AMU Announces New Sacred Music Minor

Thanks to the generosity of benefactors like you, Ave Maria University is proud to announce a new minor in Sacred Music launching this fall.

Music has shaped the life of this university since its earliest days. Sacred music in particular has always set AMU apart, most visibly through the University schola's continued devotion to the Church's musical patrimony. Music majors have long contributed to that tradition, but this new minor takes formation a step further. It exists to send graduates into parishes as trained, faithful ministers of sacred music, ready to help the Church renew her worship through beauty.

"This program will invite students to embrace the Church's teachings on sacred music as an informed scholar and prepare graduates to serve reverently and effectively in parish music positions," said Professor Trenton Phillips O'Neil, Director of Sacred Music. "All music students are necessarily involved in making sacred music while at AMU, but having this additional distinction communicates to pastors everywhere that if they want to see a renewal of faith through beauty and the promotion of the Church's rich musical heritage in the Mass, it will be an AMU graduate who will get the job done."

Students in the minor will complete five courses in Gregorian chant, church music leadership, sacred music doctrine, and the philosophical, theological, and historical dimensions of music and ministry. Alongside coursework, they will serve as members of the University schola and complete a hands-on sacred music internship at a local parish, gaining real pastoral experience before they graduate.

Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in his 2003 Chirograph on Sacred Music that the Church's musical tradition is "a treasure of inestimable value." This new minor is one way AMU safeguards that treasure and hands it on. It reflects the Church's enduring conviction that sacred music expresses the deep meaning of the liturgy's sacred texts and disposes the faithful to receive the fruits of grace.

Programs like this one are made possible by benefactors who share AMU's conviction that beauty has the power to shape souls and renew the faith. We ask the intercession of St. Gregory the Great and St. Cecilia, patrons of sacred music, for the continued success and growth of this program.