This Good Friday, in Toronto, the Mendelssohn Choir will be staging a concert (Music for a Sacred Place) in St. Paul's Minor Basilica. The fact that the music is "sacred" irrelevant. Good Friday is the most sombre day of the year. A church is a public place of prayer, distinguishing it qualitatively from other places and similar activities in such other places.
Good Friday is a day for prayer in a church consecrated for liturgical services. We are not even talking here of a church that has been discontinued for liturgy and assigned for other activities, as may be done by the local Ordinary per modum actus.
Starting at 7:30 p..m., one will not hear the sound of the Stations of the Cross - but a choir and the audience cheering and applauding.
Disgusting.
It's about as appropriate as a Klezmer band on Yom Kippur.
ReplyDeleteIt's about as appropriate as a Klezmer band on Yom Kippur.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about the right thing - in the wrong place at the wrong time. I never batted an eyelid when the Priests were in town, nor would had it been another day (much as I know the Church rule on not charging for concerts is ignored). However, I felt that this is something that should not fly under the radar. It is about trying to maintain some sort of sanctity for Good Friday in a church.
ReplyDeleteI myself have listened many times to Wagner's Good Friday Idyll on - yes, Good Friday; privately. But to attend it at a paid concert - and at a church, which at that very time should be given over to devotion? Never.