Father Fox, et. al.
I wrote this letter for my pastor back in 2007 when I was agitating for us to lose our RITUALSONG hymnal. ................. 05
JUL 07
......... A couple of months ago you asked me if there was something wrong with
our hymnal, RitualSong. It has taken me
a while to put my thoughts on the subject in order, so please bear with me.
I will begin with a recent quote by the Pope regarding
church music and Gregorian chant: ( I colored the red portions myself, not His
Holiness)
"In the course of her two-thousand-year history, the Church has created, and still creates, music and songs which represent a rich patrimony of faith and love. This heritage must not be lost. Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another. Generic improvisation or the introduction of musical genres which fail to respect the meaning of the liturgy should be avoided. As an element of the liturgy, song should be well integrated into the overall celebration. Consequently everything – texts, music, execution – ought to correspond to the meaning of the mystery being celebrated, the structure of the rite and the liturgical seasons. Finally, while respecting various styles and different and highly praiseworthy traditions, I desire, in accordance with the request advanced by the synod fathers, that Gregorian chant be suitably esteemed and employed as the chant proper to the Roman liturgy."
To RitualSong’s credit, it does have a section of Gregorian
chant. It also includes the proper
readings for each Sunday.
On the down side, I briefly surveyed RitualSong’s ratio of
old hymns to new (i.e. those composed after Vatican II) and the balance seems
to be about a 1 to 4 ratio (old to new).
Given the perspective of 2000 years, RitualSong’s compilers opted to
weight the hymnal heavily in favor of hymns most of which had yet to pass the
test of time. A huge number of
RitualSong’s new hymns have already fallen into disuse and it has only been ten
years since the hymnal’s release. The
compilers decided to do this at the expense of having us forget Catholic hymns
which are 100, 200, 1500 years old, which have passed the test of time and have
appealed to the Catholic Church throughout the ages and throughout the entire
world and not just to American baby-boomers.
Secondly, on the issue of altering the lyrics of old
hymns: Whatever advantage there might be
for doing that, there seem to be at least two negative things going on,
i.
dumming us down so we won’t have to deal with “Thee’s
and Thou’s” of the original, and
ii.
Altering the
meaning of older hymns to match the editors’ modern problems with traditional
Catholic doctrine. Below I show examples of older hymns being edited to avoid
mentioning Christ’s Death as well as being edited to avoid mention of Christian
Martyrdom. Ironically we get spared Thee’s
and Thou’s of old Catholic hymns, presumably we cannot understand old English,
but then we are expected to understand Amen Siakudumisa, (698), Bwana
Awabriki (720), Mayenziwe (725), Jesus Tawa Pano (806), Thuma Mina (796) All these are more unintelligible than
archaic English, yet they are all in RitualSong, while “Sweet Sacrament we Thee
adore”, “Panis Angelicus”, Ave Verum, the Te Deum … et.al. are not.
I feel the easiest way to illustrate my point is in the form
of the table, below, which presents some of the hymns which I feel have
problems and what I specifically see as a problem. This is not exhaustive. However it did
exhaust (and exasperate) me compiling it.
J
You will see, I concentrate on RitualSong’s “Eucharistic”
section. It seems to me, in the future,
if a hymnal we consider for adoption has a preponderance of its “Eucharistic”
hymns being penned by protestants who don’t even believe in the Eucharist, then
that should be a red flag for us, indicating that the compilers were more
interested in being stylish and modern than in helping us to worship and pray
as Catholics. Earlier I forwarded to you
an email from our former pastor, Bishop Flores, where he also mentions being
irked by modern Eucharistic hymns, therefore I don’t think I am alone in this
arena, and this raises the whole question of why we ever would want to sing
hymns that irk people, like Bishop Flores, who are simply trying to be true to
Catholic tradition and teaching. Lex
orandi lex credendi. Aside from
doctrinal considerations, I think it is just insensitive.
I hope and pray you will not be offended by what I have
written here, and I ask forgiveness in advance
if I what I have written here seems brash or angry. (I have stopped
being angry and have ‘moved on’ to just
being puzzled) I certainly think it is
the role of the committee formed to look around and make sure we have enough
options to choose from (which don’t offend any Catholic believers) before we
decide on our next hymnal selection.
|
Page
#
|
First
Line
|
Idiosyncracy
|
For
Example
|
|
911
|
Let Us Break Bread Together
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
|
|
916
|
In Christ There is a Table Set for All
|
Ambiguous and confusing Eucharistic statement. However if
it is remembered that the author is Methodist, then there is no real
ambiguity. The song is about the
protestant “Lord’s Supper” and not about the Holy Eucharist.
|
“Here he gives himself to us as bread”
|
|
917
|
Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
|
|
919
|
Taste and See
|
Though it is loosely based on Psalm 34, the only thing having remotely hinting of
the Eucharist is the word “taste”
|
The tune is a fake gospel style complete with swaying to
the music
Francis Patrick O’brien is not an. African
Amercan Baptist. Just an Irish Catholic priest from Boston “tryin’ to get
down”
|
|
921
|
As the Grains of Wheat
|
Though loosely based upon the Didache, the Eucharist’s
Sacrificial emphasis which is central to the Didache, has been edited out
|
|
|
922
|
At That First Eucharist
|
This beautiful hymn has been butchered to change “Thou”
into “You”, I have to wonder why
RitualSong didn’t update the protestant “How Great Thou Art? Are only old Protestant hymns too holy to
alter?
|
Somehow “grant us at every Eucharist to say with longing
heart and soul, ‘Thy will be done’” becomes:
“At this our Eucharist again preside and in our hearts
your law of love renew”
It just doesn’t have the same meaning
|
|
924
|
Song of the Body of Christ
|
This song seems to be all about “us”, not about Jesus, and
has no hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
|
|
925
|
Take the Bread, Children
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
I believe we are to RECEIVE the Holy Eucharist, not
TAKE it. Singing “take the bread” over and over, manages to simultaneously
perpetuate two misconceptions in one little phrase.
|
|
926
|
All who hunger
|
The closest this gets to Eucharistic teaching is the
statement “Jesus is the living Bread”, yet any protestant who denies
Transubstantiation would make the identical statement
|
The author is the Canadian Protestant Union’s first
self-avowed lesbian priestess
|
|
927
|
Bread to Share
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
|
|
929
|
Let Us Be Bread
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
|
|
930
|
Jesus Is Here Right Now
|
No hint of Transubstantiation
nor of the sacrificial nature of the Mass
|
“with this bread and wine, his peace you’ll find”
contributes to an deficient understanding of the Eucharist
|
|
933
|
Now In This Banquet
|
It does say “Christ is our bread”, (as would any
Protestant hymns,) but that is as far as it goes.
|
“bring us dancing into to day” hearkens back to the 70’s
and liturgical dancing
|
|
|
A Mighty Fortress
|
Besides being The ‘battle hymn’ of the Reformers because
it was written by the man who split the Church. Martin Luther believed many
odd things, e.g. there is no free will, God hates the vast majority of
humanity, the souls of the blessed sleep until Christ returns, mentally
retarded people are “changelings” and should be euthanized, polygamy is ok,
and many other errors.
|
|
|
850
|
Gather Us In
|
|
“Not
in some heaven light-years away” (last verse)
seems to be sneering at the Catholic teaching on the Four
Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.
Maybe it is only sneering at #3.
|
|
809
|
I Danced in the Morning
|
Flippant lyrics, which put rhyming and cuteness above
reverence
“I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance with devil on your back”
|
The author, explains his pithy lyrics as follows:
"I see
Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that
shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not
only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other
Lords of the Dance”
|
|
|
Faith of our Fathers
|
Unrecognizable when compared to the original.
|
The martyrdom verse has been edited out and replaced with
a trendy “faith of our brothers and sisters”
|
|
626
|
Crown Him with many Crowns
|
The changes made to this beautiful hymn seem to be made
just for the sake of change but then again……….
|
Changing “Of
Him who died for Thee”
to
“Of Him who set
us free’ seems to be doctrinally driven by the modernist reluctance to
mention Christ’s Redeeming Death.
|
