"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Thursday, February 13, 2003 The liturgical-industrial complex
More on Fr. Field's Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, from the Adoremus Bulletin a year ago: New Partnership - FDLC and OCP: Oregon Catholic Press…will be the exclusive publisher for all current and future FDLC publications...The press, an agency of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, is one of country's largest publishers of Church music, "missalettes", and many other "worship aids". The only other diocesan-owned publisher of its scope is Liturgy Training Publications of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The liturgy in this country is influenced far more by the "liturgical-industrial complex" -- by publishing companies and bureaucracies like the FDLC -- than by the bishops or the Holy See. Authoritative documents, such as the Instruction on sacred music, Musicam Sacram, are scarcely known and widely ignored, while two-thirds of the Catholics in America have their ideas of liturgical music formed by the Oregon Catholic Press. Parish liturgy planners are far more likely to get their notion of proper liturgical practice from one of the 400 OCP workshops and LTP's "Sourcebooks" and lectors' workbooks than from a careful reading of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Liturgy or the Roman Missal's rules for the celebration of Mass.
What has liturgy to do with the pursuit of profit? Should the market govern Catholic worship?
As Father Michel predicted nearly 65 years ago, the virtual monopolies in the liturgical publishing industry, and its "unbridled capitalism", has bridled, not promoted, the true reform of the liturgy and Catholic music for worship. And "in growing numbers [the masses] feel the futility of initiative and effort to improve their lot".
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