Which hymns do Catholics & Protestants share?

[Rae8]

This isn’t my experience at all.

When I hear or sing the old Protestant hymns now, I find that they are more touching to me because now, they make sense. They are “completed.”

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I agree with you. Now that I am older and understand more, they all make more sense. They are touching because of that and because of being familiar.

I grew up hearing my mother singing a lot of old gospel hymns while washing the dishes. She never had any qualms about belting them out through the neighborhood at top of her lungs with doors open in Summer, etc.

When I hear them now, it brings back a lot of memories and I understand them now. There was one she used to sing, *“I’ll Fly Away” *. I rarely hear that one now but when I do, the tears start rolling. :bighanky:

 

[Cat]

As one CA priest put it, translations are more art than science. And even science using different methods of measuring has its flaws.

Look at it this way. Scientists don’t go around saying all we have to do is to convert all the data, accumulated over hundreds of years, into English units and we’ll be fine forever. The failure of the Mars probe showed that over time this fails. Hardly unity in diversity.

If we call ourselves part of the Latin rite, then we keep things in Latin. Worked okay for many centuries going almost all the way back to Christ. Napoleon may have put the final stab to the Roman Empire, but he didn’t destroy the Church nor its language.

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I don’t object to keeping Latin.

What I object to is paraphrases rather than translations.

Since I don’t remember my high school Latin and can’t translate it myself, I think it’s reasonable for me to expect accurate translations.

 

[Cat]

I’ve got bad news for you, Cat. The WHOLE entire Mass is written in what language? Latin. When we attend Mass, and it’s in English, it’s a translation. What are you going to do now? Are you going to learn Latin, so you can make sure it’s accurate?

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, and I apologize.

From what I understand, years of work went into translating the Latin into the current OF Mass. It is supposed to be a highly-accurate translation. I’m good with that!

I wish that we could have the same highly-accurate translation of the Latin hymns in our hymnals and missallettes rather than the paraphrases.

Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m saying that I have no idea what I’m singing in Latin, since the accurate translations are not provided. If the accurate translations were provided, I would be good with Latin hymns. But I’m not going to sing words that mean…what do they mean?! I don’t know.

 

[27lw]

Okay - - true, the Mass did have a lot more translation work than your average hymn translation. However, are you worried that there is something unorthodox, or heretical in the Latin hymns? I think that the Latin hymns are generally the older ones, and more “conservative” in any theology. Any bad stuff is typically in the newer hymns, in my humble opinion.

 

[ProVobis]

Since I don’t remember my high school Latin and can’t translate it myself, I think it’s reasonable for me to expect accurate translations.

Let me ask you this. Had you not played the piano since high school, how good do you think you would be now?

Learning a language is a lifelong thing. Perhaps we spent too much time in trying to translate instead of trying to think it? I tend to do the same with Polish, then I realize there’s just no way to translate it into English without risk of error or criticism.

As for the Mass, they’ll only retranslate it again, either when the copyrights run out or they’ll be enough criticism of the existing translations. Just like with the English Bibles. And why are we still singing “Don we now our gay apparel” when today’s young people don’t know the old meaning of the words? Maybe we should spend more time with paraphrasing such as Cliff’s Notes does with Shakespeare.

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[uncle_joe]

** In Re: Concerns expressed by “Cat” regarding Latin translations**,

I think it is good to insist that we understand what we are singing and praying. On those rare occasions when we do not, there is a good substitute. We can direct our hearts, minds and souls toward a general but deeply intended plea to our Lord that His Will be Done, and that we all come to be in accord with His Will. We may remain silent while we do this, likely only briefly, if silence is the only honest thing we can display outwardly at that time. I mean that the content of our hearts, known to us and known better to God, might sometimes best be experienced by us in silence EVEN IF others are speaking or singing explicitly.

We need to understand relatively little Latin in order to participate reverently in the few prayers or hymns that are sung in Latin. Such prayers and hymns are not a regular part of masses in which I participate, but to prepare for them, we can make a point of studying those few prayers or hymns in our spare time. An hour or two of checking various translations should be enough to let us come to understand the words.

I’ll add another opinion about “fully” understanding communal and liturgical prayers. As soon as we make the sign of the cross, we are deeply engaged in expressing things we do not FULLY understand. I certainly do not FULLY understand The Father The Son and the Holy Spirit, but I address God this way quite often. I realize this is different from actually not knowing what the words mean at all, but it is rather like the problem of not knowing a specific language.

I mean that when we pray in spoken words or song, we do so imperfectly, without flawless clarity in what we say or even flawless clarity in knowing certainly what we want to say. Nonetheless, and perhaps all the more, we may pray rightly. In this I think we ought to try steadfastly to let a sincere desire for God’s Will to Be Done pervade all of our prayers and hymns, and pervade our silence and all that we do in life. I fail at this regularly, many times a day, but I still think it’s a good plan.

It makes sense to me to want to understand all the language of the mass. When I can not do so, for any reason - even if simply failing to hear a priest clearly, I think it’s OK at such times to humbly turn my will toward God’s as best I can, and to pray to God to help me do so.

I am Catholic.
Peace be with you.

 

[pnewton]

** In Re: Concerns expressed by “Cat” regarding Latin translations**,

I think it is good to insist that we understand what we are singing and praying. .

I certainly understand the point. Personally, though, I still like singing the Latin, even with limited understanding. After all, how many Catholics could define “Alleluia”?

 

[ProVobis]

I certainly understand the point. Personally, though, I still like singing the Latin, even with limited understanding. After all, how many Catholics could define “Alleluia”?

Good example. But they certainly know when to use it.

 

[Cat]

** In Re: Concerns expressed by “Cat” regarding Latin translations**,

I think it is good to insist that we understand what we are singing and praying. On those rare occasions when we do not, there is a good substitute. We can direct our hearts, minds and souls toward a general but deeply intended plea to our Lord that His Will be Done, and that we all come to be in accord with His Will. We may remain silent while we do this, likely only briefly, if silence is the only honest thing we can display outwardly at that time. I mean that the content of our hearts, known to us and known better to God, might sometimes best be experienced by us in silence EVEN IF others are speaking or singing explicitly.

We need to understand relatively little Latin in order to participate reverently in the few prayers or hymns that are sung in Latin. Such prayers and hymns are not a regular part of masses in which I participate, but to prepare for them, we can make a point of studying those few prayers or hymns in our spare time. An hour or two of checking various translations should be enough to let us come to understand the words.

I’ll add another opinion about “fully” understanding communal and liturgical prayers. As soon as we make the sign of the cross, we are deeply engaged in expressing things we do not FULLY understand. I certainly do not FULLY understand The Father The Son and the Holy Spirit, but I address God this way quite often. I realize this is different from actually not knowing what the words mean at all, but it is rather like the problem of not knowing a specific language.

I mean that when we pray in spoken words or song, we do so imperfectly, without flawless clarity in what we say or even flawless clarity in knowing certainly what we want to say. Nonetheless, and perhaps all the more, we may pray rightly. In this I think we ought to try steadfastly to let a sincere desire for God’s Will to Be Done pervade all of our prayers and hymns, and pervade our silence and all that we do in life. I fail at this regularly, many times a day, but I still think it’s a good plan.

It makes sense to me to want to understand all the language of the mass. When I can not do so, for any reason - even if simply failing to hear a priest clearly, I think it’s OK at such times to humbly turn my will toward God’s as best I can, and to pray to God to help me do so.

I am Catholic.
Peace be with you.

Thanks. Good post with lots of good thoughts.

 

[Silver_Thread]

Have a look through the hymn book in church and see if you recognise any…

After singing in the choir for many years, what is most disconcerting to me was the arbitrary change of the words. I loved those songs and I memorized the verses only to find that someone thought they had a better idea! As to the changes, I would say, "If you want to write a song, you don’t have the right to change someone else’s song to fit your likes or dislikes! I find myself not singing many times for that reason and silently praying for patience and understanding (?). Give me the old hymns, as is!

 

[Granum_Frumenti]

There will be exceptions.

I grew up in an Evangelical, Baptist-like church, not too overtly hostile to Catholicism, in which our congregation sang mainly “contemporary music” (even the occasional “traditional hymn” was conformed in style).

We sang at least one exception, “Here I Am, Lord,” pretty often. I’m not familiar enough with the background of everything in our repertoire to name every exception right now, but maybe there were others. (Any exceptions would most likely be ones that stayed fairly close to a biblical text–at least close enough for the references to be obvious to anyone with sufficient knowledge of the text.)

I have two things to add and a clarification to make.

Addition 1:

I don’t know why, but for some reason I completely forgot that one of the “occasional ‘traditional hymns’” is “Be Thou My Vision,” which I know has Catholic use. (I can’t think of any other examples right now of such an “occasional ‘traditional hymn.’” In other words, I’ll probably remember an example tomorrow. I can think of an example of what we didn’t do: we rarely, if ever, had “Amazing Grace.” I don’t know why.)

Addition 2:

There is a newer thread, “They’ll Know We Are Christians.” The song is a good example of my lack of familiarity with the background of everything: until I read that thread, I had no idea that I could’ve mentioned it in my quoted post.

We rarely used it, but we used it enough for me to remember it. I can whistle or hum the entire tune from memory (at least as I was taught it) although there exist reasons why I might not have remembered it. I haven’t sung it in years, I’m not especially fond of the tune (if I haven’t already remembered my favorite tunes, I’ll make special efforts to remember them), and I had no other special reason to remember it (for example, I never led the music, as a singer or as an instrumentalist).

Clarification:

When I wrote “one exception, ‘Here I Am, Lord’…” in the third paragraph, I meant to use “exception” as a reference to “There will be exceptions” in the first paragraph, not directly to anything in the second. In other words, I never intended a reading that “Here I am, Lord” is an exception to “contemporary music.” If I could edit the post right now, I’d amend the paragraph to begin “We sang at least one of those exceptions.”