Worst Hymn/Song Lyric Heard at Mass

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Petergee:
Do you mean “Turn, Turn, Turn” by Pete Seeger, which was a hit for the Byrds? The lyrics consist almost entirely of a quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes. It seems perfectly orthodox to me.
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Yes that. Well if you say so, but I think given that it has secular roots its not exactly good. Besaides I said it was the closest thing we had to a really bad song. However it does conjure up mental images of hippies…
 
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mercygate:
What’s that song? “Come dance in the forest, come play in the fields . . .” gag. I’ll bet even St. Francis chokes on that, and he wrote it.
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It’s called “Canticle of the Sun”. It is one of the hymns of my childhood, and I can’t stand it either. 😉
 
While my parish has not sunk as low as to sing the Oregon Press Gather music, the one hymn that grates my teeth everytime it is sung at Church is “Let There Be Peace On Earth”. I feel like giving the priest a Coke everytime it’s sung.

The only other abomination (in my mind) is what was done to Faith of Our Fathers in our Misselette. A new verse was added in the middle that starts with “Faith of our Mothers…” and ends with “… who work for justice ceaselessly”. It doesn’t even fit in message-wise with the other verses, and it’s not needed.
 
I just re-read the posts here and there are serious contenders for the “worst” award. In my opinion, the secular songs at Mass are wrong but the dangerous ones are the “approved” hymns.

While there are several with dopey lyrics or tunes the ones that I just can’t stand are the heretical ones. I even went to our pastor to complain about one that is in our “official” OCP hynmnal. I don’t remember the title but the lyrics includes lines about “what is this place? Just walls and a floor”. It goes on like that repeating how the Church is just an empty building without the people who come together. It is a blatant rejection of the Real Presence of Jesus in the tablernacle. Our priest said that while he agreed, he didn’t think that most people paid that much attention. 😦 Our “music minister” used to sing it at least once a month. She hasn’t in a while so I hope it is because Father said something to her. (He is known for picking his battles and the time to fight them. 😉 )
 
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grotto:
ONE MORE - NOBODY’S MENTIONED It:

“HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING”!

I will never be able to keep from thinking about all the songs mentioned here - never knew they annoyed others as much as myself.
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I always want to pipe up with advice for this hymn (Well, you could keep your mouth shut"), but I don’t.
 
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BlestOne:
Hey OutinChgoburbs,

OMGoodness…I laughed sooo hard…hey aren’t you a grandma? You aren’t supposed to know about this stuff…hehehehe just kiddin!!!
I knew there was a reason I liked you…not many could make such a witty yet intelligent comment like that! And…Anyone who likes LINUX is definitely more than OK with me…Long live the penguin!
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I’m a young grandma (Remember, grandparenthood is conferred on you by somebody else, and out of your control after they leave home). But before I was a grandma, I was (and am) a darn-good, Level III, MicrosoftÒÔ and CompTIA certified computer engineer…with a BA in English. The MS certs are reason alone to love the penguin!!!👍
 
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Petergee:
Where I come from it’s not called “Song of the People of God” it’s called “Song of the Body of Christ”. And yes, we ARE called to “be Eucharist” because we, the Church, ARE “the Body of Christ”. That is an important part of the meaning of the Eucharist.
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It is the same thing over and over and over again. “We come to share our story, we come to break the bread, we come to know our rising from the dead.” Sorry, I’m there for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, where I will receive into my own body the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus.

Petergee said:
“Gather us in” is OK except for the line “not in some Heaven, light-years away”. OK it’s theologically (and astronomically) wrong, but you can appreciate the point it’s trying to make. “Give us the courage to enter the song” to me means “Give us the courage to openly join in the Church and openly live and proclaim our Faith”. What’s wrong with that?.
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Nothing in a Protestant church service. Again, the hymn has a horrible melody and bad lyrics that are theologically unsound.

Could it be that you’re used to these hymns, and don’t expect any better?

I went to a Commencement Mass at a local university. I expected the usual Kumbyah trio and strum-strum music, as the Mass was held in the largest room on cmapus, the sports’ complex. This would be especially true, as most of the campus ministry runs toward the liberal. I was EXTREMELY, pleasantly surprised to find almost all the brothers who run the school either in cap and gown or in their habit, the presiding bishop in full ecclesicastical regalia, everyone serving at the altar properly attired or vested. More importanly, the music department’s arrangements were soaring peices of music!!! Not once during that hour and a half did anybody sing “Gather Us In”. There was a hymn offered on guitar- classical guitar, no strum-strum, finger chording all the way, playing the guitar as if it were an instrument and not a weapon!!!

And it was Pentecost!!!
 
Worst songs? By far the traditional ones with changed lyrics. Like “Amazing Grace”, where the line “and saved a wretch like me” gets morphed to “and saved SOMEONE like me”. I won’t sing that. I thought, what, are there no more wretches? Is there now a shortage of sinners?

Some of the neutered songs bother me too. I speak of the ones savagely rendered gender-neutral, sometimes rendering them nonsensical or unpoetical.
 
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Elzee:
aaaagh! I had forgotten about Sons of God! Now the memory is back. I can’t believe I remeber the words after all these years…now i have it in my head. ugh. I’ll share the pain… 😃
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
Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Alleluia!
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AAAAAAARGH! That insipid song is in my mind again! Get it out! Get… it… out!!!
 
I am reading in this thread, about the profane music at Catholic Mass. However, I read somewhere that the Pope has excommunicated every Catholic who sings something other than the Gregorian chant:

“Therefore, we command under sentence of excommunication that, in the singing and reading of your churches, you carry them out in no other way than that which Pope St. Gregory handed down with all your powers. For if, which we hardly believe, anyone should try, now or in the future, in any way whatsoever, to lead you back or turn you aside to any other tradition beside the one which we gave to you, we not only command that he be excommunicated from the holy body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we declare by our authority and also the authority of all our predecessors the he shall remain in perpetual anathema for his presumptuous audacity.”

Pope Leo IV in Una Res.

From this it looks like a Catholic would be held in perpetual anathema and excommunicated for participating in the type of music mentioned in this thread?
 
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stanley123:
but we declare by our authority and also the authority of all our predecessors
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This is a little off topic, but papal authority to excomunicate does not extend past his death, much less 1100 years after his death. Furthermore one pope does not bind another in disciplinary matters and all the most recent papal documents do not hold every Catholic to sing Gregorian or be anathema in perpetua, which, I think, is not even canonically possible anymore.

In reference to any exercise of infallibility, I don’t think so. It sure misses the mark with this, “For if, which we hardly believe, anyone should try, now or in the future.” oops.

Which every website you got this from, I doubt is bringing to light something new, that no pope of the last century has know.
 
After I returned to the Church after many, many, many years I was stunned to hear the music being sung every Sunday. I continued to be dismayed when I realized the songs were in a rotation and even the most solemn Masses, i.e. Easter Vigil, contained those very same songs. I found myself flipping through the hymnal looking for songs we COULD have been singing instead of the ones we were. Bottom line, EVERY song mentioned in this thread is in the “rotation”!

So, what to do? I found a tradional church with traditional music accompanied by an organ (not guitar, flute, recorder, trumpet, bongo drums, tamborine, piano) without hand clapping, applause for the music and the “performers”. Until I started reading this thread, I had managed to put all those gather us in, lord of the dance, sing a new song, etc. tunes out of mind.

If you will all excuse me, I’m going to go listen to my Gregorian Chat cd’s now.
 
As much as i want to complain, these songs do help with the crowd to be able to express themselves. For me, it is nothing like the Praise and Worship of the Protestants, and yet the music is not too old.

Growing up with this kind of music, and then coming back to revert after 5 years, the music is like nostalgia to me. I loved Canticle of The Sun, and, okay, Gather Us In doesn’t make sense.

But being part of the Novus Ordo, all music, even the cheesiest and wrong in theology still praises our Lord.

One of my favourite hymns, btw, is He Has Anointed Me… 😃
 
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silverwings_88:
Growing up with this kind of music … the music is like nostalgia to me.
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I still harbor a soft spot for those folky hymns I grew up singing in the late '80’s/early 90’s. Hearing them reminds me of being a kid again, reading Bible storybooks with my Dad.

“Sing a New Church” makes me puke, with its ramblings about “the God who made us rich in our diversity,” and the union of “every nation … every race.” Such babblings only focus more on our differences, instead of helping us worship God together.

Another song I love to hate is “God Who Stretched the Spangled Heavens.” Often used for Earth Day, it is full of concern for our modern society. My favorite is the oh-so-poetic verse about the atomic bomb:

We have ventured worlds undreamed of since the childhood of our race; Known the ecstasy of winging through untraveled realms of space; Proved the secrets of the atom, yielding unimagined pow’r. Facing us with life’s destruction or our most triumphant hour.

Oy vey. :banghead:
 
I was paging through Gather waiting for somebody, and I honestly found a Haas hymn I can stand…If you will all turn to #147, it is really a refrain, “Holy is His Name”. Of course it is just about taken word for word out of St. Luke, but for Haas, that’s a major thing.
 
“For you are washerwoman God. You know us in the water. Washerwoman God, splashing, happy, free…You wash the dirty diapers that baby makes with ease…Washerwoman let me be like you.”

And there’s some other song Father keeps touting…something about expressing our diversity. To quote Rev. Birkenstock himself…“It’s gender-neutral so it isn’t offensive.”

Yeah, right> :rolleyes:
 
DH and I went on vacation last weekend, and attended Mass at a parish in that town. All of the music was straight from “Gather”, but there was one moment where I nearly burst out laughing. After Communion, the cantor and accompanist broke out into a song with the chorus “Surely God is here in this place”. During the chorus the little boy behind me broke out into several loud “Bronx cheers”. His timing was impeccable.

Lest anyone think I am making fun of the parish at large- the people were lovely (and sang with more gusto than I am used to hearing from Catholics), the priest seemed orthodox, and I didn’t see any major abuses. Just some cheesy hymns.
 
What’s that syncopated song in Gather that has the “Oooh”? Gag sputter.
 
Tibbar said:
“For you are washerwoman God. You know us in the water. Washerwoman God, splashing, happy, free…You wash the dirty diapers that baby makes with ease…Washerwoman let me be like you.”

And there’s some other song Father keeps touting…something about expressing our diversity. To quote Rev. Birkenstock himself…“It’s gender-neutral so it isn’t offensive.”

Yeah, right> :rolleyes:
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Washerwoman God is gender neutral? May we please have the full reference on this landmark of Christian spirituality?
 
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