“I have heard some great sermons throughout my life on truth and on goodness, [but] not enough on beauty yet,” says the celebrated Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan, shown here conducting The Catholic University of America Chorale on April 9, 2025. (Credit: Jem Sullivan/The Catholic University of America)
Washington D.C., Apr 11, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Renowned composer Sir James MacMillan sat down with the director of music at The Catholic University of America (CUA), Peter Kadeli, to discuss how music “helps carry the prayers of the ordinary people to God.”
MacMillan, one of today’s most successful composers, has gathered inspiration from his Scottish heritage and Catholic faith to create his music. He visited CUA as part of the Welcoming Children in Worship project, an initiative focused on encouraging Catholics to explore and utilize different worship resources, including sacred music.
MacMillan began by sharing that music has long been an integral part of his life, even as a young boy. “I began to realize that even in our local Catholic life, music was an important ingredient,” he said. “It wasn’t just added on as an extra. It was actually at the core of our liturgical life.”
MacMillan explained his belief that music must be a part of the Catholic Mass and composers should be encouraged to write liturgical music.
“When a composer writes music for the choir,” he said, “it’s not written as an act of egotism or narcissism. It’s a great responsibility for the composer when he or she writes the liturgy … you are writing to carry the thoughts and prayers and meditations of the people of God, to the altar of God.”
“The Church has to be aware … that music is part of the liturgy,” he continued. “It’s not an add-on for aesthetic values. It’s an absolute central core part of what it means to be a creative Church.”
Sir James MacMillan (right) discusses the topic of “Beauty, Music, and Faith” with Peter Kadeli (left), assistant professor and head of the sacred music program at The Catholic University of America, on April 9, 2025. Credit: Jem Sullivan/The Catholic University of America
Addressing the idea of beauty and how it also connects to music and faith, MacMillan posed the question: “What is beauty?”
“To a Catholic, to the Church,” he answered, “beauty is God.”
He continued: “God is beauty. God is also truth and goodness. And these three attributes, the three attributes that are closely connected, cannot be dissolved and divided. You must have truth, you must have goodness, and you must have beauty.”
“They’re all attending and serving each other. I have heard some great sermons throughout my life on truth and on goodness, [but] not enough on beauty yet. So maybe the Church needs to address that, to inculcate a love of beauty, a search for beauty amongst people of God.”
MacMillan explained how cultural art, in this case music, is “an important part of the search for God.”
“Music is intrinsically a spiritual art form. I don’t say that just as a Catholic believer,” he said.
MacMilliam said music is even called a spiritual art form by “skeptic and agnostic and atheistic music lovers.”
“They also mean something about it, and they’re acknowledging a truth about the very nature of this art form,” he said.
“So there’s something in the music itself that seems to connect to the infinite, that opens a door or a window [to] the divine, to the numinous,” MacMillan concluded.
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The interior and side chapel of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Beloit, Kansas, which will house a first-class relic of St. Padre Pio starting Feb. 11, 2024. / Credit: Alan Holdren
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Lia Garcia, director of Hispanic Ministry at the Archdiocese of Baltimore, speaks at a panel discussion exploring the impact of U.S. Latinos on the 2024 election hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. / Credit: Georgetown University/Art Pittman
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 10, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As a record number of Hispanic Americans will be eligible to vote this November, many are asking what impact Latinos — and Latino Catholics in particular — will have on the 2024 election.
Though acknowledging the great diversity in culture and thought among American Hispanic communities, the panelists posited that the overarching values of family, faith, and care for the poor will factor largely into Latinos’ decisions at the ballot box this November.
“We are big on family, family values … We want to be welcoming and be very attentive to the needs of others,” said Lia Garcia, one of the panelists and the director of Hispanic ministry at the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
“We throw big parties, we eat a lot of food,” she added, laughing. “Everybody is invited to our gatherings, so our faith teaches us that we are built to be in communion in relationship with God and in relationship with one another.”
Hispanics don’t fit into a box
Speaking with CNA after the panel, Garcia said that in her work with Hispanic Catholics, she has heard “a lot of anxiety about what is going to happen” and “about who is going to win” the presidency.
She said that many Hispanic voters “feel pinned” between conflicting priorities held by Trump and Harris.
“They feel that they have to choose between the issue of abortion and defending immigrants,” she said. “Latino Catholics are very much for life. You can see that in our big families. But they also have a concern about the immigration issues. Even if immigration doesn’t directly affect them because now they’re documented, but they know someone, they know a family member, they know a colleague … it’s really scary to people how Latinos are portrayed to the rest of the world as criminals.”
A member of the audience asks a question during a panel discussion exploring the impact of U.S. Latinos on the 2024 election hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. Credit: Georgetown University/Art Pittman
Hispanic voters have historically favored Democrats in national and local elections. The panelists noted, however, that Republicans have been faring better with Latinos in recent elections and polls, giving credence to predictions that the Hispanic vote is no longer a monolith.
Recent polling on Hispanics backs up this theory. Newsweek reported this week that while Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is still leading among Hispanics by a wide margin, 56% to 38%, her lead has shrunk from the 59% Joe Biden held in 2020 and even further from the 66% held by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Instead of loyalty to a party, panelists said Hispanics appear motivated mostly by their family values and concern for the poor and downtrodden.
Father Agustino Torres, a priest with the New York-based Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, said that in his ministry to young Latinos he has witnessed that Hispanic youth “have this fire” for caring for the downtrodden, especially for poor migrants.
“Sometimes we’re American Catholics rather than Catholic Americans. We allow our politics to inform our faith rather than our faith informing our politics,” Torres said. “But this is the reality: I’m responsible for you and you’re responsible for me. If I see someone falling down on the sidewalk, like, I am obligated because of my baptism, and this is a good thing … This is the Gospel.”
Father Agustino Torres, a priest and member of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, pointed out that
“sometimes we’re American Catholics rather than Catholic Americans. We allow our politics to inform our faith rather than our faith informing our politics.” Credit: Peter Pinedo/CNA
“When we teach this, they are just like, ‘yes,’ and it unites their worlds, family, faith, outreach,” he said.
To be clear, like most Americans, U.S. Hispanics are most concerned with the economy. EWTN published a poll of U.S. Catholics in September that found that most of the country’s Hispanic Catholics — 56.8% — said the economy (including jobs, inflation, and interest rates) is the most important issue deciding their vote this election cycle.
The next-highest priorities were border security/immigration at 10.5%, abortion at 9.7%, health care at 5.3%, and climate change at 5%.
Yet, according to panelist Santiago Ramos, a Catholic philosopher at the Aspen Institute, even when it comes to their approach to economic issues, Hispanics do not easily fit into the political right or left.
Ramos said Hispanics challenge the “nationalist, right-wing” as well as progressivist categorizations.
“There is a community aspect to our existence, family-oriented, dare I call it socially conservative aspect to our existence that doesn’t always mesh with mainstream liberal institutions,” he explained. “So, there are all sorts of ways that we pop up in American politics and force people to see things they don’t want to see.”
Among new voters, Hispanics loom large
Aleja Hertzler-McCain, a reporter on Latino faith and American Catholicism for Religion News Service, pointed out that half of the new voters who have become eligible to vote since 2020 are Hispanic.
According to the Pew Research Center, there will be 36.2 million eligible Hispanic voters this year, up almost 4 million from 2020. While noting that U.S. Hispanics historically have low voter turnout, Hertzler said the sheer volume of new Hispanic voters could have a “big impact” on the election.
Whatever the outcome of the election, Garcia said she is “really excited” to see the Hispanic community have its voice heard in the democratic process.
“I can’t wait to see that. I’m really excited about the election for that particular reason,” she said.
“The beauty of our culture,” Garcia went on, “is we can draw from our own experiences growing up with big families, big celebrations, and also with our faith that draws us to relationship with one another. And I think that is where we can sense how [concern for] the common good is not only something that comes from God but comes from our culture as well.”
There is much to be said in response to Mr MacMillan’s remarks. On a practical level, music should enhance and aid worship, not inhibit it. Unfortunately, music is often inhibiting or irrelevant. 1) Its stylisticlanguage and appeal may be purely secular. (Glory and Praise, with its flavor of ’60s sing-alongs, is still in use after 50+ years.)
2) It may be liturgical out of place. E.g., a Marian hymn is not appropriate to the reception of communion.
3) The use of instruments deserves much more thought than it gets. Does harmonizing Gregorian chant with triadic organ accompaniment somehow improve it? Does having an overly loud organ (often of dubious quality or in a dubious state of repair) swamp a choir’s and assistants’ attempt to sing a Gloria or Creed add to the experiencing or offering of the Mass?
4) Is the 4-hymn framework suited to the structure of the Mass and optimal for the involved participation of the laity?
I am not Scrooge. I am thrilled to hear carefully prepared Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, and masterpieces since, right up to and including the best of MacMillan and his fellow composers, not excluding (often in non-liturgical contexts) the repertory of concerted choral works. Please take this comment as supplementing, rather than taking exception to, Mr. MacMillan’s welcome thoughts.
There is much to be said in response to Mr MacMillan’s remarks. On a practical level, music should enhance and aid worship, not inhibit it. Unfortunately, music is often inhibiting or irrelevant. 1) Its stylisticlanguage and appeal may be purely secular. (Glory and Praise, with its flavor of ’60s sing-alongs, is still in use after 50+ years.)
2) It may be liturgical out of place. E.g., a Marian hymn is not appropriate to the reception of communion.
3) The use of instruments deserves much more thought than it gets. Does harmonizing Gregorian chant with triadic organ accompaniment somehow improve it? Does having an overly loud organ (often of dubious quality or in a dubious state of repair) swamp a choir’s and assistants’ attempt to sing a Gloria or Creed add to the experiencing or offering of the Mass?
4) Is the 4-hymn framework suited to the structure of the Mass and optimal for the involved participation of the laity?
I am not Scrooge. I am thrilled to hear carefully prepared Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, and masterpieces since, right up to and including the best of MacMillan and his fellow composers, not excluding (often in non-liturgical contexts) the repertory of concerted choral works. Please take this comment as supplementing, rather than taking exception to, Mr. MacMillan’s welcome thoughts.
No link to the entire address?