Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Morris

“Once the Mass is restored to its rightful place” is less a neutral hope than a battle plan dressed as pastoral common sense. Richard Morris, a 19th-century clergyman writing in an era when worship style doubled as identity politics, frames liturgy as a natural hierarchy: the Mass belongs at the center, and everything else (including music) should orbit it. “Rightful” does heavy lifting here. It implies the present order is not merely different, but illegitimate - a displacement that needs correction.

The second half is the clever lever: “we will again see choirs being developed.” Choirs aren’t just an aesthetic bonus; they’re evidence of ecclesial health, discipline, and shared formation. Morris is arguing that musical culture is downstream from sacramental culture. Restore the Mass, and you restore the conditions that make demanding, collective art possible: regular ritual, trained voices, stable institutions, and a theology that values reverence over spontaneity.

The subtext also signals a critique of contemporary worship trends that likely felt to him thin, wordy, or overly congregational in the plainest sense. In many Protestant settings, choirs could be seen as ornamental or even suspiciously “high church.” Morris flips that: choirs are not frills but fruits. It’s an argument about authority and continuity disguised as a prediction about music. If you want beauty, he’s saying, you must first accept an ordering principle - and that principle is the Mass.