A reader sends in the following from a recent parish bulletin:
There will be an outdoor 9:15 am “overflow” Easter Mass this year. This Mass will have a full contemporary music group outside for those who prefer that style of music. (The Easter liturgies in the church will all be more traditional.) This celebration outside will be particularly helpful for families with small children and to account for the increase of people who attend Easter Mass.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this announcement seems to be suggesting several things.
1) That contemporary music for Mass should not be allowed inside the church on Easter.
Now this is an idea that will have significant appeal in some quarters—indeed, I know those who might perhaps hope that this parish’s plans to set up the “full contemporary music group” outside in the churchyard is a transitional step, one that could lead next to moving the band off the property entirely. But I doubt this parish is moving in that direction.
Perhaps there is something in the bulletin’s declaration that the “Easter liturgies in the church will all be more traditional”—that the parish in question, without doing away with the drums entirely, is striving to present something a little more in line with Roman practice, at least to those in the sanctuary on Easter Sunday. But the text of the announcement still sanctions the idea that it is a matter of indifference to “prefer” another “style of music” at Mass, as if the forms of Christian worship were just a variety of iTunes to download at one’s pleasure. Confusing.
Perhaps the idea is instead 2) that families with small children should not be allowed inside the church on Easter.
This is perhaps a more plausible interpretation of the bulletin text. Easter Sunday Masses are always crowded, as the, er, irregular Mass attendees come out for something to do after breakfast. The presence of noisy children is inconvenient every Sunday, and especially so on big occasions.
Now dislike for noisy kids seems to bring together a lot of very different kinds of Catholics—self-styled progressives, pious old ladies clutching rosary 
beads, neo-orthodox clergy of a certain age–all united by a common dislike of the sound of the faithfully fertile. The first group has done its best to contracept their way into a childless Futurechurch, and they generally don’t appreciate reminders that there will be a next generation (and that it will be unlike them); the second group actually has its eyes turned to heaven, but they’re pretty sure they did a MUCH better job raising their own children than these utterly incompetent parents nowadays.
But is Easter really the right time for a parish to make a special effort to get faithful Catholic families to feel guilty about being at Mass? Should they be asked to wait outside, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and loud electronic drums and 200 watt bass amplifiers? Would there be no evangelical value in forcing the casual Catholics who have come out of the woodwork for Easter to cope with a sanctuary PACKED with innumerable flourishing families living the gospel of life in all of its disorderly, inconvenient, unruly sonic fury?
The bulletin announcement also says that the outdoor Mass is “for those who prefer (contemporary) music,” but it also purports to be for “families with small children”. Here’s a problem–what if these two groups happen not to overlap? What if I prefer contemporary liturgical music but have no patience for kids–where am I supposed to go on Easter Sunday? What if I have 9 children under the age of 7 but “prefer” to attend Masses at which the music conforms to the papal documents of the last 100 years rather than to the pop music of the last 20? Are big families expected to like loud contemporary music at Mass, because it’s the one thing louder than their tantrum-throwing 2 year olds? Is an outdoor rock Mass just the logical development of the cry room principle—put all the uncouth noisemakers together in an area well removed from the sanctuary?
This is all too confusing. I know where I’ll be on Easter Sunday.
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