The Catholic Times

The vital role of music in the life of the Church was underscored in Columbus last week, when several hundred Catholic music teachers assembled for a meeting of the Ohio unit of the National Catholic Music Education Association.

Bishop Ready celebrated Pontifical Mass in St. Joseph Cathedral last Friday to open the convention. After the Mass he reminded the teachers that congregational singing should be the ordinary practice, not an extraordinary occurrence.

Referring to the singing of the Mass by 700 school children, he said it was only what the Holy Father had stressed in his recent encyclical on the liturgy.

He suggested to the children that they sing in church on Sunday when the choir sings, setting a good example for the rest of the congregation.

In his sermon at the Mass, the Very Rev. James J. McLarney, O.P., of St. Joseph Priory, Somerset, pointed out that while the purpose of the convention was to make better music teachers of Catholics, "we come here with a more fundamental purpose - to make better Catholics of our music teachers."

Father McLarney urged the teachers to "sing and understand the Lord in the unspotted way."

"If we would perfect praise in the mouths of babes," he told them, "we must become ourselves little children, or we cannot enter into that kingdom where the harmonies of angels are hushed at the Magnificat of an Immaculate Queen."