Enlightenment for beginners, offering a course of education in class, race and gender, manners, masculinity, and class politics.

In this informative and entertaining critique of music in the Catholic Church, Thomas Day outlines a stinging indictment of the influence of popular culture on American Catholicism, particularly as expressed in church music. Taking aim at the Irish-American repertoire of songs that overwhelms Catholic music in America, Day assails the secularization of liturgical practices that began, in the author s view, with the Second Vatican Council in 1962. And while targeting the demise of services, Day remains optimistic, offering several key solutions to revitalize and nurture the latent vitality...