The new father in Purdue Korean community would like to see us liven up things. He mentioned
about having more lively songs for mass and more recreational activities. We should comply
with his request, but we should also be careful not to overstep the boundaries laid down by our
church fathers of old, and not forget the advantages of many unique appeals rising from our
church tradition. To perform a popular religious songs, we would need greater skills in our
singing, for the rhythm and melodies are prone to be unpredictable, and without a set of
instrument comprising of Guitar, Bass Guitar, and drums, it wouldn't sound that good.
Anyway, how can we increase our numbers? I had been actively participating in Catholic
Church Organizations for more than 10 years and have been part of more than 7 church's choir
and numerous other church organizations' activities and came with conclusion that MORE
STRICTLY THE ORGANIZATION OBSERVE THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TRADITION, MORE
NUMEROUS ITS PARTICIPANTS. The opposite, MORE THE ORGANIZATION DEVIATES FROM THE
ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION, LESS BECOMES ITS PARTICIPANTS, has also been observed by
myself. Using popular culture and contemporary music has shown to be a quick fix: you can
expect to solve problems and briefly increase your membership once or twice, but eventually
your organization will becomes much weaker through various side effects from this. Not many
organization successfully recover from this side-tracking. If you think about it there is many
possible reason for this.
1. Biblical: In the Old Testament, we hear of Jewish kings who received various blessing when
following the tradition laid out by Moses, while those who follows the popular ways not related to
the Moses tradition made people suffer.
2. Marketing: If we consider the organizations as products and people as customers, we
should match customer expectations in regards to the organizations. Being Catholic
organization, people naturally suppose the purpose of the organizations to be one that
promotes Catholic belief and adheres to the Catholic faith.
3. Managements: As long as number of participants is limited, the organizations cannot satisfy
every needs of the people. It should concentrate on its perceived strengths to maximize the
output, and best way for a religious institute to maximize its output is to pray a lot, the easiest
and most convincing of all activities.
4. Social: The recreational and social possibilities of religious organization in inherently
inhibited by its dogma and prescribed procedures. Promoting a Catholic organization as a
means to widen social interaction will eventually become self-defeating, for having a religion will
give more secular limitations than possibilities to a person.
5. Entertainment: With all the possible entertainments available in the world, a Catholic
organizations's entertainment potential is very small in comparison to any entertainment group.
Furthermore, people's expectations will not be on entertainment but Traditional Catholic
experience. The only possible entertainment venue is to explore the types of art not typically
available in secular world and best way to explore this is to preserve old traditional Catholic
arts.
6. Psychological: When a person is involved with a group, the person usually desires the group
to improve in a direction different from any other group the person has ties to. If a Catholic group
evolves in manners vary similar to other groups, it will lose its uniqueness appeal and may bore
people who has seen it and done that in some place else.
7. Time: The tradition is there for it has some qualities beneficial to the survival of Catholic
Church. The comtemporary or popular ways are unproven, therefore risky, and, since the 20th
century culture is built on the premiss that majority will be experience things passively, not
actively, those ways are prone to be difficult. Just ask the choir members who has seen the
music scores for the song 'Voices That Challenge.' The proper performance of the song,
according to the scores, will take more people, instruments and much better timing that
performing William Byrd's Ave Verum. 'Voices That Challenge' is much longer to sing in its
entirety as well.
What worries me is that most of my training is that of traditional music and it may be inadequate
to properly perform songs like that sung in St. Tom's. We would need more rooms to put those
instruments in and find people skilled in the instruments. These are some of the difficulties that
will be introduced by trying our hands (our voices) at contemporary popular religious songs
and I feel myself to be insufficient. I hope that Purdue Catholic Community will become more
prosperous.
Dominus vobis cum,
Wontaek Ignatius Ryu
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