Posted on 08/12/2008 1:40:53 PM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the not-too-distant future, songs such as "You Are Near," "I Will Bless Yahweh" and "Rise, O Yahweh" will no longer be part of the Catholic worship experience in the United States.
At the very least, the songs will be edited to remove the word "Yahweh" -- a name of God that the Vatican has ruled must not "be used or pronounced" in songs and prayers during Catholic Masses.
Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Divine Worship, announced the new Vatican "directives on the use of 'the name of God' in the sacred liturgy" in an Aug. 8 letter to his fellow bishops.
He said the directives would not "force any changes to official liturgical texts" or to the bishops' current missal translation project but would likely have "some impact on the use of particular pieces of liturgical music in our country as well as in the composition of variable texts such as the general intercessions for the celebration of the Mass and the other sacraments."
John Limb, publisher of OCP in Portland, Ore., said the most popular hymn in the OCP repertoire that would be affected was Dan Schutte's "You Are Near," which begins, "Yahweh, I know you are near."
He estimated that only "a handful" of other OCP hymns use the word "Yahweh," although a search of the OCP Web site turned up about a dozen examples of songs that included the word.
OCP is a nonprofit publisher of liturgical music and worship resources.
Limb said the company would be contacting composers to "ask them to try to come up with alternate language" for their hymns. But he said hymnals for 2009 had already been printed, so the affected hymns would not include the new wording for at least another year.
Even when the new hymnals are out, "it may take time for people to get used to singing something different," he added in an Aug. 11 telephone interview with Catholic News Service.
At Chicago-based GIA Publications, another major Catholic publisher of hymnals, no major revisions will be necessary, because of the company's longtime editorial policy against use of the word "Yahweh."
Kelly Dobbs-Mickus, senior editor at GIA Publications, told CNS Aug. 11 that the policy, which dates to 1986, was based not on Vatican directives but on sensitivity to concerns among observant Jews about pronouncing the name of God. As an example, she cited Heinrich Schutz's "Thanks Be to Yahweh," which appears in a GIA hymnal under the title "Thanks Be to God."
Bishop Serratelli said the Vatican decision also would provide "an opportunity to offer catechesis for the faithful as an encouragement to show reverence for the name of God in daily life, emphasizing the power of language as an act of devotion and worship."
His letter to bishops came with a two-page letter from the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, dated June 29 and addressed to episcopal conferences around the world.
"By directive of the Holy Father, in accord with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this congregation ... deems it convenient to communicate to the bishops' conferences ... as regards the translation and the pronunciation, in a liturgical setting, of the divine name signified in the sacred Tetragrammaton," said the letter signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze and Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, congregation prefect and secretary, respectively.
The Tetragrammaton is YHWH, the four consonants of the ancient Hebrew name for God.
"As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: 'Adonai,' which means 'Lord,'" the Vatican letter said. Similarly, Greek translations of the Bible used the word "Kyrios" and Latin scholars translated it to "Dominus"; both also mean Lord.
"Avoiding pronouncing the Tetragrammaton of the name of God on the part of the church has therefore its own grounds," the letter said. "Apart from a motive of a purely philological order, there is also that of remaining faithful to the church's tradition, from the beginning, that the sacred Tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context nor translated into any of the languages into which the Bible was translated."
The two Vatican officials noted that "Liturgiam Authenticam," the congregation's 2001 document on liturgical translations, stated that "the name of almighty God expressed by the Hebrew Tetragrammaton and rendered in Latin by the word 'Dominus,' is to be rendered into any given vernacular by a word equivalent in meaning."
"Notwithstanding such a clear norm, in recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel's proper name," the letter said. "The practice of vocalizing it is met with both in the reading of biblical texts taken from the Lectionary as well as in prayers and hymns, and it occurs in diverse written and spoken forms," including Yahweh, Jahweh and Yehovah.
We call Him, FATHER, because His Son is our Brother, Jesus, who is also God.
Not to me.
Some Haredi might get pissed.
No, it isn’t. Yahweh is a beautiful name for God. Hey, if it’s good enough for HIM, it’s good enough for me. PC is right.
“When the Messiah comes and rebuilds the Holy Temple, he will once again teach us how to pronounce G-d’s holy name”
They must call upon the name of the Lord Jesus now to be part of the Temple. If God wanted us to know the specific way to pronounce YHWH He would have done so, but what He does teach is that those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus with a contrite heart and confessional type faith (Rm. 10:9, 10) “are washed, sanctified, and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God “(1 Cor 6:11).
And in His name we are to be baptized (Acts 2:38), and by faith in His name we are healed (Acts 3:16), “And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Even though many “blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called” (James 2:7).
(Phil 2:10) “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;”
(1 Cor 1:2) “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:”
To God be the glory.
ME, TOO. It’s embarrassing to me to be practically the only one singing when I go to a funeral.LOL.
Good for you!
That’s great.
I would still respect your father and not use the name He told you not to use outside the Temple, which is the issue at hand.
If you don’t want to listen to me, think about this:
If Orthodox Jews and the Roman Catholic Church can agree on a theological point, I’m thinking it’s pretty solid.
Indeed it is.
Yes, it is. The ‘new’ Methodist hymnal is nearly unrecognizable. I was asked to sing at a funeral when I came to the funeral (not before) and I looked through the hymnal and found very few songs I recognized. And I’ve been singing in churches and choirs since I was 11.
That’s great and all, but has nothing to do with the narrow issue we are discussing.
Good for you, Miss Didi.
>>And I will continue to say “MEN” to be rebellious. ;)<<
HA!!!
You’re the best!!!
It's a third-person form, roughly equivalent to "He is." Kind of an odd way to address someone.
We sing a song Yahweh and it’s beautiful, reverent, and anointed. Folks miss so much these days because of ‘religion.’
” common folk, using that name is getting “above one’s station” so to speak”
That makes complete sense to me. I’ve recently expressed doubts (to my family) about how people are using the name of God because of the Lord’s Prayer. I’m glad to see the Vatican take up this topic.
Same here. My first thought when I saw the headline was, “Good. All the songs that use ‘Yahweh’ suck anyways.”
I’ll be singing Yahweh til my voice goes dry. It’s beautiful and I bet God likes it, too.
I'll go with what Jesus told us to do.
Every mass a Children's Mass, oh brother!
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