"I-- I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.' "
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.
What would it take for all parishes to switch over to GIA and drop OCP's hymnals until they come into compliance.
Some Jews consider the entire text of the Torah to be God’s real name.
In that case, if He’s got a phone, I hope it’s an unlisted number.
"I-- I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.' "
Oh good grief. Political correctness gone wild. This is not a good sign for the direction of the church.
So is this taken to be a Commandment violating improper use of the name?
Or is this a style change?
Since the practice will be permitted to stand for at least another year because of the publisher’s new edition already being at the printer’s, it doesn’t sound like the Church finds it to be an unforgivable sin.
This has got me scratching my head. Does this mean I was wrong to believe that Catholics followed the same God as Jews and Protestants?
Since there are probably not too many Jews attending Mass what’s the big deal? My God (Or Yawheh whatever) it wasn’t too long ago they tried to tell them who they could classify a saint.
I was an early adopter.
Since when is following the Law political correctness?
Stating that particular name of G-d is disrespectful to G-d, according to the very Word of G-d.
Disrespecting G-d, even in worship, is a bad thing and should be avoided by reasonable people.
Can we ditch this too...
Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
Someones singing lord, kumbaya
Someones singing lord, kumbaya
Someones singing lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbayah
Someones laughing, lord, kumbaya
Someones laughing, lord, kumbaya
Someones laughing, lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
Someones crying, lord, kumbaya
Someones crying, lord, kumbaya
Someones crying, lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
Someones praying, lord, kumbaya
Someones praying, lord, kumbaya
Someones praying, lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
Someones sleeping, lord, kumbaya
Someones sleeping, lord, kumbaya
Someones sleeping, lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
Oh lord, kumbaya
It would be nice if Catholics got used to singing, period. Every time this Episcopalian has attended a Catholic Mass I've been just about the only person not sitting in the Choir loft who's been singing.
Oh Lord...”kumbaya.”
No, someone there looked up and read the Old Testament and what it says on this matter.
Thank you!
Makes perfect sense.
We sing.
We sing as loud as we can and when we do, others around us start to sing too.
I teach my children that if they can blare out the songs from HSM or Hairspray, they can give their all for Our Lord.
Best to lead by example. That’s the way I think of it.
LOL! Yeah, that one!
From Askmoses.com:
The correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton is unknown. It is only permitted to utter that name in the Holy Temple; since we do not have a Holy Temple today, that name is never uttered. Instead we substitute “Adonai” (my Master) whenever the Y-H-V-H appears in the prayers.
Since we do not have a Holy Temple, we substitute “Adonai” (my Master) whenever the Y-H-V-H appears in the prayers.
When the Messiah comes and rebuilds the Holy Temple, he will once again teach us how to pronounce G-d’s holy name.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.