What Happened to the aLL THE composers Who Were Inspired by the Roman Catholic Church
Before Vatican II Destroyed Serious Church Music?

The Church's own proper music is, of course, the Gregorian chant. However, the Roman Catholic Faith has been an inspiration to polyphonic composers as well. In fact, up until Vatican II there was hardly any major composer who had not written a Mass, a Requiem, a Te Deum, or some other significant Roman liturgical work, usually more than one. And usually the most significant work of a composer was his religious work. One has only to think of Giovanni Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli, Johann Sebastian Bach's High Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Josef Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Hector Berlioz' Requiem, or Ralph Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor.

On January 27, 2007, we celebrate the 251th anniversary of another great Catholic composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His output of Church music, mainly for the Archbishop of Vienna, was copious. He wrote 17 Masses, one Requiem Mass, two Litanies, two Vespers, two sublime Motets: Ave verum corpus and Exsultate, iubilate, five separate Kyries, and 18 short sacred works.

One can well imagine how the cathedral of Vienna resounded with this glorious music, elevating the souls of those present at Mass or Vespers to spiritual sublimity.

It is all the more pathetic that all the Church after Vatican II seems to be able to offer is the insipid campfire ditty Kumbaya. Anyone calling this church the `Catholic' Church, let alone the Roman Catholic Church, truly has to be deaf, dumb, and blind!

Is it a crime in this church to pray to Christ to take now?  Sometimes when a business is no longer in touch with the needs of its clients, it must declare bankruptcy, in order to reorganize its business plan and then re-emerge from under the tremendous load it was carrying which was its debt.

In a similar way, I pray to God the Father to declare bankruptcy on this corrupt church here on earth, and let it get itself back to its core purpose.  Leading the faithful and evangelizing the world is the business of the Church, not telling other nations what they should do.