. The Soviet Union had crushed out dissent
in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Millions were starving in Biafra as bloodshed escalated in the endless
war in Vietnam. Humanae
Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, drew the ire of
progressive Catholics and was widely ignored.
Within
the cloistered confines of Queen of Angels High School Seminary, this global
turmoil was far removed. It was
time for morning meditation, and the seminarians were supposed to focus on the
usual spiritual platitudes from their olive green prayer book. But all that went out the window on
this glorious autumn morning.
There was a definite buzz in the air, a tangible excitement that sliced
through the mandatory silence like the proverbial hot knife through butter.
Here at the minor seminary of the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles, we
were going to celebrate our very first Folk Mass!
I
was a rowdy sophomore, ill at ease in my black-and-white boarding school
uniform. Most of us seminarians,
despite our fresh-faced youth, were practically professional liturgists. We prayed a modified version of the
Divine Office morning, noon, evening and night; we celebrated Mass daily at
6:30am, sometimes in silence, but usually in song with the seminary’s grand pipe
organ pouring forth in the “four hymn” mode so prevalent in the mid-1960s. On feast days we sang High Mass with
Jan Vermulst’s Mass for Christian Unity. Occasionally, we sang in chant, and our
alma mater was the beautiful Gregorian “Ave Maria.” But on this memorable morning, as
Father Ready and the altar servers processed out of the sacristy, our voices
rang out with a gusto that we never before experienced at liturgy.
Come,
let us worship the Lord, our God.
Come,
sing praise to his name . . .
The
accompaniment was simply three acoustic guitars and an upright bass, without
microphone, and the student musicians stood in the back of chapel, behind the
assembly. Their stirring blend
reminded me of my favorite Peter, Paul & Mary records. There was no cantor. In fact, that word had not yet been
applied to Catholic liturgy. The
momentum of the singing was carried by our unabashed youthful enthusiasm. We were worshipping God with the sound
of our generation!
Something
was happening in our Church, something quite beyond our secluded existence in
California’s San Fernando Valley.
As I sang along with my brother seminarians, I glanced down at the
copyright credits on our printed worship aid. Our music director, Monsignor Gerken, had taken care to do
everything properly.
“Come,
Let Us Worship” by Bro. Gregory Ballerino. Copyright © 1967 by the Gregorian Institute of America,
Chicago, Illinois.
“They’ll
Know We Are Christians by Our Love” by Fr. Peter Scholtes. Copyright © 1966 by F.E.L. Church
Publications, Ltd., Chicago, Illinois.
These
exciting songs came from the Midwest a year or two prior to our singing
them. Clearly, an extraordinary
Spirit was sweeping the land.
After that first Folk Mass, my life would never be the same.
The
story of the Folk Mass is a largely forgotten chapter in the history of
liturgical renewal in the United States.
Mere mention of those two words brings a variety of reactions ranging
from wistful nostalgia to the rolled eyes of outright derision. The Folk Mass movement has been blamed
for everything from the allegedly poor state of liturgical music today to the
beginning of the end for the sensus mysterii. It conjures up images of
guitar-wielding nuns in modified habits, activist priests, and liturgical
experimentation gone haywire. And
yet, for many American Catholics, the Folk Mass was one tangible way that the
Second Vatican Council came to life.
The
Council was certainly groundbreaking.
News accounts of the bishops’ deliberations filtered back to Americans
by way of official condensed reports in their diocesan newspapers or in Xavier
Rynne’s “eye-witness” accounts in The New Yorker. Terms like Sacrosanctum
Concilium, “ecumenical dialogue,” and “The Church in the Modern
World” were weighty and even intimidating to the average person in the
pew. But celebrating Mass in
English? That
got people’s attention.
Congregational singing? It
was awkward at first, but people reluctantly caught on. Guitars and folk music? Good Lord! What next? The
Folk Mass was either embraced whole-heartedly or rejected vehemently. For the former, it was the means by
which a whole generation became personally involved with their Church.
Keep
the Fire Burning reveals the influences, history, and legacy of the
Folk Mass. The story unfolds by
focusing on the key players of the movement and how they interacted with each
other in changing the worship life of the American Catholic Church. . .
(c)2009
by Ken Canedo
===
Keep
the Fire Burning is slated for release this summer (July 2009) by
Pastoral Press. Watch this MySpace page for future updates and other previews.