Looking for a New Parish—and Crossing Some Off the List

Mr DiCamillo discusses trying to find a new Parish and attending the Vigil of Christmas, only to hear a "hymn" with lyrics about sexuality and questioning one's faith.

From Crisis

By Kevin T. DiCamillo

When the last bastion of the truly sacred in the world allows the profane to permeate its structures, art, and music, it does a grave disservice to the faithful.

Twenty-six years ago, Niagara Falls, New York, had 14 Roman Catholic parishes. However, due to the fact that the city loses about 1,000 citizens a year (death and a mass-migration to southern climes), as well as a sex scandal that has had a stranglehold on the Diocese of Buffalo since 2002, the number has dwindled to just five full-time parishes. Since my parish was one of the latest to close, I’ve been trying to find a new church. That search took a one-two punch recently.

On the vigil for Christmas, I went to the oldest church in the city—founded by St. John Neumann himself. One of the reasons I favor this particular parish is that it is where my parents now worship (their church closed back in 2007). Also, it has a pipe organ and a choir that really belts out the hymns from the choir loft.

However, during Holy Communion, as I was making a Spiritual Communion, there was a solo, to the accompaniment of a piano. It sounded quite beautiful, and for about a minute I could not quite place the tune. Then the singing started: “I heard there was a sacred chord/ That David played and it pleased The Lord…”

Since I am a huge fan of Leonard Cohen, it didn’t take long to figure out that the Communion song was his signature hit, “Hallelujah,” from the 1984 album Various Positions—though the song did not really take on a life of its own until John Cale’s version in 1991, followed by Jeff Buckley’s take in 1995, and then almost everyone who has been on The Voice or America’s Got Talent, and, perhaps the nadir, the movie Shrek. In 2021, a nearly two-hour documentary on the song, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song, was released—in which Cohen himself (who died in 2016) said that the song “Hallelujah” needed “to go away for a while”—due to the fact that it had become so overplayed.

But the problem with playing Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the Christmas Vigil is much deeper than its ubiquity. First, it is not a liturgical song. Second, there’s the opportunity cost of singing a secular song on the eve of Our Lord’s birth to, say, any number of traditional Christmas Carols (as we once called them): “What Child Is This?” “Adeste Fideles,” or even “Away in a Manger.” 
Setting all of the above to the side for a moment, “Hallelujah” is particularly inappropriate in that it is a song not only about the sexual act but the refusal of oral sex on behalf of the female participant in the song. (Does no one bother to even read the lyrics before singing this in a church on Christmas Eve?) Yes, “Hallelujah” is a beautifully-sounding piece, and its lyrics do draw in everyone from King David to Bathsheba to Samson to The Holy Ghost—but that does not make it a liturgical hymn. Anyone who has listened to various versions of it knows that it is an overtly sexual song—which is fine as far as that goes, but not for Christmas Mass. Finally, the line “Maybe there’s a God above” is not exactly what I would call an edifying lyric for wavering Christians who have been away from Mass for a while but have come home for Christmas.

So, the next week—on the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God—I went to another church, the one where I had been baptized back when Nixon was president. It was snowing—which, in late December in Niagara Falls, is nothing new. Actually, it’s a fact of life to be expected. This was not the kind of snow that provokes a “winter storm advisory” or “winter storm warning,” let alone a blizzard; it was just cold, windy, and snowy. But that was all it took for the priest to decide to truncate the Mass—even though it was only 4:00 and not even particularly dark out.

The odd thing, in addition to acting like it had never snowed here before, was the way the Mass was chopped up (and down): the Gloria was omitted, as were the Credo and the Homily. However, not only was all of the singing retained—which, if the point is to get the faithful home as soon as possible before a storm turns into a blizzard, would be the first thing to nix—at the end of the Mass, the pastor insisted on all of us joining him in a rousing, and extended, chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” Coincidentally, this song, like Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” is not a liturgical hymn either.

And then, as a sort of encore, he added the Solemn Blessing for The New Year, which is completely optional—unlike the triad of the Gloria, the Creed, and the Homily on a Solemnity. Finally, he jokingly warned us at the end that we should not “get used to this half-hour Mass.” Which, in a strange way, was somewhat reassuring.

Of course, anyone in the pew can be a critic of the liturgy—from mispronunciations of the readings, to celebrants confusing which Eucharistic Prayer they started with, to singing the wrong verse of a liturgical hymn. As my late Aunt Theresa used to say, “We must allow for human error,” which is good, sound, Christian advice. 

Still, there’s something to be said for preparing well for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. After all, this is not just one among many liturgical expressions. It is the re-presentation of the sacrifice Jesus made for us. To allow the singing of pop songs, however well-written, and to remove a triad of pillars of the Mass (Gloria, Creed, Homily) is worse than just being sloppy, it is a form of disrespect not only to the Mass qua Mass but to the faithful who are there to—as we are constantly being reminded by Vatican II purists—“actively participate” in the celebration.

Alas, my search for a new parish continues…