Repost: Catholic Organists and Singers in Protestant Churches

[428] Qu. Dear Rev. Sir: In a Conference lately held we disagreed as to the licity [sic], under any circumstances, of a Catholic acting as organist for any Protestant service. We agreed to submit the question to the Ecclesiastical Review.

Can a Catholic, in conscience, act as a salaried organist or as singer in a Jewish synagogue or Protestant church, i. e., as such during what they call their divine service?

It was declared that no Priest, Bishop or Pope could grant said permission under any circumstances.

Resp. Whilst as Catholics we are not forbidden honorably to assist Protestants, Jews or Pagans when they stand in need of our service, nor to earn our daily bread by serving them in honest employment—the positive divine law forbids all conscious and direct participation in heretical worship. This is done by playing the organ or singing in the religious service of those who deny the revealed truth of Christ as manifested through its only legitimate channel, the Catholic Church. In case of most sects the very term "Protestant," accepted by them as their religious party-name, is an unconscious admission of their denial of the Catholic teaching as emanating from God. Individual Protestants may not realize this fact; they may be, as we say, "in good faith;" [sic] nevertheless they have attached themselves to a wrong or defective system of interpreting the truth in which God commands us to worship Him. Catholics who are supposed to know and realize the fact that they are in possession of the true faith, cannot consent under any pretext to participate in such false worship without denying implicitly the faith which [429] they are pledged to maintain uncorrupted at the risk of their lives.

What is said here of Protestants is true of Jews and of all other sects separated from the one true Church which, like an open book, is accessible to all who will approach and examine her teaching without malice or prejudice.

What the Catholic believes on this subject to-day is precisely the same as that which the early Christians believed when they shed their blood as martyrs rather than worship in the pagan faith; or which the Jews believed before the coming of Christ, as is witnessed by Eleazar and the Maccabees, who preferred to suffer torture and death sooner than participate in a religious worship which they knew to be false, although there may have been men who belonged to it in good faith.

If there could be any doubt as to the duty of Catholics in this respect, it would be dispelled by the following declaration of the sacred tribunal which acts as the ordinary legitimate interpreter of Catholic disciplinary law. (Cf. Collectan., n. 1854.)

Ex Litt. S. C. de Prop. Fide 8 Jul. 1889, (ad Archiep. Marianopolit.)
"Quidam . . . istius archi-dioecensis petierat facultatem pulsandi in diebus festis organa in templis protestantium ad victum sibi procurandum. S. Congregatio super precibus, uti supra, hoc edidit decretum Fer IV. die 19 elapsi Junii:
Illicitum esse in templis haereticorum, cum ibi falsum cultum exercent, organum pulsare. . . . Quod decretum SS. D. N. Leo XIII eadem die ratum ha buit et confirmavit."

It must not be forgotten, however, that playing or singing in churches or houses which are used for Protestant worship is not quite the same as playing or singing at Protestant worship. [N.B. This is the part of the reason that early American Catholics could share the same church building with Protestants, having Mass at one time, and the Protestant service at a different time.]

Nor is every gathering of non-Catholics for purposes of moral culture, on Sundays, a religious worship in the sense that it excludes or opposes the Catholic teaching of Christ's church.

This [sic] it may be useful for confessors to remember, not because Catholics are in any way to be encouraged to associate [430] themselves with any movement which will cast a doubt upon their thorough and sincere fidelity to the one true Church of Christ, but because circumstances may bring a Catholic unwittingly into associations which look like a denial of faith without being such in reality. In these cases prudence and discretion will counsel and lead a person out of the danger, where blind and mechanical zeal would forthwith condemn absolution under morally unchangeable conditions.

We discussed a case of this kind, not long ago, in the Review.

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Source: "Catholic Organists and Singers in Protestant Churches," American Ecclesiastical Review 15 (October 1896): 428–430.