Daily Inspiration Quote by Francis Arinze

Arinze’s line is doing the quiet work of detonating a pious assumption: that “church music” has an approved sound, and that approval just happens to line up with European instruments and tastes. By invoking “dogma,” he reaches for the Church’s highest-level category of unchangeable truth and then flatly denies that this preference exists. The move is strategic. If it’s not dogma, it’s custom; if it’s custom, it’s negotiable. He’s relocating the argument from “the faith requires this” to “someone got used to this.”

The pairing matters. Organ and harmonium aren’t neutral; they carry the aura of cathedral architecture, colonially exported liturgy, and the idea that reverence is best expressed through sustained, orderly tones. “The drum,” by contrast, is coded as bodily, communal, and in many contexts (especially African ones) wrongly suspected of being “pagan” or too close to dance. Arinze doesn’t defend drumming as trendy inclusivity; he reframes it as a simple question of theological permissions. If the instrument can serve prayer, it can belong.

The subtext is pastoral and political at once: he’s clearing space for inculturation without letting it be dismissed as liturgical rebellion. Coming from a senior Catholic clergyman, the statement also functions as cover for local communities and clergy who want worship to sound like the people in the pews, not like a museum of European solemnity. It’s a reminder that tradition is often just power with good acoustics.