by Fred Moleck
Wedding Doves
A few weeks ago, I played an old-fashioned Catholic wedding. It was the music that made it old-fashioned.
Before I go any further, I must let you know that I was shanghaied into playing the stuff that I have screamed the loudest about—you know, things like “Sunrise, Sunset” and “One Hand, One Heart” and Weber’s “All I Ask of You.”
It is the same ranting we’ve all gone through when inappropriate music is requested.
This stuff has no place in a Roman Catholic wedding! It doesn’t matter that it’s played before Mass; it’s connected to the liturgy, and that’s reason enough not to use it! Use it at the reception, but don’t use it in church!
Alas, I had no choice.
Now that you are completely horrified and are convinced that I’ve sold out everything holy and appropriate and tasteful, and before you think that I’ve already fallen into total dementia since retirement, let me explain.
I was hired by the two singers who built the program. I personally talked with the bride, and she requested great things, e.g., Handel’s Water Music, Clarke’s “Trumpet Voluntary”—all classical standards.
When I joined the singers for rehearsal a few days before the wedding date, it was then I discovered that most of the music programmed was stuff that was popular in the 1970s and since then fallen by the liturgical wayside—except in this little western Pennsylvania town.
I expressed my dismay, to which they responded, “But Father approved it.”
It was a no-win situation. I was not about pulling the rug out from the singers and the bride and groom. I was to be pastorally sensitive. But, I felt a right to express my “harrumph.”
Well, the oldies were sung, and the congregation was so obviously moved that they found it impossible to verbally participate in the ritual.
It all sounded like insecure muttering from my gallery space. Spectator liturgy is still alive and well in some pockets of American parish life.
There was an experience, however, that I had never witnessed, though I had heard about.
It was the dove launch.
While the guests were leering at the couple stationed on the top steps of the church’s entrance, the wedding planner was yelling the importance of the symbol of the white dove—the symbol of peace, the white purity of their graceful plumage.
(The dove’s, not the bride’s.)
Then he began the countdown. 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Liftoff!
Then, I knew I had just seen it all. As I said earlier, I had read about such a practice, but never really believed that it happens.
Horrified at the animal handling, I wondered where the animal rights people were whenever we needed them.
And then I wondered, Where do the doves go after the release? Will they be part of a dove pie at the reception?
I’m surprised that in the Order of the Wedding Service bulletin there was no disclaimer saying, “No animals were hurt in this production.”
I didn’t stick around after the dove launch, so I don’t know if any rice was thrown, or bubbles blown, or money tossed at the nuptial couple.
But doves? Well, I guess it’s better than ospreys or pelicans.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net