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Views from the Choir Loft

Permission Needed to Replace the Propers?—(5 of 7)

Andrew R. Motyka · February 24, 2015

WAS GLAD to see our new blogging colleague, Andrew Leung, post about permission in Hong Kong for replacing the propers of the Mass with other pieces of music. It gave me hope, or at least reconsideration, because from my end of things, the whole conversation we have been having about this so far is useless.

Say someone in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis writes a hymn: text, music, harmonization, everything, and he wants to follow the letter of the GIRM and get it approved for use in the Archdiocese or even the United States. What is his process for obtaining such approval? There is none. So he’ll call the Office of Worship, and upon hearing the word “music,” the call will be sent to me. I will be asked about what needs to be done to obtain approval, and my answer is, “I have no idea.”

It’s not that I am ignorant of the mechanism by which approval can be obtained in the USA; it’s that there is no mechanism. There is no process. Some bishops who take GIRM 48 seriously might want to see such a piece or collection, but in the end, what bishop has time for that?

So what should happen? Should the bishop delegate the process to a commission? Probably, just as Andrew Leung points out is the norm in Hong Kong. However, I also see several problems with this solution:

1. Every diocese, and every commission, is comprised of different people, with different skillsets, ideals, and opinions. There will be a wild lack of consistency over what gets through or not.

2. If this were kicked to the national level (the USCCB), we would be adding one more layer of bureaucracy to the process. I can’t imagine the chaos that an attempt at a “national hymnal” would cause.

3. From my understanding, as things stand now, approval by one bishop counts as approval for the whole country. Therefore, something approved in Seattle is cleared in Tampa, under the current law. This means that all you need is one out of hundreds of committees to clear your work to get it by, practically invalidating the safeguard of approval altogether.

4. The need for approval will be ignored anyway. As it stands now, the GIRM is ignored, and that is binding liturgical law. It’s not a suggestion, it’s not a guideline. It’s law, and people ignore it left and right anyway in more than just this area. Further legislation or bureaucracy will just incentivize the local parishes to tune out the law even more.

So what am I saying? Should the GIRM just be ignored on this point? No, what I am saying is that the solution to this issue is—to borrow political lingo—above my paygrade. I suspect and fear that the cat is just out of the bag on this one, and no legislation from above is going to fix it. I think our efforts would be better spent winning hearts and minds to the most fitting place that Gregorian Chant and the proper texts hold in the Mass than trying to legislate it from above.

This article is part of a series:

Part 1 • Richard Clark

Part 2 • Veronica Brandt

Part 3 • Andrew Leung

Part 4 • Dr. Lucas Tappan

Part 5 • Andrew Motyka

Part 6 • Cynthia Ostrowski

Part 7 • Aurelio Porfiri

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Hilgartner 20 November 2012 Last Updated: October 15, 2022

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About Andrew R. Motyka

Andrew Motyka is the Archdiocesan Director of Liturgical Music and Cathedral Music for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.—(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
    I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

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“It is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Recent Posts

  • “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
  • PDF Download • “Text by Saint Francis of Assisi” (choral setting w/ organ: Soprano & Alto)
  • “Yahweh” in church songs?
  • “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
  • “Participation” • Recovering its Receptive Dimension

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