Across different cultures, decolonization is often interpreted through literal, moral, anagogical, and allegorical frameworks that parallel Biblical hermeneutics. Within African sacred music, literal approaches often imply a total rejection of elements deemed “inauthentic” or Western in origin. Recent publications on decolonization by Agawu (2025) and Taiwo (2022), foreground a primary danger of such literalism– the reinforcement of essentialist practices that rigidly distinguish African and Western practices while ignoring lived realities in contemporary societies. This essay will extend current debates on literal decolonization through a case study of the 2026 Sexagesima mass at the Holy Cross Catholic church of Kenya, which primarily incorporated Gregorian chants during the liturgy. The Holy Cross Church is affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to preserve the traditional Roman liturgy in the wake of Vatican II’s reforms. Following a brief historical overview of chant transmission in East Africa from the nineteenth century, I will juxtapose the rationales that literalist perspectives often invoke to justify the decolonization of Western repertoires in HCCK’s liturgy with the distinctive liturgical functions that Gregorian chants fulfilled during the Sexagesima mass. Rather than providing a definitive position on whether Gregorian chants should be eradicated or preserved, this essay seeks to illuminate the complexity of liturgical preferences among Kenyan Catholics that risk being flattened by literal decolonization approaches.