Heretical Hymns

The piece was fine while he concentrated on heretical hymns, but when he moved on to those he simply didn't like, he lost me.

Polluting the list with songs that are tasteless dilutes the seriousness that heretical hymns ought to be taken.

Sing a New Church is my most hated heretical hymn.

May we add "Come, Now is the Time to Worship?" and "Amazing Grace" to the list? The first is blatantly non-denominational, mega-church, N'SYNC, Christian pop-rock complete with soup-and-cracker theology. The latter is just simply...well...too Baptist.

Evangelical Catholicism

I'm going to have to dissagree with you on the so called "I am lord" hymns. These songs are simply quoting the Lord of scriptue. i find great peace when I hear the the quote "and I will raise you up on teh last day" sung in mass

Oh I got one...

After the Consecration sometimes I hear..

"Hear our prayer, hear our prayer, through this bread and whine we share - may it be your sign of peace everywhere.."

I don't think I even need to point out what's wrong here..

I agree with Tony- a fifty year ban might be fitting, but hardly worthy of being discussed alongside the far more serious concerns of heresy within the liturgy.

One problem, as Mr Weigel points out, is that taking on Jesus' voice in our hymns is in complete discontinuity with our historical past.

In a dimension I'm more familiar with: it also confounds the direction of prayer, given that most of those songs fail to make it explicit whom is speaking to whom.
Singing, "and I will raise you up on the last day," for example, is a very confusing statement. Who is raising whom? Are we assured of this event? Raise who to where? Which last day: the last day of my life (when we hope to be lifted up to Heaven), the last day of Octember (Dr Suess anyone?), or the last day of time (which would see the Parousia and the Last Judgement, which implies some will be cast down, as frightening as that prospect is!).

Yes, that song is emotionally appealing- especailly when a soprano manages to hit the descant on key! But, as Mr Weigel points out, hymns ought to be more than 'feel good' ditties. They are capable mediums for expressing truth and beauty, which then elevate the soul and mind towards heaven and God.

My vote:
SHE COMES SAILING ON THE WIND

She comes sailing on the wind, her wings flashing in the sun,
On a journey just begun, she flies on...

This is a song about the Holy Spirit! It is an appalling amalgam of pop, New Age, 'inclusive' pap.
To see middle aged women shaking it and clapping and grooving and --oh I just can't go on.
Suffice it to say - all the hair on my neck, head, and arms stands straight up and lifts my headcovering to where it can "sail on the wind".

Tony and Chris, just to stir the pot a little, isn't there a theological problem with non-beautiful hymns at Mass? I think so. It's not just a matter of personal taste but of a kind of ecclesial taste for beauty.

Okay, our parish sings EVERY ONE OF THOSE. I also hate, hate, HATE "Gather Us In" as well. (Regular song at our parish.)

We are having a survey this fall, and I intend to complain a LOT about the music. It's usually Protestant, rarely old, and when it is, it is FREQUENTLY changed to be gender-neutral. What gives our musical director the right to change "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" to "Good Christians, All, Rejoice?" (It's bad grammar, too.) One verse that was changed in a song was SO badly done that I had to pray over it to figure out what the heck it was supposed to have been. (I was interpreting the Mass for a Deaf family member attending a First Communion.) I couldn't interpret the line as it was because it made NO SENSE! NONE!!! I tried to determine what it was supposed to be, and I think I had it pretty much right. I believe the line was originally about priests for the tribes of Israel, but was clearly male-centered. It got muffed up to be something about all of us being priestly. I should have saved it - it was priceless.

Sometimes, I just can't even sing this stuff, it's so bad. I just daydream about the traditional hymns we can sing. Even "I am the Bread of Life" is fine because at least it's Scripture! I mean, how bad is it when the Episcopal church you visit for a family Baptism (where there is a female deacon and a priestess) has hymns that are more Catholic than your own Catholic parish?

Oh, can I add one more? Those songs that are "Praise the sun, praise the wind" stuff are HORRIBLE. It sounds PAGAN, for goodness' sake! Why do we have to sing those?

Why do we have to sing those?

Um, because St. Francis wrote them?

Both the heretical and the cheesy have to go. The heretical obviously, but also the lame ones he mentioned because they are the musical Big Macs. Big Macs are fine, but just as I would not serve an admired guest in my home Big Macs, so we should not be offering their musical equivalent to Our Lord.

I'm convinced all liturgical abuse stems from embarrasment about the Real Presence in the Eucharist and there is every attempt to obscure the teaching with an army of EMHC's, entertainment gimicks, and lousy Jesus-is-my-buddy/boyfriend hyms.

I think the problem comes from a combination of the embarassment you mentioned, plus an overemphasis on "evangelization"--misunderstood as "water things down so everybody can get their groove on as soon as they walk in the Church from the street." Not exactly the "new evangelization".

Kathy,

The hymn I'm talking about is not a "brother wind" type thing. It barely mentions God at all! It's not "Praise God for the wind," it is "Praise for the wind." I know that St. Francis wrote thanking God for brother moon, etc., but this really comes off more like paganism and nature worship. I don't have a copy of it, but I'll look for it.

I hit post too soon. This has a copy of it. I know that the Canticle of the Sun is St. Francis, but this still bothers me a lot.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ho9iLIbC1T8J:www.washucsc.org/bulletin/20060625.pdf+hymn,+%22praise+for+the+sun%22+%22praise+for+the+wind%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

As a matter of fact, we sing most of the songs listed there.

Maybe I'm just missing the traditional hymns like "Faith of our Fathers" (without the "faith of our mothers" verse) and the occasional Latin.

Christine, I think I know the one you're talking about, and it is offensive. But I think that the words of the verses are okay--it is somehow the music that tells an untruth.

Well, the refrain is not too good in words, either. It has heavy bacchanalian overtones: "Come dance in the forest, come play in the field".

Oh, please.....

Can we please add the song, "I Myself am the Bread of Life!"

The next sentence gets better: "We are the Bread of Life".

Adoremus Bulletin already pegged Rory Cooney's heretical piece, among others.

I had to do a search on it after visiting another parish with relatives in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Argh - Jeff - can we do better than white on light blue in the combox for links?

Even traditional choirs fall victim to bad music selections. Too often Protestant hymns are selected because the director found a pretty arrangement, without any thought to what is being sung. Take for example, "Surely the presence"

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.
I can feel His mighty power and His grace.
I can hear the brush of angel wings, I see glory on each face.
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.

That may be fine in a Protestant assembly, where they want to stir up a touchy-feely sensation to signify the Lord's presense "where two or more are gathered". But at a Catholic Mass, where we have the Real Presence right there on the altar or in the tabernacle, we don't need to imagine the "brush of angel wings" to KNOW that the Lord is present. (Never mind that angels, as pure spirit, don't have wings!)

If it is true that "He who sings well prays twice", then well-sung heresy must also be compounded.

"Be Not Afraid" and "You are Mine" are some of my favorites hymns. When I sing these hymns I pray as if Christ was speaking to me. Now, the hymn that I feel is hyretical is "I am the bread of life" "You and I are the bread of life...Taken and blessed broken and shared by Christ, so the world might live." Huh? What person are speaking in here? Jesus is the bread of life, not me.

I think that there are some songs and hymns that would be very good for personal prayer and even group prayer, but not for liturgy.

Of course, the bad hymn business is not a new nor a uniquely Catholic phenomenon. Lionel Dakers, in his thin volume, "Choosing and Using Hymns," quotes this example of an Anglican hymn text from the early '60s that appeared in The Church and School Hymnal. It gets my vote for worst of all time (with points for most creative rhymes). I only wish I had the music!

* * *

O once in a while
We obey with a smile
And are ever so modest and prudent,
But it's not very long
Before something is wrong
And somebody's done what he shouldn't.

In meadow and wood
The cattle are good
And the rabbits are thinking no evil;
The anemones white
Are refined and polite
And all the primroses are civil.

O Saviour, look down
When we sulk or we frown
And smooth into kindness our quarrels;
Till our heart is as light
As a little bird's flight
And our life is as free as a squirrel's!

The rhymes ROCK THE HOUSE.

Rhyming is incredibly tough in English. Meter just falls into place, but rhyming is incredibly demanding. Those are GREAT.

The hymn is lousy. But it does point to a kind of hymn that isn't too bad if it's kept in its place, the "Sunday School" hymn. These wouldn't be right for worship but might be really good for learning lessons and Scripture.

Tony and Chris, just to stir the pot a little, isn't there a theological problem with non-beautiful hymns at Mass? I think so. It's not just a matter of personal taste but of a kind of ecclesial taste for beauty.

No pot stirring there. If you can quantify and universalize "ecclicial taste for beauty", go for it.

Otherwise it's just preference.

In Beethoven's time, his concertos were "newfangled music".

The WORST (because it puts comical images in your head just before Communion and did you ever try to not laugh when you really MUSN'T laugh?) is "Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees". A visiting music director sang that in our church one Sunday during the presentation of the gifts. Weirdly ONLY my family complained about it. No one else seemed to consider it inappropriate to a Catholic Mass...It should be ripped out of the hymnal!!I was mad when I heard it, but even madder that I LAUGHED!

Tony, I mostly disagree with the idea that musical taste is totally subjective. I think there is a kind of musical vocabulary that is meaningful to most people. For example, the background music in movies--a lot of different movies have a lot of music in common. There are scary sounds, and exciting sounds, and falling-in-love sounds. This is all conveyed (usually) in music alone, without words. I think that people recognize some sounds as being "holy" and that this is especially true of chant. It seems less true of jazzier or pop music. Personally I don't have enough musical training to say musch about what makes some music better for worship (or what makes scary music scary, for that matter), but I think there must be some criteria.

Actually, one thing I do know is that Palestrina followed strict harmonies in counterpoint, in long, smooth, interweaving melodic lines, with very little dissonance. He's widely considered to be the best polyphonic composer ever for the Latin liturgy, based partly on the fact that he was a genius and partly on those definable characteristics of his music.

All of you are being overly critical. If you can do better- do so. Write the hymns for your church service. See what others have to say about them. Talk about casting the first stone...

George Weigel's statements on Heretical Hymns should be accepted for the first part because heresy is bad, whether in hymns or anywhere else. When he talks about the congregation speaking with the voice of Christ as a bad thing he is way out of whack. Any time we postulate the doing of something good because
" Christ said so", we are taking on the voice of Christ, and that is not a bad thing. I could write bucketfuls more about this article, but will confine myself to one final statement: Omer Westendorff did not write "I Am the Bread of Life" Suzanne Toolan did. I remember when it was first published, and we sang it for our Bishop's inaugural Mass. I was thrilled. I agree it should not be sung too often, but it should be sung. I am not confused with whose statements these are and who I am adoring. I adore God. JF