Category: Liturgy and Music

What are your favorite Christmas songs and hymns? For myself, I still love hearing “O Holy Night.” “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” is a lovely and blissfully non-ubiquitous song. Corelli’s Christmas Concerto in G minor is probably my favorite piece of Christmas chamber music (I wrote about it last year.) I don’t have a favorite hymn, but “Adeste Fideles” gets my blood moving.
As a public service, I would like to issue my annual reminder that the Hallelujah Chorus is for Easter, not the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior.

Yesterday, we sang the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as the recessional hymn. Only in “Gather,” it’s listed as “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.” Wouldn’t want to use the common title! So bellicose!
I could live with the name change, but I can’t take the politically correct bowdlerization of the hymn’s words themselves.
Verse 3: “He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement seat”
becomes
“He is sifting out all human hearts….”
Verse 4: “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”
becomes
“As he died to make all holy, let us die that all be free.”
Which, I suppose, is a little better than “let us live to make all free,” which is another variation I’ve seen. Who dares to do such things? Probably the same people who lecture us about the integrity of “art” and the “artist.” Unless the artist is dead, and the art in question’s copyright has expired.
Somebody made these changes so that “men” is not used as a generic plural noun for male and female human beings. The rationale is that women are oppressed when such a thing gets printed in a hymnal.
The reason this is stupid — and I apologize if you think “stupid” is name-calling, but the adjective is perfect — the words of the hymn were written by Julia Ward Howe. As the name implies, she was a woman!
To all those who want to impose their feminist ideas on the rest of us by changing the words to one of the most well-known and beloved hymns in American history, I have four words of advice: Write your own damn hymn.
Amen.

I got an invitation to the “Advent Celebration and Benefit” for the Georgetown Center for Liturgy today. It looked harmless enough, until I opened it.
The “Celebration and Benefit” honors “the 2004 recipients of the National Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Liturgical Life of the American Church”
(How about “Church in America?”)
And who’s one of the recipients? None other than the Canonizable Marty Haugen. He’s giving a talk on “Writing Music for Today’s Christians: A Composer Reflects in Word and Song On How It’s Done”
Spare me. The man arguably most responsible for turning Liturgical Music into Liturgical Muzak gets to reflect in “Word and Song.” Then there’s a Mass (probably a Haugenfest) and a buffet reception.
I’m normally not one to turn down a buffet, but after all that I wouldn’t have an appetite.
My last thought is, I wonder who should get an award like that? James Chepponis, who writes music that is much more reverent and interesting? I really don’t know any other giants of Catholic Liturgy in this age because the age seems to be the terrible long Era of Cheese. Just when some of those jokers should be sunsetted they trot them out for another Award, Mass and Buffet.

The refrain of “For the beauty of the earth” is: “Lord of all, to Thee we raise / This our hymn of grateful praise.” It goes along with the tune “Dix”, a very stately little number. You can see that text in, for example, the Worship II book.
(And, by the way, while you’re looking around, get a load of the composer.)
The editors at Oregon Catholic Press, however, have it: “Lord of all, to you we raise / this our gift of grateful praise.” What gives?
Of course, there are two changes in that line, and I can understand one of them: some people want to replace “thee” with “you”. I don’t think it does any good, but at least there is a rationale behind it. So what’s the rationale behind changing “hymn” to “gift”?
I’ll tell you my suspicion: once the OCP staff got into the habit of removing references to “He” and “Him”, they didn’t know where to stop!
Anyway, the OCP publications are really shameless in their editing of classic hymns: they don’t even bother to admit it when they do it. Most publishers mark an altered text with the notation “alt.” next to the author’s name. Not this lot. They expect us to believe that the PC stuff they stick into hymns is original: the perjurers.

I had the debate on while I was doing my first Finance assignment, and was pleased to see Bush do a much better job. Here’s some random thoughts:
Style of Substance – so many people seem caught up with the externals: grimacing, posture, tone, etc. It’s almost like we’re having an audition for President, not an election.
Kerry the Catholic – his abortion answer reminded me of Pontius Pilate: “What is Truth?” It was a meandering rationalization that was strained and insincere.
Kerry and the war – nothing points to Kerry as someone who can continue the Iraq campaign of the terror war with any effectiveness. He never met a weapons or intelligence program that he didn’t want to cut. He seems to think he can negotiate the US out of the terror war and out of sticky situations like Iran and North Korea.
Bush’s humor – self-deprecation is the mark of someone who is at peace with himself. It was nice to see Bush go on the offensive and have an enjoyable time.
Bush and substance – it was nice to see Bush tackle the meat of the issues in an effective way.
Kerry’s closing statement when he said, “I’ll say this – and right to the camera” and then turned like Herman Munster to the camera to start his lines. It was as if he was reminding himself to doing something like Reagan…