The Neumann Press has brought this one back into print. We bought 45 copies for our choir!
Posted on 12/02/2006 2:49:30 PM PST by NYer
Can you believe it! Bump!
“Our music has changed gradually since Vatican II, and it’s not like there has been some recent radical leftwing feminist shift that needs to be corrected,” said Lisa Sowle Cahill...
Ummm...yes it is.
They added stanzas about shopping and yapping a lot?
In addition to the Calvinistic-sounding "wretch like me," there is this:
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!
Which seems to deny Catholic doctrine on the salvific nature of baptism.
Happy news on a cold day. *big smile*
Bad doctrine through the hymns is one of my big pet peeves and I'm glad something is going to be done about it. I'm surprised to find I agree (somewhat) with the feminist prof and disagree with this Podles guy. I like getting rid of the archaic English and I much prefer "God in us made manifest" to what it was. Change "Thee" to "You", "art" to "is" and "Thy" to "Your", drop the suffix "th" and I'll be happy.
***The complaint about "Amazing Grace" is humorous, as it is doctrinally troublematic for use in Catholic settings. ***
A few years ago I was watching some program from the Vatican in Rome. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the processional music...A Mighty Fortress is our God...
I will not sing "Amazing Grace".
“It has been like giving someone a broad paintbrush and a can of white paint and telling him to edit out the parts he doesn’t like on a Michelangelo painting,” Esolen said. “The changes have reflected not only vandalism, but heretical revisionism.”
This is my favorite quote! Our church is about to purchase new hymnals. I wish I could get them to hold off another year or two! Maybe we'd actually be able to purchase one with real Catholic hymns.
Amazing Grace is a lovely song, but not theologically correct for a Catholic. I cringe when I hear it, or the other heretical one, "How Great Thou Art," sung at Mass.
The melodies are uplifting, so I can see the temptation to use these protestant "hymns" - but if we were to bring back the old Catholic hymns, that would supply plenty of melodic beauty and spiritual inspiration.
"Maybe we'd actually be able to purchase one with real Catholic hymns."
There's one that I know of, a great one: the "red book" Adoremus Hymnal. I believe they also publish a paper-cover "Missalette" with songs in back and some traditional prayers.
Neither "Amazing Grace" nor "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" are anywhere near as inimical to Catholic doctrine as some of our own home-grown so-called "worship songs" (in the USA, I mean ... Italian Catholic hymns may be much better).
***(I mean ... Italian Catholic hymns may be much better).***
I still like to listen to Gregorian chants.
No, please let's sing about ourselves again..."WE are his PEOPLE the flock of the lord.
"God in us" changes the focus from "God in man", i.e. Christ made man (nobody thinks he was made woman, nobody normal anyway). Now we're once again singing about US instead of about God!
One of the greatest failings of the modern happy-clappy Catholic music is that it removes the focus of worship from God and onto self. Look at how many times the first person pronouns appear in nasty modern offerings like "Here I Am, Lord".
Removing the old second-person singular pronoun also removes from the English language a distinction that survives in German, Spanish, and French (as well as Latin and Greek) and probably in many other languages. The second-person singular is reserved for intimates (e.g. husband and wife) and for conversation with God. (It also used to be used with servants and inferiors, but that isn't generally done anymore and isn't applicable here, except when God is addressing us.) So once again the happy-clappy moderns are removing something that makes prayer special and different from ordinary conversation.
The problem with all this revisionism is that it seeks to make the Church more like the World. That is NOT the direction things ought to be moving. The Church is separate from and distinct from the World -- and that is its purpose. Any removal of that separation and distinction poses the question, "Why not just sleep in on Sunday morning?"
And, from a poetic point of view, these spot-zoning revisions mess up the meter and scansion as well as the rhymes. From a historical point of view, you are messing with the text. It also is dishonest to revise the work of a poet (like Christopher Wordsworth) who isn't here to whack the nasty feminists over the head with a brick.
The Neumann Press has brought this one back into print. We bought 45 copies for our choir!
Does anybody else use the Hymnal called Breaking Bread. It's what my parish uses. Any thoughts?
Scary as it may seem, much of the Episcopal Hymnal (1982) is surprisingly good. They may be a bunch of heretics, but their taste in music is impeccable. They DID feminize some of the words, but a bottle of white-out and a fine-point pen take care of that problem just fine!
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