The St. Clappy Hands Contemporary Choir Strikes Again…
So there I was.
Sunday morning. Coffee in hand. Still recovering from the theological trauma of the previous evening’s Vigil Mass, where I endured Rain Down and Table of Plenty, two spiritual crimes that deserve their own tribunal at The Hague. I foolishly thought I had absorbed the worst of it. I thought the damage had been contained. I thought wrong.
I click “play” on my Canonically Assigned Parish live stream—you know, just to confirm whether this horror show just follows me wherever I go and maybe reverence is reserved for when I’m not physically present. Or, maybe the entire Diocese [except for the TLM community] has replaced the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a spiritual talent show—and there it is:
🎶 “You’re a good, good Father… It’s who You are… It’s who You are…” 🎶
Who. You. Are.
That phrase now haunts my dreams like Gregorian Chant’s emotionally unstable twin. If I hear it one more time, I’m starting a schismatic monastery in a cornfield with a chant schola and a strict ban on guitars, suspenders, and anything labeled “Gather.”
Meanwhile, the Vigil Mass…
Yes, I attended the Vigil at St. Suburbanus of the Ever-Flowing Liturgical Creativity, where the décor is Felt banners and the theology is held together with Elmer’s glue and outdated Marty Haugen CDs. If you thought Good Good Father was bad, allow me to introduce you to:
🎶 “Rain down… Rain down… Rain down your love on your people…” 🎶
What is this? A weather forecast? A musical plea to the celestial sprinkler system?
I was hoping for Agnus Dei, not The Doppler 9000 Catholic Edition.
And if that wasn’t enough, during the entrance hymn we were treated to the infamous “Table of Plenty,” a song so aggressively banal it sounds like it was composed during a group hug at a campus ministry retreat. The refrain practically screamed: “This isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a potluck. And everyone’s invited—even if they haven’t been to Confession since the Carter administration.”
Let’s Break This Down:
Rain Down: Nothing captures the solemnity of the Passion like a liturgical singalong that could double as an Enya B-side.
Table of Plenty: A theologically neutered anthem to inclusivity, where Christ’s Sacrifice is downplayed to make room for everyone's dietary restrictions and emotional comfort zones.
Good Good Father: The crown jewel of Charismatic Croonball™. Jesus isn’t Sovereign Lord—He’s a dad who bakes cookies, journals his feelings, and probably drives a Prius with a “Love Wins” bumper sticker.
The Diocese of Soft Theology: United in Blandness
What is happening in this Diocese? Is there a secret memo? A kind of Lex Orandi, Lex Blandi directive that requires all parishes to forgo sacred music in favor of the Now That’s What I Call Heresy Vol. 4 playlist?
Did I miss the announcement that Gregorian chant is now considered a hate crime? That Palestrina has been declared too rigid? That the Council of Trent is “problematic” because it uses Latin and doesn't include guitars and drums?
Because at this point, it’s clearly Diocesan policy to emotionally manipulate the faithful using songs that sound like Jesus got friend-zoned.
If the Bishop is reading this: Your Excellency, please, for the love of all that is holy, call off the Felt Banner Hit Squad. We are dying out here. Dying. Every “Rain Down” is a drop in the flood of mediocrity drowning the sacred.
Imagine This for a Moment:
There you are, kneeling in what’s supposed to be reverence, and the choir launches into Rain Down. You instinctively reach for an umbrella. Not out of piety—out of self-defense. This isn’t the Liturgy. This is musical waterboarding. And it’s being live streamed to the world like a war crime.
Sacrifice? What Sacrifice?
These songs neuter the Mass. They reduce Calvary to a comfy couch. Instead of Mysterium Fidei, we get Emotionum Fluffius. The Crucifixion becomes a brunch invitation.
There is no blood. No Lamb. No altar. Just a table of plenty, where every sinner gets a participation trophy and maybe some gluten-free Eucharist. Confession? Mortification? Nah, just feelings and finger cymbals.
“But people like it!”
As previously noted, so did the Israelites and the golden calf. That didn’t end well either.
Let’s be clear: Good Good Father isn’t a hymn. It’s a spiritual lullaby for Boomers with boundary issues. “It’s who You are,” they wail, as if Christ’s identity depends on their emotional security blanket. I don’t want Jesus reduced to a soft-spoken therapist with a guitar and a Pinterest board of affirmations.
I want Christ the King. Christus Victor. The High Priest. The Lamb slain. Not Mr. Rogers with nail marks.
Meanwhile, the Martyrs Are Watching
What do you think St. Ignatius of Antioch would do if he heard Good Good Father as he marched to the lions?
What would St. Thomas More say if his final Mass featured Rain Down before his beheading?
What would the North American Martyrs have done if their Jesuit chant was swapped for Table of Plenty while being flayed alive?
I’ll tell you: they’d ask to be martyred twice just to avoid enduring the Offertory.
AND, ONE MORE THING
I have sought counsel. I have confessed, repeatedly, my prideful judgment of my fellow parishioners and for having difficulty finding the Mass to be the serious affair that it is. I have even confessed that I believe I cannot attend my Canonically Assigned Parish because, I cannot, in good conscience endorse this as the leader, protector and provider for my family. Such attendance would constitute tacit acceptance. I have confessed this seeming lack of humility, anger and pride again and again. And there I was—again—seeking counsel from a priest, not to unburden some scandalous sin, but to confess and to ask an apparently far more egregious thing:
Why doesn’t the Mass look like the worship of the Almighty God instead of a second-rate Christian coffeehouse with lighting issues. And, I sought this counsel through the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation WHILE THE CHOIR WARMED UP! Yes, while the Church was dispensing the most sacred Sacrament of Reconciliation, I had to listen to the choir director warm up via guitar solos for the Vigil Mass in that brief one-hour the Church has decided to dispense this most important Sacrament.
And how did Father respond?
With a gentle head tilt, a pained smile, and the holiest of clerical cop-outs:
“We must treat this with charity.”
Charity? Father, I’m not punching Linda in the narthex or burning her guitar in the vestibule. For the upteenth time, I’m asking why the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass sounds like a mashup between a third-grade talent show and a breakup album Jesus never wrote and expressing my deep spiritual difficulty associated with this.
Now— before we get to the rest, let’s get one thing straight: Charity should not be code for “shut up and accept it.” Yet, that’s EXACTLY what it is. And, that is the counsel I receive each time along with an increasing Penance—this time the Litany of Trust.
It’s not charitable to say nothing while the Lord of Hosts is serenaded with lyrics that reduce His infinite majesty to something that sounds like a love song written in a hot yoga class after too much kombucha.
What priests often label as “charity” is, in fact, cowardice baptized in pastoral perfume. It’s emotional pacifism dressed up as virtue. And worse—it is a dereliction of liturgical duty.
A priest is not a cruise director. He is an alter Christus—a mediator of the Holy.
And you know what’s uncharitable?
Standing by as the Holy of Holies is profaned week after week because Our Shepherds are too afraid to confront the tambourine cartel on the parish liturgical committee.
Letting the faithful languish in spiritual malnutrition while you tell them to “focus on the Eucharist”—as if Christ Himself isn’t pierced anew every time His Passion is drowned out by “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”
Father, we faithful laypeople aren’t asking for lace-trimmed perfectionism or some aesthetic idealism imported from 13th-century Burgundy.
We are asking for reverence.
Which is not negotiable.
Which is not optional.
Which is your job to protect.
If anything, priests should be commending the few souls left who can still recognize irreverence at all. Because after decades of Masses that look like public school assemblies for Jesus, many of your flock can’t tell the difference between the Agnus Dei and a Disney Channel closing credits theme.
We don’t need to be told to be “more charitable.”
We need to be told: “You’re right. This is not how we should treat the Lamb of God.”
We need priests to say:
“I’m sorry for letting this go on. It ends now. We’re cleaning house—starting with the glory-and-praise binder and that tambourine that sounds like liturgical PTSD.”
Don’t tell us to “offer it up.”
We’ve been offering it up for years—and it’s beginning to feel like the Israelites wandering 40 years through the Wilderness of Woke Worship.
You know what would be charitable?
—Preaching the truth.
—Teaching the parish that liturgy isn’t personal expression—it’s divine worship.
—Explaining that Christ is not the headliner at an emotionally unstable spiritual concert.
—Cutting the mic, shelving the heretical sheet music, and introducing the people of God to their birthright: chant, reverence, and awe before the Mystery.
Stop demanding our silence so you don’t have to confront their noise.
Because if Christ flipped tables in the Temple for it being treated like a market, what makes you think He’s okay with being serenaded like a prom date at His own Sacrifice?
The Mass is Calvary. It is not Camp Praise Fest 2025™.
And no, I will not be more “understanding” of a liturgical culture that treats the Crucifixion like a bad 70’s talent show.
So, with all due respect, Father. I don’t need another lesson in charity.
I need a priest who remembers he was ordained to guard the sanctuary—not to soothe the egos of 1970’s guitar theologians still riding the wave of post-conciliar improvisation.
You want charity?
—Then love God enough to defend His altar.
—Love your flock enough to feed them sacredness, not sentiment.
—Love the Church enough to risk the wrath of Linda, Paula, and the Parish Praise Team for the sake of Truth.
And, Finally, it happened…
The final insult happened and it was served cold with a passive-aggressive smile and a side of spiritual gaslighting.
After expressing my deep anguish over the irreverence plaguing the Holy Mass—over the lyrical lobotomies of Rain Down, the “Jesus is my prom date” balladry of What a Beautiful Name, and the soft-theology smorgasbord of Table of Plenty—I was met with that all-too-familiar reprimand:
“We need to avoid being divisive.”
Divisive?
Father, with all due reverence: what planet are you on?
Let me be clear. Refusing to clap along to liturgical heresy does not make me divisive.
It makes us Catholic.
Clinging to the Sacred, fighting for reverence, and rejecting music that sounds like it was composed during a trust fall at a youth retreat is not schismatic. It’s fidelity. It’s love. It’s devotion to the Holy Mass as handed down—not reinvented by the Parish Liturgy Committee and its rotating cast of tambourinists farmed from early 1980’s nostalgia.
You know what’s divisive?
Replacing chant with pop ballads.
Treating the ambo like a stage.
Reducing Christ the King to an emotional support figure who “brought Heaven down” because He just couldn’t live without us.
Creating parallel religions within the same sanctuary: one reverent, ancient, transcendent—and the other a spiritual TED Talk set to piano.
That’s division.
We who cry for reverence didn’t create the split. We’re just the poor souls who notice it and are refusing to pretend or accept that it’s normal. It’s the same caution I have given my children: “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you follow?” The answer is no. I won’t follow and I won’t encourage my family to do so.
We’re not divisive because we object to banality. We’re not divisive because we call a spade a felt-bannered, tambourine-wielding atrocity. We’re not divisive because we want Dies Irae back and the guitar solos gone.
Division comes from those who have rejected continuity and installed novelty in its place. It comes from those mocking tradition and canonizing trends. It comes from those replacing doctrine with feelings, sacrifice with self-expression, and beauty with kitsch.
We’re not disrupting unity. We’re trying to recover it—by restoring the sacred, the solemn, the sublime.
The martyrs didn’t die for Rain Down.
Aquinas didn’t write a Eucharistic hymn so it could be followed by a bridge and a key change.
And the angels aren’t hovering over our sanctuaries with harps in hand, swaying gently as we croon about being “chosen” and “loved” in a way that sounds more like a middle school yearbook message than a theological reality.
So please, Father, spare me the “divisiveness” label. It’s not us who divided the Church’s liturgical voice. We’re just the ones trying to remember what it sounded like before the microphone was handed to Linda and the Guitar Apostolate.
This isn’t rebellion.
This is obedience—to the Church’s own liturgical documents, tradition, and sacred music treasury.
It’s not bitterness.
It’s grief—over what’s been lost and what continues to be profaned in the name of “pastoral sensitivity.” It is noted that such pastoral sensitivity never seems to extend to those of us who try to live an authentic Catholic life.
And no, we will not smile quietly while the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is subjected to the same musical stylings as a 1970’s youth group pizza party.
We are not the problem.
We are the sacred remnant crying out from beneath the noise, the saccharine, the sentimental sludge, silently praying for the day when priests stop calling our reverence “rigidity” and start calling it what it is:
Catholicism.