[Campion]

The one in our church is published by Oregon Catholic Press, but there is no intro to explain who put it together, or how.

It's not true that all bad Catholic music comes from Oregon Catholic Press, but most of it does.

See if you can find a parish that uses Leaflet Missal, or better yet the St. Michael or Collegeville hymnals. We took my wife's Presbyterian aunt to a parish near that uses Collegeville, and she said afterwards, "I loved the hymns ... knew them all."

[Campion]

Forgot: Adoremus Hymnal is good also.

[Siobhan]

COllegeville plays fast and loose with rewriting the texts of hymns. I don't like that at all. The St. Michael Hymnal has a few problems along those lines but they made an editorial commitment to printing original texts as much as possible.

[Jim Noble]

My impression of the OCP Hymnal in our church is as follows: There are 25-30 hymns which are excellent for congregational singing (of 500 total). The first 200 are chants and RC service music with which I have no experience. There are ca. 50 seasonal ones-Christmas Carols, etc.

The rest is a mishmash of what used to be called Negro spirituals, a few Spanish ones, and a slew of Leftist cant. "Sing a New Church", which we sang today, is so terrible I can't imagine it is Catholic in origin, but it actually was written by a nun!

It brought tears to my eyes to hear this leftist crap (pardon) sung to the majestic tune of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

Come to think of it - Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is pretty orthodox, for all I know about Catholicism.

So how did the new words get in?