'Bah! You Kids Today & Your Rock und Roll!'

'Vhen I vas a Nazi youth, ve didn't have none of your modern "electrical gueetars" und "tam-bore-eens"! Ve had eunuchs und they screamed UND VE LOVED IT!'

Pope Starts the Chant - Stop the Pop

from Sydney Morning Herald

Pope Benedict has called for an end to electric guitars and modern music being played in church and has demanded a return to traditional choirs and Gregorian chants.

The Catholic Church has been experimenting with new ways of celebrating the Mass to try to attract more people.

The recital of the Mass set to guitars has grown in popularity in Italy. In Spain, the Mass has been set to flamenco music. And in the United States, the Electric Prunes produced a "psychedelic" album called Mass in F Minor.

However, the use of guitars and tambourines has annoyed Pope Benedict, who has a love of classical music.

"It is possible to modernise holy music," the Pope said at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci, the director of music for the Sistine Chapel.

"But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."

The shift to more traditional forms of music comes as Australian bishops have voted in principle to accept a new English translation of the Mass that the Vatican favours as being more faithful to the original Latin text.

The argument about music is part of a wider debate over whether to return to a Latin Mass. If Latin Masses are not reintroduced into common practice, few Catholics will know the words to the Latin Gregorian chants that the Pope advocates.

The Latin Mass was restricted in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, on the grounds that it was deterring worshippers from going to Church.

Pope Benedict's conservatism is becoming more apparent, a year after his election.