Hello everyone! I’m a college student studying how religion is intertwined with bodily experiences, and one of my finals is going to be focused on how music interacts with Catholicism. I’ve created a survey on the topic if anyone has a few minutes to fill it out! It’s about ten open-ended questions- feel free to answer with as much or as little detail as you’d like.
https://forms.gle/uixyzzhLppkHo43W8
Thank you 
I took the survey. I don’t usually think about physical aspects of religious music (or other music, though I mentioned that some other music is intentionally funny and makes me laugh).
I hope my responses did not come off as condescending. I used to attend a non-Denominational Church and I used to think I could make the Catholic Church to be more like them, but as my Faith matured, I began to understand the Sacred Liturgy and how it is not the same thing as a non-Denominational Praise & Worship Service. I have no problem with Catholic Christians doing a P&W Service outside of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass or going to Popular Christian Music Concerts/Festival (I do both, in addition to the Sacred Mass).
I once attended an event where Christian College Students gave talks geared on the subject of Worship. There were Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and other Students from surrounding Colleges at this event. The one that stood out to me was a Lutheran girl who wanted to explain how you could have an entire Liturgy using U2 Songs and which songs might go where. Though I like the thought experiment, I do not think this is a good idea. And I’m not even saying that some U2 Songs would not be worse than some of the songs from the 60’s and 70’s that we still sing in Church today (a few of which I would love to have removed from our hymnals or given the hymn number 666, because you ever notice that we never sing the song with this number? You know how hotels often skip rooms ending in the number 13?)
I think Christian Music done well is good. And not all Christian Music is appropriate for all occasions. If it is a Holy Mass, then the music should convey both beauty and truth. If it has one without the other, then skip it! : )
And if the music is meant to be played on radio, concert venues, and on movie soundtracks, then make it entertaining. Christian Music in the 90’s did a pretty good job of keeping these lines drawn and there was some really great Christian Music coming out during that time. Then when church-planting and seeker-friendly Churches exploding in the 2000’s the lines were blurred. And with it, what is perceived as true has also been blurred and distorted.