The correct answer is clearly and emphatically in the negative. In this excellent article by Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker, from the February 2004 issue of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, we get a taste of the knowledge and insight from our dear friends at St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum.
The authors hit on some very key points in trying to overcome the sometimes substantial roadblocks which have been erected in the way of moving parishes to re-discover the Church's patrimony of liturgical chant. Here's a sample:
Many people resist recovery efforts because of a visceral opposition to chant, an emotion stemming from rigid ideological commitments. Others are less strident. Many parish musicians and liturgists are inundated by contemporary music settings offered by publishing houses that specialize in marketing to parishes, and the chant tradition just goes unnoticed. Other musicians are simply unconvinced that ancient music has any real contribution to make to modern parish liturgy. In still other cases, parishes just don't know where to begin, and, fearing the unknown, they stick with the tiresome standard fare.The value of chant as art, par excellence, is undeniable. But if left in the museum, it risks dying of suffocation; as do we, in our impoverishment for having ignored its life-giving spirit for so long.
The pure echoes of the chant can touch the hearts and minds of all who are fortunate enough to sing or listen to it. Conceived in humility and expertly and lovingly crafted over centuries, chant is our heritage, and should be allowed to live and breathe as it was intended, in liturgy. It ought not to be relegated to the concert hall where its beauty can be only half realized, as there it can point to no mystery beyond itself.And, to the dismay of the faint-hearted, the best way to begin is not by trying a little piece here and there, as if the sacred liturgy were a cut-and-paste collage.
For chant to make its full impression (and this goes for music of any style or period) it needs to be sung within the context of a musically integrated liturgy. It makes no sense to impose one style of music upon another within the same liturgy, and expect each isolated bit to lead the faithful to an understanding of the greater mystery playing out on the altar before them. Beginning the Mass with chant can be breathtaking and mysterious, but if contemporary music dominates thereafter, the sense of timelessness and tradition evaporates.[Via St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum]
