In one form or another, the headlines all read, “Pope Forbids Guitars” (although my favorite variation appeared in the Irish News : “Pope’s Rock Rap Hits Just the Right Chord”).
But Benedict XVI didn’t really ban guitars, or any other instrument. He just urged that music for the Mass should be modernized within a path already set by Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony. And his comments were off-the-cuff, delivered after a concert held in his honor by the newly appointed director of the Sistine Chapel choir, Domenico Bartolucci. And Fr. Bartolucci wasn’t really newly appointed either: He directed the choir from 1956 to 1997, when he was forced into retirement. But both the pope’s comment and Bartolucci’s reappointment are seen as the beginnings of an effort to reform music at the Vatican and in the Catholic Church at large.
