The communion song at St. Mary’s took me back to college, and not in a good way. The song (not a “hymn,” to be sure) was “We Are Called,” one of the favorite campfire songs at our folk masses on campus.
Normally, since these songs can detract from basking in the presence of God, I steel myself to ignore them, but one lyric has stayed with me: “We are called to love tenderly.”
Are we? I wondered. I’ve spent over three decades on earth and maybe I haven’t loved tenderly enough. So I investigated the matter, and found that the phrase “love tenderly” is mostly found on Catholic Web sites, citing Micah 6:8 as the source text.
So the Bible tells us to love tenderly, eh. I immediately resolved to do so, and frequently. Yet I still had a nagging doubt. I went to the excellent (Protestant) English Bible Gateway to look at various translations of Micah 6:8, and after looking through most of them, I did not see “love tenderly.”
I suspected that loving tenderly must be a Catholic thing — you know, like translating Gabriel’s words to Mary as “full of grace” instead of “most highly favored one.” Yes, that must be it. I opened the New American Bible and found…
You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.
Hmm. That was pretty much how the Protestant translators rendered the verse, too. Could it be that David Haas messed around with the words? That instead of the imperative “love mercy” or “love goodness,” depending on the Bible version, he changed it to the less direct “We are called to love tenderly”?
This is a small example of lex orandi, lex credendi, that how one prays determines how one believes. Haas took a strong, masculine passage from Micah about man’s obligations to the God of Israel and made it into a wimpy suburban anthem to the God of Nice. Today there are Catholic organizations — including at least one archdiocese — that quote the lyrics of “We Are Called” as if they are the words of the Prophet Micah himself.
Plato regarded bad music as the biggest threat to an ideal society, because it appeals directly to the passions and can override the intellect. In contemporary American Catholicism, traditionalists often treat folk music as a symptom of many parishes’ mediocre spiritual life. I wonder if it isn’t a primary cause.
Is that the music or the lyrics? By folk do you mean 50s and 60s protest songs, or Trad? If the latter, you’d have to also condemn Be Thou My Vision, and Let All Mortal Flesh Be Silent. Not to mention Poor Lonesome Stranger.
err, Poor Wayfaring Stranger. Sorry.
Is the tune of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” of folk origin? The text is from the Byzantine liturgy of St. Basil.
Yes, it’s called “Picardy” and it’s a French folk song. Cyberhymnal says it’s a “French Carol Melody.”
Let’s not be cute. I’m referring to the popular music of the ’50s and ’60s in America that went by the name of “folk.”
Thank you, Eric, for voicing my sentiments exactly. I hate that song with a perfect hate, as David says in the psalms. The music is like a poor show tune and the lyrics sound like the anthem for a particularly effeminate Call to Action rally. Unsurprisingly, we were force-fed the song in the seminary, since it was seen as some sort of ideal Christian statement. Some of us who could not stand it anymore came up with a parody version that I will not reproduce here lest our gentle readers be scandalized. (I was not one of its authors, but I sympathized with their frustration.)
On a more academic tack, I note that in most classic spiritual writers, such as St Francis de Sales, among others, “tender love” is a euphemistic way of saying “physical romance.” Not exactly the kind of thing I go to Mass looking for.
And I agree with you that music of the Haas/Haugen variety likely has a lot to do with the malaise in many parishes today. That’s worth a post in itself.
OK, I’ve finished venting. Back to your regularly scheduled blog.
Oh, please! Fr. JP, let us have the parody!!
Love me tender, love me true, all my dreams fulfill;
for, my Savior, I love you and I always will.
Thankyouverymuch.
One other bad thing about “We Are Called”: the music itself is so high, it’s suitable only for sopranos and castrati, not for us bass-baritones.
When I’ve heard/done “We Are Called” it’s been in a more gospel style — done that way it’s very effective. I’m a baritone and it’s really not that high, actually.
While the translation may be a bit free (artistic license) I don’t think it’s wimpy, any more than saying that God loves us tenderly.
Here’s the lyric. The intention behind the song is obviously good, but the text could be better:
“Show your mercy” would be better if it referred to *His* mercy.
“Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord”: this is telling us what kind of personality to have: quite insensitive to us introverts.
“Live in the freedom of the city of God”: where does this expression come from? When antinomianism is so widespread, exhortations to “live in freedom” need to be made with some nuance. St. Paul writes of the “freedom of the sons of God”, but of course that gender-related image could not be allowed to stand unchanged.
“We are called to be hope for the hopeless
so all hatred and blindness will be no more!”
— This is simply illogical and shows a lack of emotional understanding. Despair does not cause hatred.
Haas’ song is vague:
“sing of that great day when all will be one!
God will reign, and we’ll walk with each other
as sisters and brothers united in love!”
Where’s the causality here? Does human unity bring about the “great day” and God’s reign, or vice versa? What day is this: the parousia? the ending of division among Christians? In either case, walking with each other should take second place to our walking with Him.
And that brings us to the main flaw in the song: in it, God is merely context and we take the center place.
Contrast it with this early American hymn full of vivid words. (Here’s a recording.) It exhorts the faithful to mercy and to sharing spiritual goods, but sets the love and mercy shown by the faithful into the context of saintly Scriptural examples and of God’s own acts.
I love what that fascist Plato said about music…he was right….most of today’s music is demonic pure and simple….you don’t have to be a catholic fundamentalist to know this….certain intervals are malevolent…hehe….gosh we need to bring back the chant……it’s coming….the renaissance is coming!!!
Here’s the Douay-Rheims for Mic 6:8
I will shew thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requireth of thee: Verily to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk solicitous with thy God.
and the Vulgate
indicabo tibi o homo quid sit bonum et quid Dominus quaerat a te utique facere iudicium et diligere misericordiam et sollicitum ambulare cum Deo tuo
I don’t have the faintest idea how one could get “love me tender’ out of this verse!
He was obviously thinkig of the wrong king.
“a catholic fundamentalist”
What is that?
It’s like “non-alcoholic vodka” or “brave Frenchman,” a phrase that is grammatically correct but logically impossible. Catholic liberals like to call orthodox Catholics “Catholic fundamentalists” because they don’t like fundamentalists or, for that matter, Catholicism.
Ah … like “the fascist Plato”?