Many Roman Catholic hymnals published in this country during the past
fifteen years include the Protestant “gospel” hymn, “Amazing Grace,”
presumably because the source of the “American traditional” tune (“New
Britain” or “McIntosh”) is the “Virginia Harmony” published in 1831 by
James P. Carrell and David S. Clayton, and most often sung today in the
harmonization of Edwin O. Excell. The tune may be “American traditional,”
but which tradition does the text reflect? A Catholic tradition? A current
non-Catholic hymnal15 prints “Amazing Grace” under the sectional heading
“The Gospel–Repentance and Forgiveness,” and one can find the hymn in the
topical index under “Grace,” “Salvation,” and “Testimony.” The author of
the text, John Newton (1725/1807) was an evangelical divine in Great
Britain who “in theology was a pronounced Calvinist,” as the standard
theological reference works inform us. “Pronounced Calvinism” implies
adherence to Calvin’s doctrine of the inamissibility of divine grace and
the certitude of salvation, as well as those basic doctrines characteristic
of Lutheranism. One is therefore not surprised to find the personal
pronouns, “I, me and my,” more than ten times in the text, which leads one
to suspect that the author held a typically Lutheran “reflexive” faith.16
Here, the legitimate liturgist cannot forbear to ask whether the
archetypical attitudes “sola gratia” or “sola scriptura” are in fact
specifically Catholic themes–those central to our Catholic identity"
(Hubley)? If not, then could it be that the presence of such themes in a
hymn text might eventually produce a “lulling effect upon our Catholic
consciousness” (Hubley)?
