Hey now...we have some good ones!
It’s just that a lot of ‘em are in Latin. And most Catholic parishes seem to think they can’t sing anything older than about 1970, and prefer unsingable garbage rather than anything with pretty melodies and maybe some nice harmonies.
Of course it does not help that the two parishes we have been hitting in the last year insist on singing everything 20% too slow! Argh!!
Isn’t “I am the Bread of Life” a Catholic hymn?
Our church in DC loved that. We were sort of a Mennonite-Catholic-Presbyterian-Baptist-Evangelical-Military-Pacifist kind of congregation...
‘Zactly. And the local ones seem to think everything has to be played at funeral speed. We sang “I will rise and go to Jesus” Sunday and it was a dirge. Not the foot-tapping beat I know.
Every time we flip past good stuff on the way to “We are water, we are fish, we are some random noun, lalalala” I wince. There’s good stuff on the same pages (even some nice Wesley hymns and things that I love) so why pick the lamest ones?
The Presbyterian church we go to sings songs written in the 80s too - the 680s, the 1480s, the 1880s. Some of ‘em are by Saint so-and-so. You-all should reclaim your own music :-D
I don’t know what happened since 1970 but apparently, some dreadful curse means it’s impossible to write good songs. That’s a problem with all Christian praise songs apparently (although it’s not true. There’s a couple really, really good songwriters out there today. Can’t remember his name but the guy who wrote “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us” and some others is awesome)