introduced me to a wonderful bit of parody that begins:
Awake from your slumber!
Arise from your sleep!
The homily's over!
It wasn't too deep!
It brings to mind the old joke that the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist is that you can reason with a terrorist. Jokes are one of the last refuges of a people who have little power over The System. The Soviet Union was a wellspring of this sort of humor, as were, of course, the Jews of the Borscht Belt era. People who can't do a lot about the Powers That Be can still laugh at them.
So I thought it was a healthy sign when the mysterious domination of our hymnals by third-rate drivel was lampooned by the late, lamented
Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas. I neither know nor care who decides what twaddle we have to murmur through Mass, but I did appreciate the bleat of satire while it lasted.
There are a few things I find vile, loathsome, and dreadful in contemporary liturgy. I think much of the Glory and Praise drivel is essentially ordered toward encouraging what Amy Welborn calls the "Church of Aren't We Fabulous" to worship itself.
