Liturgy and Music: July 2008 Archives

I sent a note to Fr. Z. today:

According to a press report, the new English Mass will say, "Lamb of God,
who takes away the sins..."

As far as I can tell, that's a grammar error, putting the verb "take" into
the third-person form, whereas the sentence is addressed to the second
person. It should be "who take", as in "you who take".

Is that press bit right, and do we need to ask CDWDS to head this bug off?

--rc

The reply:

Thanks for that!

I wrote to Card. Arinze about it.

Fr. Z

Quis custodiet custodes? Well, OK, I will. :-)

But this might just be an error on CWN's part. A WYD musical setting of the Mass used the new text approved in Australia, and it says, "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world...."

That's not ideal, as it doesn't follow the structure of the Latin clauses, but it would be better than having a grammar error ensconced in the official Mass text. I'd be gritting my teeth for decades if that were to happen.

We'll find out what the case is eventually.

In Boston, the traditional Latin Mass has moved from its former home at Holy Trinity Church to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross; today's celebration was a Low Mass in the lower church, and 101 souls attended, about as many as attended at Holy Trinity. Fr. Bernard Shea, SJ, has been a frequent celebrant of the old Mass. Holy Trinity's music director emeritus George Krim served as organist, and the chant choir Schola Amicorum sang.

For the anniversary of the announcement of Summorum Pontificum, we sang the Oremus pro Pontifice.

Just to prove that we Americans don't have all the bad taste in the world, here's an AP report about how the Aussies are just as able to choose bad funeral music:

Australians making odd choices for funeral songs

5 minutes ago

Hymns are being replaced at funerals in one Australian city by popular rock classics like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," a cemetery manager said Wednesday.

At Centennial Park, the largest cemetery and crematorium in the southern city of Adelaide, only two hymns still rank among its top 10 most popular funeral songs: "Amazing Grace" and "Abide With Me."

Leading the funeral chart is crooner Frank Sinatra's classic hit "My Way," followed by Louis Armstrong's version of "Wonderful World," a statement said.

The Led Zeppelin and AC/DC rock anthems rank outside the top 10, but have gained ground in recent years as more Australians give up traditional Christian hymns.

"Some of the more unusual songs we hear actually work very well within the service because they represent the person's character," Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said.

Among other less conventional choices were "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" by the Monty Python comedy team, "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead," "Hit the Road Jack," "Another One Bites the Dust" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead."