Free music is always good, so on Sunday we went to hear the Westminster Brass at the Lutheran church down the street.  I'm so glad we did!  The first piece they did was "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty": a glorious fanfare, then the grand boom of the organ, and then singing.  I love to sing, and I love especially to sing in church, and I really especially love singing in church when everyone else is singing too.  A hundred people in the church, all standing up and singing at the top of their voices!  It was so grand that "grand" is a poor and paltry word that fails to convey the sheer crashing massive grandiosity of it.  Wow.  (Even if they got some of the words wrong...)

By way of contrast, on Friday night we were at our home parish for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, part of our usual Lenten program.  About fifty people were there, so when we sang the opening hymn, and then "Tantum Ergo", you'd think we would have been able to produce a pretty good volume of sound.  However, as is usually the case, only about five people actually sang; the rest mumbled tunelessly into their shirts, if they made any noise at all.  I sang out with my usual gusto, because hey, if you're going to sing, you ought to sing, especially in glory and praise of the Lord--however, what works well when you're standing in the midst of a bunch of people gust-fully singing is much more sore-thumbish in a mediumly empty hollow echoing church where most of the people are apparently whispering sweet nothings to their sheet music.

This was the more ironic, in that the lecturer for the evening had just spoken on hymn-singing and the importance thereof.  "Singing isn't like praying," he said, "it is praying."  I couldn't agree more, sir!

So why don't Catholics sing?  Our parish in particular, with its Anglican roots (something I'd like to talk about more at some other time), ought to really get into the singing of the hymns.  It seems patently obvious to me that singing is a vital way in which we give glory to God--it's not a time-out during the middle of the mass, it's not a performance on the part of the choir, it's not a chance for you to kick back and think about the football game or work out your schedule for the week.  It is integral.

I don't understand it, and I don't have any answers.  It's just weird to me.  The people at the Lutheran church weren't any different in kind than the folks who attend my parish: doctors, lawyers, teachers, phone center workers ... you know, people?  So what is it about them that makes them willing to sing out, while the Catholics clamp shut their jaws and sit mum?