My 4-year-old son—rascally, chaotic—is better behaved at church than he is anywhere else.
Before you start writing to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints on his parents’ behalf, there are caveats. For this miracle to work, he has to be at our home parish’s 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass. At any other Mass, whether at our parish or elsewhere, his natural restlessness takes over by the responsorial psalm, and he starts slamming a hymnal on the pew or going boneless in the aisle.
There are other parameters that must be met for my son to behave. We have to be sitting as close to the choir as humanly possible. And Mr. John, the bald, bespectacled Boomer who plays the drum set at this Mass, can’t be out sick or on vacation. If all these conditions are in place, our son will ask me to hold him the whole time so he can see the drums and cymbals from an elevated vantage point. He will watch Mr. John—whom our son calls “the priest,” having figured out “the priest” means “important person at church”—for an hour straight.
When we get home, our son will spend a good chunk of the afternoon listening to our cellphone recordings of the 10:30 choir while singing Alleluia and Hosanna and drumming along. He will mimic Mr. John’s distinctive playing style, including the groovy shoulder-roll move he does. He will drum for hours over the course of the week, accompanied only by our bootleg church tracks.
My wife and I have watched this development in our preschooler’s spiritual life with enthusiasm and curiosity. Mostly, we don’t want to jinx it. How did it happen that this rapscallion who pokes and tackles his older sisters with relish has simultaneously become the most devoted churchgoer in the house?
One thing that’s clear to me is that just bringing him to Mass is half the battle. His fascination never would have happened if we had just read him books about liturgical music. Faith, like most traditions, is more “caught” than “taught.” Our son needed to be enchanted—to feel the bass drum boom in his chest and to look at the shiny cymbals up close. The conditions for his spiritual awakening, if a 4-year-old can have one, required us to go to Mass and sit in the sonic equivalent of the splash zone at SeaWorld’s killer whale show. We did nothing fancier or more psychologically savvy than just show up week after week.
My son’s focus on liturgical music has forced me to ask big questions about it too. Our parish has a vibrant music ministry and a highly talented choir director. I have wondered what would happen if the director took the singers, the engaging multilingual music and the drum set with him to another parish. At this point in our family life, we’d follow them wherever they went.
And that raises a larger point: The music we hear at Mass makes a difference. Whether because of financial or human resources, many parishes must settle for music that is less than ideal. Good music takes a large amount of resources and planning and time, yes; but if I were a pastor, it would be the first thing I’d try to get right. It is not always easy to please everyone, but when it works, it works. Our son looks forward to church all week long, and the music is the reason why.
At this point, liturgically traditional readers may be shifting uncomfortably in their seats. A drum set at Mass is a bold choice and not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s fair to wonder if our son is being formed as a Catholic with a sense of the sacred or just becoming a fan of loud music. And I am sympathetic to church-drum-set skepticism because I share it. I’m more of a high church, “smells and bells” aficionado than a praise and worship guy.
Before having kids, my universal declarations about what was “good” or “bad” church music made my wife roll her eyes, but my commitment was steadfast. In an effort to find music that would meet my standards, I joined a choir in a beautiful church building in a different state from where we lived. We held practice before the 6 p.m. Mass; the whole enterprise would take up three or four glorious hours each Sunday.
Once we had our first child, it became instantly clear to both of us that my routine was unsustainable. We found a parish only 20 minutes away from our house (and in our own state) that had what I deemed good music. But by the time our second child arrived, even the 20-minute Sunday commute was too much. We wound up at a smaller community just down the street from our home. It didn’t nourish me liturgically, but I appreciated that our children were welcomed there and that it was a warm, caring place. And in that context, I found that the electric keyboard in the front of the church, instead of an organ or grand piano, didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I could sense my priorities shifting.
When we moved to a new region five years ago and started shopping around for a new parish, our children now old enough to be at least semiconscious at Mass, our son’s love of the Drum Set Parish made our choice an easy one.
If you had told me 10 years ago I’d be going to Drum Set Mass—and not just going, but sitting as close to the drums as possible while filled with relief and gratitude—I would not have believed it. But children make you flexible in ways you never would have imagined. Thanks to my children, I can appreciate, and even enjoy, liturgical music in my not-favorite style. I can acknowledge my preferences are just preferences and not universal truths. I can happily accept with no sarcasm whatsoever the fact that we are part of a big church with plenty of room for people and instruments of every shape, size and volume level. And any aesthetic concerns pale in comparison with the main point: Our son, age 4, has already found a home here. In today’s Catholic Church, that’s a story that folk Mass, chant Mass, jazz Mass and organ Mass fans should be able to make joyful noise about together.