The Music: Chuck Mangione’s “Freinds and Love” concert, recorded here in Rochester at the Eastman Theatre, 1970. The single it came off of that album, was called “Hill Where The Lord Hides”, which is to this day one of the most powerful records I’ve ever heard in my entire professional life. I still remember the run up to that night. The local pop station, WBBF, was screaming about it for a full month prior to the concert. Some of the names that played at this particular concert you’ll recognize;
Don Potter whose version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” is a classic. he’s since gone on to Christian music, and made a fairly decent mark for himself in that field. Bat McGrath, is perhaps a name only known around here, but who has managed to obtain over the years a legendary status, particularly when playing with Don. Chuck’s brother, Gap, Who, oddly enough, played at my senior prom, of all things. Which will pretty much date the situation, I suppose. Stanley Watson, is a name you should know if you don’t, similarly the names Marvin Stamm and Gerry Niewood, who turned in very memorable solos and went onto solo carreers. Niewood, particularly, I remember fondly warn album he turned out a number of years ago which I still have on file here. Tony Levin, who has played bass on EVERYONE’S LP at one time or another. Bill Reichenbach, you may know from his jazz quartet with Jimmy Johnson and Biff Hannon. The man is also on everyone’s LP… around 800 all told.
You can imagine, that some of this is audio dynamite. I should tell you also, that these albums, of which I have two on file, are going for around $250.00 for the double album set. And my wife said the collection would never amount to much.
It was almost 37 years ago… May 9th of 1970, that Rochester first thrilled to this sound; And what a concert it was. Now, it’s happening again! Alas!, but it’s sold out, already. But at least, since I have the original pressings, and broadcast quality turntables, to convert this stuff over the digital, I can go back. I can only hope they’re rolling some tape on the reunion.
…
* A few months ago, I made note of a trend that I had noticed among newspapers. Newspapers will seldom make any mention of the fact that newspaper readership as a whole has been dropping for several years. Something like whistling in the dark; they don’t want to talk much about their own demise. Perhaps, just perhaps, they are hoping that it won’t happen if they don’t talk about it. But dropping the readership is. Like a stone.
But one thing I noticed some months ago was the idea that the speed with which the readership was dropping was in direct relationship to the editorial policies of the paper. I give you as a quick example, The New York Times. I don’t think I have to tell you that the readership of the gray lady has been dropping like a boulder dropped off the top of the Empire State Building. Similarly, Newsday, which serves more less the same market, but is kind of concentrated on Long Island, and who is also a left leaning paper, is seeing its readership drop also. Funny thing; the New York Sun, is seeing its readership increase by the leaps and bounds. That situation repeats itself in markets all over the country. The left lane INC papers are withering away, and the ones that are not left leaning are doing far better. Some of them , simply holding their own; others seeing rapid increases in readership.
These trends, are easily paralleled in the electronic media. Fox which tends to take a balanced approach, is going great guns, wereas everybody else (NBC CBS ABC, CNN and so on) is so far back the dust is settled by the time they get by.
Something was brought to my attention tonight which brought all of this back to mind . And I think it’s an interesting parallel. Consider church membership, nationwide. I commented, on this site, not so very long ago, that churchgoers didn’t want a more liberal church. That was upon the occasion of the death of Pope John Paul the second. I said, at the time:
-1-
As the Cardinals gather to decide the matter of who will be the next Pope, many are writing to this subject of the future of the church. Peggy Noonan stumbles across something that is an intagable for so many:
You are a cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, a modern man, and for the past seven days, in private conversations in Rome with cardinals you trust, you’ve been admitting what you would never say in public.
You were shocked at the outpouring for John Paul II. You were shocked at the four million who came to Rome, at the line that stretched across the Tiber, at the tears.
You had no idea.
Not that you didn’t have real affection for the old man. He was probably a saint. All that suffering, dragging his broken body into each day the past five years. That’s a long time on the cross.
But you thought he was yesterday’s news. Everyone had already said goodbye to him at those big audiences in the Paul VI hall. And let’s face it, the church under John Paul was slammed every day as conservative, ossified, reactionary.
Here’s another strange thing. In the polls on churchgoing and belief it’s always Catholics on the street in Europe and America who say they want change and reform. They’d been saying it for years! And yet it was Catholics on the street from Europe and America-real nobodies, not to be impolite but just regular Catholics-who engulfed Rome to weep and yell Santo, Santo!
Dale Franks notes the press and the social left apparently ignoring this outpouring:
One of the most interesting—if irritating—features of the coverage surrounding the death of John Paul II has been the more or less constant harping by the media about the pope’s failure” or “resistance” to modernizing the church’s doctrine
Yet, we see the outpouring of litterally millions who poured into Rome, to pay their respect for the main who as one commenter at Q&O said the other day, shattered “the myth that compassion and theological conservatism are diametrically opposed”
We also hear the calls from around the world, for sainthood for the man the left and the press both within the church and without, are saying doomed the church to irrelivancy with his conservative angle.
So, what’s happening here? Why the apparent disparity?
Well, I did address part of this a few weeks ago. In that BIT, I linked the names of Pope John Paul, Lech Walessa, Margaret Thatcher, and Solzhenitsyn, as as being on the correct side of the fence between good and evil.
Here’s a concept, and one most of those calling for a more liberal outlook from the church can’t handle; The desire really isn’t there for a more liberal outlook from the church. They don’t want the church becoming more friendly to the world, for a simple reason… as Eternity Road remarks this morning:
“A church must, by its very nature, be a conservative institution. The point of a church is the conservation and dissemination of a body of doctrines.”
Within that context, the people have identified what the church stands for is good, and by definition, therefore what seeks to change the church away from that as evil.
That point would seem to be accentuated not only by the current members, but by the number of people who have dropped out of the various branches of the Christian church in recent years, in this way;
While proponents of liberalizing the Church would argue that the Church must respond to the falling membership numbers by veering left so as to become more ‘relevant’, the fact is, veering left has already been done… to the opposite of the stated desire of bringing more people into Church membership. The problem wasn’t that the church wasn’t liberal enough, it was already TOO liberal. Rather like the older gent in the Buick stepping on the gas rather than the brake, the results of the error in judgment are the exact opposite of the desired… and are usually catastrophic.
A look at the relationships between church membership in Non-Roman churches, between liberalized doctrine and falling membership reveals a rather startling picture; While there were falling membership numbers during the 60’s, memberships fell even faster in following years, in direct proportion to the rate at which the various branches of Christiandom liberalized their doctrine. Rather than warming to the idea that the chruch was now being “more inclusive” the numbers of filled pews went down like a stone.
Yeah… “Oops”.
It’s true that many within (And more without) the church will not be able to get their mind around those facts,(Usually responding with charges of rampant bigotry within the church) but those ARE the facts.
Now, it should be noted as a practical matter, that the chances of any Pope being elected out of this conclave being significantly more approved of by say, an Andrew Sullivan type… is very small indeed, given that the vast majority of the Cardinals now in Rome deciding this matter are appointees of Pope John Paul II, and so are likely to be following in his footsteps.
What I’m suggesting, here is that we should not look for any major changes in polcy coming from Rome in this next Pope… for two reasons….
* The people within the church, really don’t want a liberalized doctrine.
* Nor do the any of the Cardinals now deciding who will next incarnation of Peter will be.
And that, given the facts we see of the last 50 years, would seem to be the best outcome.
-0-.
My friend, that I spoke with today, who brought all of this to mind, drew the conclusion that much the same as the newspaper readership is down in direct relationship dollar brawl the paper is, church membership, also is down, also in direct relationship to haul Liberal the church is. At the leading edge of this downfall in membership is the Episcopal church, and the Presbyterian church, both of whom have fallen victim to the pro homosexual agenda. The troubles within the catholic church, I have already mentioned in the quoted article.
If we are to take these events at face value, we must conclude that institutions fail in direct proportion to how absorbed in the liberal philosophy they become. These points I’ve raised would seem to suggest an anti leftist bias in the general population.
I wonder; does this give us any lessons to be learned for the next election? Might this trend, that I have noted, explain why the only person on either side of the aisle who is generating any excitement at all in the oncoming presidential race is Fred Thompson, who has not even declared he’s running yet?
Tags: BitsBlog, Nightly Ramble
