Liturgical music is “too often merely serviceable, barely imaginative, and almost entirely a matter of patching things through from one cadence to the next.”

As Catholics, basically, we’ve already won the art contest. Any historical survey of visual or musical art makes it perfectly clear that the Church is peerless. In order to maintain “top chef” status, the Church in its art simply has to basically not ruin its own reputation.

It is worth asking whether we are currently meeting the standards that have been set over the two millennia. How is our drawing in the churches, for example? How is our sculpture? Do our churches show a concern for proportion and shape? How are we doing with verbal art, in hymnody?

And of course, how is our music?

She’s not looking to blame anyone, but says ” our devotion to God should involve the highest aspirations possible, particularly in our art.”

When art is excellent,she says, it “has the power to make one Christian’s devotion accessible to another..”

All based on the idea that worship should energize and comfort us.