Questions about a Song

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DaveBj:
It has been my ***very personal opinion *** that in general the musical and lyrical quality of Protestant contemporary music is higher than that of Catholic contemporary music. Again I stress “in general.” There are some Catholic contemporary songs that are great, and there are some Protestant contemporary songs that stink. I have never studied why that is, but my top-of-the-head opinion is that the lower place of congregational and special music in the Mass means that Catholic writers simply don’t have as much experience. Also, a style may have developed during the “folk mass” era (remember those?) that writers simply have not been able to break out of.
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I’m curious whether it might be numbers game too – Catholics are a minority in the U.S. Thus, there are a lot more Protestent contemporary music writers in the U.S. Honestly, some of the music on EWTN’s Cathoic Jukebox leaves quite a bit to be desired. IMO.
 
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Disillusioned:
At Christmastide we had to sing congregationally “When a Child is Born” (as popularised by Johnny Mathis?) Every single line is a cliche…what is possessing them to imagine that this is about the birth of our Saviour ?
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Our choir soloist sang “Mary Did You Know?” which contains actual heresy. It asks Mary if she knew that the baby she was delivering would one day deliver her – as if she had not already been delivered through the Immaculate Conception.
 
Interesting-There is a rather stupid one that is not so modern that makes the passion appear as the Blessed Mother’s joy…simply because six rhymes with crucifix!

The holly bears a berry
As white as the milk
Mary bore Jesus Christ
And wrapped Him in s i l K ???

She never did.

Could you tell me which ones don’t make the grade on Catholic Jukebox.

They get too keen on a wordplay and they end being heretical…playing around, as you observe , with deliver from sin and being delivered of a child.It’s really inferior when you read what seventeenth century people did soaked in the Fathers and Scriptures…art may well have gone downhill.

Do you not get the feeling that some times this fill out of Alleluias or Lord Have Mercy takes us into the realm of the Hare Krishnas really than the Christians, as it becomes mindless…There was one “Sing Alleluia to the Lord”-a canon, oh, it became so boring…

They obviously don’t censor hymns for doctrine like they did for books at one time…

"Mary’s Boy Child"It fouls up the account, it’s delivered in pretend patois and it was subsequently demolitioned to a point of no return in the hands of a pop group in England, so that one doesn’t count as a carol for me anymore.It’s universalistic "Man will live forever more because of Christmas Day "

Does anyone know pleasant settings of the Lord’s Prayer ?just shoving “hallowed be thy Name” into every section is back in the mindlessness category.

The Archbishop of Liverpool until his death 1996, was quite happy that Rogers(spelling ?) and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” could be sung as some kind of hymn.Well it might be reasonably pleasant words and a good ending to a musical, but what a rock bottom to reach, when your senior hierach is convinced this tells you something about God.Does he also believe that men polish the stars in Heaven like Billy Bigelow?Oh how are the mighty fallen.
 
I wanted to suggest the book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing by Thomas Day for those interested in the problem of sacred music in our Church. (Sorry, if that’s already been mentioned, but these threads get long.)
 
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the tune that was sung (and strummed by three high school girls and their mom) was “Sons of God” Does any one remember that hit?
The verse is " Sons of God, Hear His holy word, gather 'round the table of the Lord. Eat His Body, Drink His Blood, and we’ll sing a song of love. Hallelu, Hallelu, Halleluia!"
My dad used to imitate Bela Lugosi singing this in the car on the way home from church, much to the delight of us kids.
Poor Father got so sick and tired of this tune (as were the rest of us) that he actually said at the end of his homily, that “Sons of God” was not to be sung ever again at his Masses! Amen!! And except for demonstrating to the much younger members of our Latin Gregorian Chant choir how bad “folk Mass” music was, I never sing “Sons of God” anymore! Amen!
Our good pastor also threatened to have the ushers remove from Mass any teeny boppers who stood at the back of the church and placed their feet on the newly painted walls. He said that he had biblical precedent, citing Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple. Good Father Folliard, he is now pastor emeritus, and a Monsignor. 🙂
 
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bquinnan:
Our choir soloist sang “Mary Did You Know?” which contains actual heresy. It asks Mary if she knew that the baby she was delivering would one day deliver her – as if she had not already been delivered through the Immaculate Conception.
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That is not heresy. Jesus redeemed Mary, just as he redeemed every other human being. Let’s look at it from two viewpoints, temporal and sin.

First, the timing of the events is immaterial. Just because the Immaculate Conception occurred before Christ died on the cross doesn’t mean anything. After all, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah all died before the crucifixion, yet were also redeemed by it.

Looking at sin, just because Mary remained sinless doesn’t mean that Christ didn’t save her. After all, she was fully human, not divine. She remained sinless through grace. Here is an analogy. Consider a blindfolded child who falls into a deep pit (i.e., falls into sin). You come over and pull them out of the pit, thereby “saving them”. Now consider the blindfolded child who walks right over to the edge of the pit (near occasion of sin), but you pull them back before they go over the brink.

That second child is no less saved. Actually, it is a more generous and loving form of saving that child because they were spared the degradation of being in the pit.

Our Lord saved his Blessed Mother in such a beautiful fashion.
 
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Disillusioned:
These were the ballads of the old fortress mentality…They’re best forgotten unless you are as red as the collective farm tomato crop.
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Well, I don’t know where you are from, actually, so this may be a regional variation. For me, growing up as a Boston Irish Catholic meant enjoying Irish rebel music as part of the heritage. The Wolfetones coming to Boston for St. Paddy’s day was one of the highlights of the year. But I don’t believe that belting out “The Boys of the Old Brigade” made me red in the slightest, and I am certainly not supporting the current crop of Marxist murderers. If you have any doubt about my political inclinations, a quick read of my response to Re: If Kerry was Pro-Life should suffice.

However, one point on which we are in complete agreement is that none of this kind of music is appropriate in the Mass!
 
Yes do not worry, my friend, you grasped the main point about the inappropriately politicised chants that sneak in …I never once meant to say that Roddy McCorley isn’t absolutely marvellous, so is Bold Robert Emmet (Is it two t’s? I forget)…I studied Republican Ballads as part of an Irish Studies course.Somewhere in my family runs a deep folkish sympathy…but the red songs in my joke criticism were around. I don’t believe in any politics at all in church…the clerics of South Africa and in Nicaragua need to take note.“My kingdom is not of this world”

Away from the mass, politics of both wings galvanises people.The Irish music is often top of the list, but even the National Socialists wrought their sinister seductions by a cobbled anthem.

There’s also a tangent that I musn’t engage-the definition of Martyrdom.If you ever have chance find out about Quintus who was the antithesis to martydom discussed in the early church.By hideous coincidence or irony, look at the number the Nazi “martyr"Horst Wessel wears on a collar patch. }”
 
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Disillusioned:
There’s a lot of (name removed by moderator)ut from me about songs-but whoever the lady was who correlates so much of what we sing now with bad digestion of belief in that it’s laughably third rate, well my hat goes off to her (except I don’t wear one)

Do you have that one in America that goes on interminably? Love is His Way, Love is His Word…One keeps changing a word of the lyric to link the verses, well it uses the bad word sign about the Eucharist and seems to be generally shy of saying God or Jesus in place of Love.Bread for our strength , wine for our joy…I don’t know what was in the writer’s head…war films ?Hitler slogans ?No thanks…

I vowed that I would go elsewhere to Mass if they played a number that has come from independent evangelicals in England . It’s called Shine Jesus Shine and it is a football chant pretending to be a hymn.

How do you feel about Meekness and Majesty ?

Do you sing this one “Be still for the presence of the Lord…How awesome is the sight a radiant king of Light…Be still for the power of the Lord is moving in this place” Not quite what Catholics believe in.

I have no idea why a final example has become so popular-They call it the Celtic or Gaelic Blessing and it starts “Deep peace of the running wave to you” It’s an eco hymn,full of references to nature rather than God really.I’ve decided it’s thin and it’s been sung so much that I want a rest from it.

There are lovely ones, do you sing “My Song Is Love Unknown” ?
Doesn’t that show that they really knew what they were about years and years ago…it’s from English Civil War time.
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Yes, Disillusioned, we have those awful songs in my parish: Love is His way & Shine Jesus Shine and a host of other puke-making ditties.

Do you have Here I am, Lord (it is I, Lord/I have heard you calling in the night)
These are standard fare in all the parishes of my diocese except the cathedral, where things are done with dignity, and there is a world-class choir that sing a choral Mass (Mozart’s, etc) each Sunday. I actually stopped going there, however, because it felt a bit too much like a concert.
Clearly, there is no pleasing me!!!😦
However, apart from the songs, I’ve no complaint about my own parish - everything else is reverent and orthodox, and there are still old-style devotions for those who want them.
Our parish priest also wears a dog-collar whenever he goes out in public too!
So I personally can live with the songs. I even join in sometimes.​

A Te numquam separari permittas.
 
I’m currently in something of an ongoing drama at my parish, where I’m one of the cantors. My “favorite” song, for this thread’s purposes, is something called “Sing a New Church”, written by a Benedictine nun. The last line of the refrain is “Sing a new church into being, one in faith, and love, and praise”.

Uh, excuse me, but can somebody tell me what’s wrong with the 2000-year-old one for which Our Lord and all the martyrs died? I could go on, but you get the picture.

In response to Ham21, I’ve been tempted to do the same.
 
Someone mentioned “One Bread, One Body.” I have always loved that song and my understanding of the line “Gentile or Jew…” is that it is a reference to the early church when Gentiles and Jews were converting to one Christian faith…( ie. in letters of St. Paul, Acts of the Apostles) How we are all called to be Christian (not only the Jews.)

The line that has always bothered me is “one cup of blessing which WE bless…” Do **WE **bless the cup, or does the priest? It seems to downplay the special role of the priest in the consecration. Am I reading too much into this? Any thoughts?
 
I find many of the more personal and casual contemporary songs such as “Here I am Lord” to be more appropriate for a retreat, prayer meeting or youth group meeting. I like that song in a more casual setting than Mass.
 
We often sing a song that basically says “this is the air I breathe, your very presence living in me, this is my daily bread, your very word, spoken to me” The problem I have with this song is that our protestant brothers and sisters view “daily bread” as being only the word of God, whereas we also see it as the Eucharist. There is no mention of the true presence in the Eucharist. It seems to bypass this most important theology. I find myself wanting to change the words when I get it stuck in my head.
 
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jp2fan:
The passage you’re referring to is 1 Cor 11:26- …
directly followed by: “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.”

I imagine things would get pretty interesting if we said both of those verses as the mystery of faith.
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LOL! So true!! I’m imagining the abrupt sound of a needle scratching off of a vinyl record!
🙂
 
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d.ewing:
I’m currently in something of an ongoing drama at my parish, where I’m one of the cantors. My “favorite” song, for this thread’s purposes, is something called “Sing a New Church”, written by a Benedictine nun. The last line of the refrain is “Sing a new church into being, one in faith, and love, and praise”.

Uh, excuse me, but can somebody tell me what’s wrong with the 2000-year-old one for which Our Lord and all the martyrs died? I could go on, but you get the picture.

In response to Ham21, I’ve been tempted to do the same.
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At least in the Archdiocese of Newark, Music Directors were told not to use this song as it is heretical.
 
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rfk:
That is not heresy. Jesus redeemed Mary, just as he redeemed every other human being. Let’s look at it from two viewpoints, temporal and sin.

First, the timing of the events is immaterial. Just because the Immaculate Conception occurred before Christ died on the cross doesn’t mean anything. After all, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah all died before the crucifixion, yet were also redeemed by it.

RFK, it is a pleasure to find someone who knows his/her theology. Thanks for setting that issue stright. Mary’s Immaculate Conception was based on the anticipation of the Sacrifice of Jesus. Very fitting for the one who was to become His mother and ours as well.
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Ham1:
TANGENT ALERT…

Anyone heard the song “One Bread, One Body”?

At a certain point the song goes, “Gentile or Jew…Servant or Free.” The notes that accompany those words are identical in interval, timing and chord accompaniment to “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues.

Everytime I almost end up singing, “Nights in white satin…Never reaching the end.”
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We used to sing “One Bread, One Body” a lot and I never thought of Nights in White Satin. But now that you mention it, you’re right! I’ll never be able to think of it any other way again!
 
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