Steven Millies on Leonard Bernstein's 'Mass'

"It is not easy to summarize Leonard Bernstein's Mass. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy and premiered as part of The Kennedy Center’s opening in 1971, it succeeds to be a liturgical composition much like Bach's Mass in B Minor or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, but also something else.

"Of course it is a liturgy. It also is a drama, and a dance, and a challenge to how we think about praise and the community of believers. Most of all, it is a document of a moment in Roman Catholic history when the fervor of Vatican II's embrace of the world coincided with a kind of American Catholic confidence that could be expressed with no word better than 'Kennedy.' Really, Mass only could have emerged from that particular time and place, one where even a bisexual and Jewish composer could feel drawn to the Roman Catholic Mass by the sheer cultural power of Catholicism in that moment."

In a recent commentary, writer Steven P. Millies, associate professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, reflected on how Leonard Bernstein's Mass tells us something true about our church and ourselves,

To access Mr. Millies complete essay, please visit:

US Catholic: What Leonard Bernstein's 'Mass' tells us about our church (August 2019)