Catholic and Musical: Three Voices Sing Out

The word Catholic comes from the Greek word “katholikos,” which means “of the whole” or universal. As St. Paul writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians, “all the parts of the body, though many, are one body.”

Each person in the body of Christ that is the Catholic Church has a unique lens with how we see God, and a unique ear in how we hear him.

Perhaps that is why there are so many different ways to experience the Lord in music.

With music front and center in the seasons of Advent and Christmas, it’s the perfect time to consider three musicians who express their Catholic faith in different ways through song.

Linda Halverson
Director of Liturgy and Music, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, New Berlin

Most often, people perceive Catholic music as the hymns and Sunday Mass parts that we sing — or pray twice, as St. Augustine would say.

Linda Halverson lives her Catholic music calling as a vocalist, choir director, pianist and organist in parish settings.

Her life’s work was launched in an unlikely spot: a bowling alley in Wauwatosa.

“At the age of 15, I remember someone coming up to me from our church at the time, St. Agnes in Butler,” said Halverson. “They said, ‘We hear you play the piano. We don’t have anybody to play Mass on Saturday night.’”

She was given no direction on songs or a cantor to assist her and had to cobble together the music on the spot.

“Throw me a bone here!” she joked. “But it went well, because I had a lot of people coming up afterward saying ‘Oh, that was so good.’”

Over time, she has brought the musical “good” to five parishes in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and countless faith-related events.

Halverson, whose secular experience includes singing backup for the Rolling Stones at a Milwaukee performance, focuses each week on a smooth sonic experience that goes beyond performance and into worship.

“It’s not a performance. It’s prayer. Good liturgy is something that people are moved by to participate in, to bring their prayer to life,” she says.

She evokes many different styles of music within her Mass repertoire, being present to how different ears receive something different from each song and the different ways of delivering it.

“I don’t think we can forget about traditional hymns because young people need to know them. I do a little bit of praise music. During Holy Week, I bring some Gregorian chant. I wish I had timpani because there’s nothing like Easter Sunday and ‘Jesus Christ Has Risen Today.’ Sometimes, I go acapella and let the people sing. It’s a balance,” she shares, offering how God uses her musical balance as a salve for the human heart.

“People talk to me and say I heal their hurt through my music. I love the power of music and prayer.”

Sheila Bost
Music Minister, All Saints, Milwaukee

The Dominican sisters infused that same love of the power of prayerful music into a 10-year-old girl from Milwaukee’s north side.

Inside the walls of All Saints Catholic Church, near her childhood neighborhood, Sheila Bost now brings that calling to Sunday Mass through the parish’s renowned gospel choir.

“Music is universal, and good music lasts forever. It never gets old, and it’s never tired. Anyone who appreciates good music can find themselves housed in the center of God and in our faith,” Bost says.

“How do we go about encountering it and opening ourselves up to what God has in store? We have to do what’s called a surrender. We have to surrender everything that we know and put everything aside.”

Bost says the emotional power of gospel music offers that musical table-setting for surrender, because of the nature of the sound and lyrics.

“It’s very repetitive. It allows you to experience the energy, the words, the meaning, the faithfulness of Scripture all through the music to the point where you don’t need a piece of paper for the lyrics. You can be open to the experience of the music,” she says.

“As 100 percent cradle Catholics, sometimes we can box ourselves in, but it’s when you open yourself up to the faithfulness of our God that you can look at the various ways that you can meet him. We do that every time we enter into somebody else’s church.”

Newcomers to All Saints Catholic Church, and those who first encounter their choir at other parishes and archdiocesan events hear, feel and sing a new way of meeting God, she said, often in a Communion meditation that overpowers the churchgoer into charismatic praise or contemplative tears.

“We sang ‘Nobody Like Jesus’ on Sunday. ‘You can search high and low, no matter where you go, and you will never find nobody like the Lord,’” Bost says.

“When I sing about it, I’m telling you what I know for myself, and I’m hoping that you might be able to borrow a little of that too. Somebody’s lost their wife, somebody might’ve just had cancer, but it’s nobody like Jesus. You can’t find anyone who’s going to take care of you and understand you like the Lord. So it becomes a personal testimony.”

Ethan Keller, independent acoustic and rock musician

The art of musically expressing the personal encounter of God’s care and understanding can happen outside of Mass, too.

Milwaukee’s Ethan Keller is one of many Catholic artists whose music shares God’s conversations outside the church walls — even as his lyrical content is more subtle than what you typically would hear on a Christian music radio station or playlist.

“A lot of my music isn’t necessarily talking to God, but in some ways trying to figure out what God is, or what God is asking me to do,” says Keller, whose parents were members of religious orders before they met.

“I can remember music being important from my mother singing the song ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ as a child.”

Keller grew up at what was Holy Spirit Parish on Milwaukee’s South Side, and he now attends St. James, Franklin.

As an adult, Keller brings his music to coffee houses and pubs, where his language of exploring God’s presence in the world offers that subtle approach.

“I don’t necessarily feel like I have to have a very overt operation when I’m talking about God,” he says. “I’m also satisfied with having a covert operation, because if all of these things are unified, which one of these languages is not God’s? Is music not God’s tool? If God’s love is infinite, it requires an eternal reveal.”

For Keller, that means giving God’s love anywhere and everywhere — at the bar or the campfire at a church youth campground where he served.

“I had a camper named ‘Devo.’ He had his senior year speech, and those campers played their favorite song. He picked a song off my debut solo album called ‘Camouflage.’ It says, ‘You can’t camouflage what’s true,’ alluding to Psalm 139 where it says, ‘Where can I go from your spirit?’ That was really touching,” he says.

“If God made me as a gift to the world, I should give myself to the world, connecting with my neighbor, connecting with people. There’s energy in the music, there’s power in the words that I say, and that will impact people.”