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Views from the Choir Loft

Kids Are Colorblind But Adults Are Not

Dr. Alfred Calabrese · May 3, 2017

AST WEEK in my article, I mentioned my daughter, so I thought this week I’d reference my son. When he was about three years old we lived in Atlanta and he was in a daycare with children of many different races. His best friend there was a Chinese boy. My son never asked about the color of anyone’s skin or the shape of their eyes. To him and all the other kids there, they were just kids—all the same. They didn’t have any prejudices or biases. Here’s a beautiful example of what I’m talking about.


Isn’t this kind of colorblindness always the case? Until, of course, adults and society get involved, and begin to inflict their biases on children. I’ve often thought that this is what happens with music, especially music in the Church.

ANYONE INVOLVED WITH TEACHING music to children, especially very young children, will know that they’ll gladly sing anything you put in front of them. If they know you like it, they’ll like it. If you tell them, “this is what you’re supposed to do,” they’ll gladly do it. It’s been wonderful to hear the first and second graders in our school sing hymns like Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All (SWEET SACRAMENT). They absolutely love it! It’s equally great to know that my choir kids love Panis Angelicus and Fauré’s Ave Maria.

Too often, however, adults (parents, teachers, older children) tell them that’s not the music they’re supposed to like. It’s not cool. And besides, aren’t kids supposed to be cute? What normal kid would like Latin? What modern Catholic kid wouldn’t want to sing something exciting, with fun things like clapping and stamping and raising up their arms? It’s when they experience these prejudices that kids start to think twice, biases set in, and we’ve lost them.

What’s both interesting and sad is when adults with these prejudices hear children joyfully singing traditional music, they dismiss it as an aberration. Further, they often stereotype these kids. They’ll say that the little ones are too young to know better, or that the choir kids are just a little “different” (weird, or worse). “Just wait until they become teenagers,” they say, “then they’ll really rebel.”

I’m convinced that kids and teens have been taught by adults with an agenda to dislike solid hymnody, chant, and anything that smacks of tradition in the Church. So many adults find it necessary to inflict their prejudices on these children instead of just staying out of it. I think I know why. Do you?

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

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Dr. Alfred Calabrese

About Dr. Alfred Calabrese

Dr. Alfred Calabrese is Director of Music and Liturgy at St. Rita Catholic Church in Dallas, TX. He and his wife have two children.—(Read full biography).

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Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“For any member of laity, who is at least somewhat literate, the ignorance of the Latin tongue, which we can call a truly Catholic language, indicates a certain lack of affection towards the Church.”

— Pope Pius IX

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