Politics & Power Quote by Richard Morris

A little snobbery is doing a lot of work here, and it’s calibrated for a church in transition. When Richard Morris complains about the “democratic and pedestrian character” of the “new Mass,” he isn’t just griping about taste; he’s diagnosing a shift in authority. “Democratic” is not a compliment in this clerical register. It signals a liturgy becoming more accessible, more legible to ordinary worshippers, and therefore less tightly controlled by educated clergy and inherited tradition. “Pedestrian” doubles down: the new service walks on the ground where people live instead of hovering in the elevated air of Latin, chant, and ritual density.

The kicker is the verb “invite.” Morris implies the problem isn’t merely that bad music has appeared, but that the reformed service structurally encourages it. Once worship is redesigned to be participatory and easily grasped, the aesthetic bar drops; the hymn becomes a catchy moral tune. “Ditties that pass for hymns” is a surgical insult: “ditties” suggests triviality, sing-song simplicity, even commercial entertainment, while “pass for” frames contemporary hymnody as counterfeit currency circulating because the institution has changed its standards.

Contextually, Morris is speaking from the 19th-century Anglican world where liturgical reform, congregational singing, and the broader democratization of religion were reshaping what “reverence” looked and sounded like. The subtext is anxiety about modernity: if worship starts sounding like the street, the street may end up setting the terms of belief.