N MY article released on 27 January 2026 I asked the following question: “Why do Catholic liturgical musicians, especially those in our American cathedrals, seem so unwilling to focus their attention on the training of youth in order to raise up future generations of liturgical musicians for the Church in these United States?” I suspected (and was quickly confirmed in the belief) that the answers I received were as numerous as the number of music directors themselves. However, I did notice certain ‘patterns’ in the responses I received from cathedral musicians, non-cathedral musicians, and even from the ranks of the clergy, regarding this question. I also realized I should have prefaced my comments about cathedral music directors with the caveat that while I noticed a lack of institutional involvement with youth on their part, many of them go to untold lengths to bring the Church’s treasury of sacred music alive within the hallowed walls of their sacred spaces—always in service to the Church’s Opus Dei and the people of God—and for this I am truly grateful. Nevertheless, many of the responses I received revealed the great number of challenges musicians continue to face, even in cathedrals, in their unending work of passing the baton onto a future generation of liturgical musicians.
Second Vatican Council
It is pointless to spill any more ink on the destruction of sacred music after the Second Vatican Council (and even lack of it before the Council), but suffice it to say that regardless of how the council fathers felt or voted, the reality on the ground was such that—even before their work officially ended in 1965—the Council’s famed document on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, was a dead letter. Musically speaking, plainchant (Gregorian or vernacular), sacred polyphony, and almost everything else composed before the 1960s was deemed ‘useless’ and ‘fit for the trash heap’ under the new ecclesiology. Sixty years later this mentality is finally beginning to crumble, but the amount of work necessary to restore what was lost cannot be underestimated. Cathedrals were not immune from this destruction. Nonetheless, to their credit, many continued to employ full time professional musicians, who—at the very least—kept musical standards much higher there than in the surrounding parishes.
Cathedral schools had created a natural pool of young talent for cathedrals to draw from, but these, too, were damaged. Artificial contraception, urban sprawl, and the vanishing of womens’ religious orders worked their magic. As a result—within a short time—many cathedral schools struggled to remain open. Where cathedral schools closed, cathedrals were deprived of the very children needed to build flourishing music programs for the youth. Where cathedrals schools were able to remain open, it was often discovered that their students no longer practiced the Faith, weren’t necessarily from the cathedral parishes, and (in some cases) were no longer even Christians. These aren’t easy demographics to work with. It’s very difficult to have a robust musical program for children at a cathedral when their are no children.
Bishops & Cathedral Clergy
It must also be acknowledged that a cathedral’s music program is greatly shaped by the bishop and rector or dean. I wonder how many of these men have anything amounting to a robust cultural education steeped in the Western tradition (which should include the discipline of music). If one were to ask for a list of music on a prelate’s SPOTIFY account, I would hazard to guess that most of their chosen songs would fit squarely in the realm of rock music or sacro/pop. This is probably true even for some of ‘traditional’ priests ordained in the last ten years. I had a conversation with one such man recently: one who ardently believes all the Church teaches, works very hard to bring all men to Christ, preaches hard truths, wears his cassock religiously, and is quite adept at the Latin language. He told me—openly and without embarrassment—of the excitement he felt, having just attended a Metallica concert. It is difficult to convince men of the power that good sacred music can have on the Church and society in today’s world when they themselves haven’t (yet) been personally touched by this music.
Following my initial article, a Roman Catholic cathedral director from England contacted me and related that a number of bishops and deans of Anglican cathedrals still matriculate through the nation’s famed PUBLIC SCHOOLS,1 where they not only experience the great Anglican choral works in their own chapels, but are also exposed to the best of the western classical music tradition via robust music programs in their schools. Therefore, the Anglican choral tradition is not a foreign concept to some of that church’s leaders. While this is not usually the case with the UK’s Catholic bishops, the great Anglican music tradition has nevertheless had an effect on the Catholic music scene in England simply by standing in stark contrast to the abysmal state of Catholic music, and thus becoming an inspiration to many Catholic cathedrals. This particular music director also explained that as larger numbers of Anglican musicians convert to Catholicism in the UK, they are bringing their musical expertise to bear on Catholic sacred music music in that country.
On a side note, I would like to mention an exception to the list of the UK’s unmusical prelates. On Saturday, 14 February 2026, the new Archbishop of Westminster was installed. An interview with Simon Johnson (Westminster Cathedral’s Master of Music) revealed much about the new archbishop, who seemingly understands the importance of music in the Church’s Opus Dei and evangelization efforts. Mr. Johnson said concerning the His Excellency:
“We had a meeting with Archbishop-Elect Richard a couple of weeks ago. I was delighted to discover that he obviously loves plainchant, and also that I think he loves polyphony. So he’s requested one or two bits and pieces, including Byrd’s Mass for 4 Voices, which I think is a particular favorite.”
Mr. Johnson’s was a different experience from one I had. When I mentioned to a former pastor something about ORLANDO DI LASSO (d. 1594), he thought I was talking about the city in Florida.
Cathedral Musicians
I would like to again reiterate that we have some incredible musicians at the helm of many of our cathedral music programs in the US, but I imagine that few of them have spent any formative time during their education in places where children are engaged to a high degree in the cathedral music programs. I have in mind places like: the Madeleine Cathedral (SLC), Saint Michael’s Cathedral (Toronto), Westminster Cathedral (London), RC Metropolitan Cathedral (Liverpool), Saintt Mary’s Cathedral (Sydney), and so forth. Therefore, they follow the standard American practice of employing adults—male and female—to fill the ranks of the cathedral choir. While this makes for some incredibly beautiful choirs, it does have unintended consequence on the Catholic music scene in the United States.
Firstly, it makes it extremely rare in American cathedrals to find daily sung choral services because of the difficulty and expense of hiring in a choir of adults on a daily basis. I believe there are other factors involved in this issue, but that’s a discussion for another time. On the other hand, the Cathedral of the Madeleine (Salt Lake City) and Saint Paul’s, Harvard Square, (Cambridge, Massachusetts) often provide for daily choral Masses and Offices because the children in their schools are readily at hand. Needless to say, children singing five (5) services every week develop musically much faster than children singing only once a week … or even once a month.
Secondly, cathedrals fail to help form the next generation of musicians who are equipped to go out to many other parishes and to bring the Church’s music to them. If each of our cathedrals (almost 200 of them) trained a group of 25 boys and 25 girls every year, there would be approximately 10,000 children per annum being trained as future musicians. A number would take up music as a career—something desperately needed—while others would end up being ‘choral leaders’ in their own future parishes, which would have a profound impact on Catholic music. Studies also show that young people who are actively engaged in their parishes in a meaningful way are more likely to continue practicing their Faith in adulthood.
I should also mention that I heard from a number of musicians (in those places where there is still a school) who wrote to say that it is impossible for them to do any meaningful work with the youth in their cathedrals because someone else, perhaps a cleric or a principal, has made it unrealistic for them to do so. Maybe the director of music is not allowed to be involved in school Masses (even when the cathedral’s school doesn’t have a full time musician on staff), or in other instance the director of music is given such a short time to be in the cathedral school that no meaningful progress can be made. In such cases the director of music would love to do more to involve the youth of the musical life of the cathedral, but others are actively blocking his/her efforts. This is reprehensible!
In other places, where the cathedral once had a school but had to close it—due to lack of children and/or financial hardship—music directors discover a wariness among rectors, staff, and parishioners of trying to begin a new school that might bring a new return of the old problems. (The Madeleine Cathedral in SLC worked through this problem.)
The Laity
This point corresponds to my earlier point about the lack of formation in our clergy. It is simply the reality that most cathedral congregations would balk at an abrupt return to a complete program of real sacred music, regardless of its being ancient or modern, and most clergy (and even some music directors) don’t want to deal with the “Karens” in the cathedral, because “Karen” can cause a lot of trouble and headaches. The congregations of our cathedrals aren’t any different from those in our parishes. Unfortunately a certain mentality (“Vatican II got rid of that…”) has been so ingrained into the laity’s minds that pointing out Church documents doesn’t help. I remember years ago in my naïvety asking all of the musicians in my parish if they’d come over during evenings to carefully study Sacrosanctum Concilium so we could discover together what Vatican II really said. One female guitarist ‘of a certain age’ told me curtly over the telephone that she was “not going to come in just to read that what she was doing wrong.” I imagine many laity ‘over a certain age’ feel the same way.
Lack of Musicians on the Ground
The last point I would like to mention is that working with children involves an incredible amount of time and added oversight. Suppose a choirmaster decides to found a vigorous chorister program at his cathedral. Assuming he’d already sought and procured permission from the rector, he would have to take time auditioning children in the cathedral school. If the cathedral didn’t have a school, he would have to take several weeks traveling to various Catholic schools in the area (and procuring all of the permissions necessary for this), auditioning hundreds of children, then managing communication with all of those parents. Then there is the time spent working and singing with these children. In my own parish, I spend 2.25 hours four days per week in front of choristers teaching—as well as 2 hours each Sunday—to say nothing of the time it takes to prepare lessons and music, the constant emailing and creating of schedules, and so forth. It’s true that in some cathedrals there might be other staff to help mitigate some of these issues, but the point must be stressed that it takes an inordinate amount of time to train young children, who sometimes can’t tell their left from their right hand, somehow turning them into professional musicians by the age of twelve.
Time is not the only commodity required of the music director. He must also enjoy working with children, and he must possess the skills necessary to do so. To be honest, this is where I often meet resistance from music directors. Working with children can be daunting if one has never done it before—and few university degrees in the United States incorporate this important work into their degree programs. At the same time, most liturgical musicians have neither grown up in rigorous chorister programs nor worked in such environments. I can, therefore, understand their uneasiness about starting a cathedral chorister program. This stands in stark contrast to the Anglican cathedral choir system in England where boys and girls spend 5-6 years in choir schools watching their music directors work with them and other children; then they continue singing in similar programs through high school and the university (where they are continually mentored by others); then they become assistant organists at a cathedral—where they are mentored further—before taking over cathedrals themselves. Even after all that, they still retain the ability to approach their friends and colleagues at other cathedrals for advice about working with children—because they all do it. We simply don’t have that infrastructure in our American cathedrals.
Where do we go from here?
If it were impossible to do anything about this situation, there would have been little use of my writing this article in the first place. So where do we go from here? I trust that what follows will give both hope and direction:
(1) Real music, especially folk singing, must become part of the daily existence of strong Catholic families and communities. This is not icing on the cake, but an integral part of thriving societies, and should be at the very heart of human experience. Children who experience good music in their daily lives will be much more willing to join a church choir. We need to push for this in Catholic schools AND ALSO Catholic homeschooling groups.
(2) Music education in our seminaries needs to become much more thorough. Of course, most of us can’t do anything about this problem, but I will say that I know several people who are involved with the musical education of our seminarians and we are moving in the right direction. It will take a while, but know that this movement is already taking place and will only accelerate from here.
(3) Accept that certain things won’t change today, or even tomorrow. There are some bishops and rectors who simply don’t want a rigorous chorister program at their cathedrals for whatever reasons, either because of the time and expense, or because they don’t feel there is any place for the Church’s treasury of sacred music in the sacred liturgy today. You simply have to accept that. This, too, however, is changing.
(4) Work to build healthy relationships with those you work with so that when you ask about moving forward on a project of this magnitude, they will trust you and at least give you the benefit of the doubt when you come asking.
(5) Spend time at some of the great choir schools and learn how they do their work. Some of these institutions are happy to have visitors, while others have conferences where you can at least get a taste of what they do and how they do it.
(6) Encourage your students to study or work in these institutions as part of their education. I have yet to teach a young organist who was not excited about the choir school concept.
(7) Hire men and women who have grown up in these institutions to help you in your work. Most cathedral music directors have an assistant, so why not hire one who can actually help you in this regard.
(8) Start a chorister program even if you don’t know what you are doing. If you keep learning, you will get better at it, and you will begin to make an impact. Trust me!
In My Own Parish
AVING STARTED such a program in my own parish just shy of 15 years ago, I can already see the fruit of budding organists coming up through the ranks; Catholics educated along these lines who are now fanning out, being ‘deployed’ to parishes nearby. These students have a leg up over other young musicians who have never had such training. My adult choir is also filled with former choristers who can actually read music. This spring my chorister program will see the first priest ordained from our former chorister ranks, and he will be an incredible blessing to other music programs in our archdiocese. [I currently have four boys in choir who repeatedly tell me they feel called to the priesthood, and God willing, they will make great clergy who will also be a blessing to other sacred music programs.]
I also want to impress upon the reader that I had no clue what I was doing when I began this. But thanks to a great teacher, I was able to spend six (6) weeks at the Madeleine Choir School in 2012. Moreover, I have since had the opportunity to spend two (2) weeks in England, observing at the Schools Singing Programme (run by the Catholic Diocese of Leeds) as well as watching and listening to choirs in other parts of that country. I’ve also attended numerous choirmaster conferences at Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue in New York City—all in an effort to continue my own education. I will keep doing this, in order to make our program better and to spread this kind of learning everywhere I can.
Last year I decided to bring all of this learning directly to my own choir. I invited Dr. Ronny Krippner to work with our choristers for a week. (Krippner brought the chorister program at Ripon Cathedral, UK, back to incredible life.) Along with him was Dr. Chris Berry from the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music as organist, and the transformation they began continues to have an effect on the group—so much so that I have invited Roger Sayer (of Interstellar fame) to work with our choristers this fall. God willing this will become an annual affair. If an ‘average’ parish can take on work like this, I guarantee most cathedrals can do likewise. They just need to think and work outside the box in order to make a go of it. Miracles do happen.
1 These are, in fact, very posh private schools, usually connected to the Anglican communion.
