The day the music died cannot come quick enough for Pope Benedict XVI. He has called for an end to popular music in churches.
“It is possible to modernise holy music”, his Holiness broadmindedly conceded, “but it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music.”
Since the reforms of the 1960s (when the Second Vatican Council curtailed the use of Latin), Catholic parishes and dioceses have increasingly conducted mass with new types of music, in an effort to draw the crowds.
