UST BECAUSE YOU SEE something published on our website, that doesn’t mean all our contributors agree with it. Nor does it de facto mean our editorial team endorses it. In the olden days, music journals often published opposing viewpoints. Here at Corpus Christi Watershed, we sometimes follow that tradition. Needless to say, we would never permit views contrary to the holy Catholic Faith—but when it comes to musical matters, we don’t rule out opposing views. If somebody is bothered by disagreements (e.g. disagreements over plainsong rhythm) it might be best to skip those articles. Our volunteers have produced something like 40,000 Pdf scores, Mp3 files, and rehearsal videos. Therefore, there’s plenty of variety for everyone to enjoy on our blog! Over the years, we’ve received beautiful messages of encouragement. These emails mean more to us than you’ll ever know.
Hate Mail • We’ve also received enormous amounts of hate mail. For instance, several years ago, an email we sent said THANK YOU to readers who’d generously given us donations. In response, someone accused us of “attacking people in nursing homes unable to provide financial support for your efforts.” For years, we received acrimonious messages from a gentleman angry our articles refer to the CLOSING HYMN as a RECESSIONAL. According to this person, there’s no such word. He told us countless times: “One can only process to and from the Altar; one cannot recess from the Altar.” And here’s a message someone sent us in response to an article on plainsong interpretation (!) we published:
If you ever gaslight me in any way ever again, it won’t be good. Back off. Hold yourself accountable for all the atrocities that you have committed against humanity. Other than apologize and making the wrong right you can zip it. **** off.
Anyone on the internet knows hate mail “goes with the territory”—and this is nothing compared to what our Savior suffered for our sins. Nevertheless, by reading these examples, perhaps you can understand better why we cherish messages of encouragement sent to us.
Submitting a Guest Article:
We welcome guest submissions! (Remember that not every submission will be published.)
Formatting Your Submission • We have good reasons for our requirements. We want your article to look sensational. You’ve probably noticed our blog entries are usually tiny “works of art”—rather than “cut and paste.” If you employ special formatting, your article might have a greater chance of being rejected. Please avoid any special formatting. By “special formatting,” we mean text that has been aligned to the right or center, funky line spacing, footnotes, endnotes, and/or anything else that won’t display correctly on the various web browsers (and iPhones) that read our blog articles. However, if it is absolutely necessary, you may include a paragraph or so in blockquote: <blockquote></blockquote> Your submission ought to look like this. On our blog, it will actually turn out like this.
Final Reminders • Please send a picture along with your submission. If you don’t have a picture, please indicate what sort of picture you’d like, and we’ll take care of the rest. Using bold letters, underlined text, or colored text is not allowed. If you wish to emphasize a particular idea, careful and skilled writing will suffice. It is allowed to use italics, but you must add them yourself, using the following code: <em></em> Your blog submission ought to be sent to us in one of the following formats:
(a) .TXT document (b) .DOC file (c) .PDF document
Please email your submissions to us: chabanel@ccwatershed.org.
No Taking Down:
Articles’ Permanence • Upon acceptance for publication on the CORPUS CHRISTI WATERSHED website, articles and musical scores are considered a permanent part of our archive and will not be removed. As a 501(c)3, we will not allocate donor-funded resources toward retroactively ‘unpublishing’ content or repairing the broken links such removals would inevitably create across our site. It would also annoy readers to have scores and articles appear only to disappear later.
Suppose you submit an article (or musical score), declaring: “I want you to publish my creation, but only for 896 days. After 896 days have elapsed, I will rescind my permission, and the content must be removed.” We will never accept terms or ‘provisos’ like that. Needless to say, we do reserve the right to remove articles for any reason—or for no reason at all. During our twenty-year history, such a thing has happened (although it’s extremely rare).1
1 For example, we published some articles by a particular musician. Later on, this person was caught engaging in highly inappropriate behavior. As a result, contributions by that person were removed. While we regret publishing them in the first place, we cannot be expected to know the future.
