Few are welcome in this place

Jonathan Day is a consultant and writer; he is also the chairman of the parish council of the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception (Farm Street) in central London.

Remember Bishop Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin? He told his diocese that communion under both kinds would be limited to “the Chrism Mass, the Feast of Corpus Christi, … the bride and groom at a Nuptial Mass, and [to] those so allergic to wheat that they cannot tolerate even low-gluten hosts.”
Now he has written a column in his diocesan newspaper on beauty and truth in the liturgy.
Like many essays of a similar stripe, this one starts out positive but turns to the negative. After a quick swipe at Lady Gaga – and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to bring her work into the liturgy – the column zooms in on the Marty Haugen song, “All Are Welcome.” You can find its lyrics online, but the bit that the bishop finds offensive is the chorus:
All are welcome, all are welcome,
All are welcome in this place.
He says to us that this cannot possibly be “appropriate-for-liturgical-use” because the chorus is not true and hence not beautiful.
And why is it untrue? In Bishop Morlino’s words, because “People who have little interest in doing God’s Will don’t fit at the liturgy.” Very well, then, let us bring back the ostiarii, in case someone who has little interest in doing God’s will turns up in the narthex. Have these visitors committed sexual impurity? Have they even thought about doing so? Out with them. Has this man called his neighbor “fool”? There’s the exit door. Has this woman been greedy, loving money more than she loves her neighbor? Sorry, not welcome here.
Eventually, the saintly Bishop and a few of his true followers – a very few – can celebrate Mass on their own, perhaps rewriting Haugen’s words:
Few are welcome, few are welcome,
Few are welcome in this place.


See the rest of the column at Pray Tell