Mary Immaculate Star of the Morning

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ioana
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

Ioana

Guest
Overall I imagine Americans and many others living in mainly Protestant countries get tired of yelling “We don’t worship Mary”. There’s this hymn (I think it is used in the liturgy of the hours) whose title is the title of my post. At some point it has in it the words “sinners we worship your sinless perfection” in some versions and in others it says “sinners we honor”. So my question is: which word did the original composer use? What was “worship” meant to mean in this context? ie Would it be fine to sing either version and still not worship Mary?

*PS it is an otherwise beautiful hymn but I guess most of you know about it already.
 
I don’t know, and I’ve never heard the hymn. That being said, if it is about the Virgin Mary, I wouldn’t be comfortable using the word worship, because of how its meaning has changed over the years. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad hymn I’m just giving my point of view.
 
Ioana said:
There’s this hymn (I think it is used in the liturgy of the hours) whose title is the title of my post. At some point it has in it the words “sinners we worship your sinless perfection” in some versions and in others it says “sinners we honor”. So my question is: which word did the original composer use? What was “worship” meant to mean in this context? ie Would it be fine to sing either version and still not worship Mary?
Click to expand...
I’ve never heard of this hymn so I looked it up.
It appears to have been written by F. W. Wetherell who is NOT a Catholic, but rather some guy from an Anglican Communion church (Church of Ireland). This probably also explains why I never heard this hymn sung in a Catholic church in my life.

I have no idea what the guy was thinking when he used the word “worship”. I think “honor” is more appropriate for the reasons stated by the other posters.
 
Last edited:
I guess you could argue it but all the other stanzas directly addressed Mary and so this could be the only stanza addressing God but that is improbable.
 
I’m not accusing the poor old lad of anything, sure he was a nice chap 🙂 . I simply thought the word was in there for some reson and tbh I said the divine office today and that hym was in there with the word “worship” so I stopped and de facto changed it to honor but that’s the only reason why I asked
 
The composer was not a Catholic. He was an Anglican. He was already in schism from the church so it’s immaterial whether his hymn was heretical or not when he was already a heretic.

Catholics cannot be held responsible for whatever some Anglican might come up with.
 
Last edited:
In the link you gave us there is a clip on Youtube and there the singer says “honor” in that said verse.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top