The Catholic Case for Protestant Hymns

First Things ^ | 3/16/12 | Nathaniel Peters

[marshmallow]

Should Catholics sing hymns at Mass? Given the state of Catholic liturgical music, it’s a fair question. In the last century, Catholics exchanged their musical solid food for milk—usually skim and on the edge of going sour. Hymns at Mass are a recent addition to the liturgy. Hymns were used in the daily office, rotating by day or by season, but the Tridentine Mass had chants for particular days—the propers of the Mass—not hymns. Protestant congregations who were departing from medieval practice in other ways introduced hymns into the liturgy itself, and, as many Christians of all kinds acknowledge, Catholic attempts to appropriate and improve on this Protestant modification have not turned out well.

It should not surprise us, therefore, that some Catholics who want to fix church music focus on Gregorian chant and move away from hymns altogether. Others lean more favorably toward hymns, but seek to make sure that they are Catholic hymns. But there are good reasons for Catholics to sing hymns—and Protestant hymns, at that. Even as they strive for excellence in Gregorian chant and other areas of musical renewal, Catholics would do well to remember what good hymns can do and why excellence in hymn-singing should be part of the Catholic liturgical renewal.

First, good hymns offer an excellent opportunity for catechesis, which is one of the purposes of liturgy. Like the proper chants, they can help us digest the truths of God we have just received in Scripture and offer an exegesis of particular feasts themselves. Consider the Lutheran Easter hymn, “Awake, My Heart, with Gladness”:

Now I will cling forever
To Christ, my Savior true;
My Lord will leave me never,
Whate’er He passeth through.
He rends Death’s iron chain,

[Bryan24]

Interesting thread. We have no musical instruments at all. The entire congregation sings acapella. We sing a variety of hymns. From Martin Luther to Isaac Watts to Fanny Crosby to Bill Gaither. Gregorian, Anglican, Early American, Gospel, Modern.

[PanzerKardinal]

50. In sung liturgical services celebrated in Latin:

(a) Gregorian chant, as proper to the Roman liturgy, should be given pride of place, other things being equal. Its melodies, contained in the “typical” editions, should be used, to the extent that this is possible.

- Instruction on Music in the Liturgy, Second Vatican Council 1967

..............

Roma locuta. Causa finita est

[PanzerKardinal]

Why do Catholics have to ape Protestants?

We have 2,000 years of treasures to draw from.

What do Protestants have to equal the great Eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas?

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

Prostrate I adore Thee, Deity unseen,
Who Thy glory hidest ‘neath these shadows mean;
Lo, to Thee surrendered, my whole heart is bowed,
Tranced as it beholds Thee, shrined within the cloud.

Taste, and touch, and vision, to discern Thee fail;
Faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil.
I believe whate’er the Son of God hath told;
What the Truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold.

What can compare to the grandeur of the Te Deum?

Te Deum laudamus:
te Dominum confitemur.
Te aeternum Patrem
omnis terra veneratur.
Tibi omnes Angeli;
tibi caeli et universae Potestates;
Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim
incessabili voce proclamant:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt caeli et terra
maiestatis gloriae tuae.

We praise thee, O God :
we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee :
the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud :
the Heavens, and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim :
continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy :
Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty :
of thy glory.

And at Easter, what is more moving than Vidi Aquam

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo,
a latere dextro, alleluia:
et omnes, ad quos pervenit aqua ista,
salvi facti sunt, et dicent, alleluia, alleluia.

I saw water coming forth from the temple
on the right side, alleluia:
and all those to whom this water came
were saved, and shall say, alleluia, alleluia.

Catholics should act Catholic.

Catholics should be Catholic.

Catholics don’t need to be watered down Protestants.

[mosesdapoet]

Boy did you open a can of worms...For years I belonged to a Gregorian choir. Now I’m in the diocease of LaCrosse and I can only pick out a handfull of hymns I know in their book of liturgy.

Nobody knows most of those hymns and most importantly sor does the congregation. What’s the point ? What are the bishops proving ? I do have a slight advantage I can sight read the music if it’s there. The organist, least we have an organ at our church feels she’s got to play at least once every hymn that’s in that thing..Going to Mass for me is my pennance If I could find in my locale another eastern rite to belong to I’d join it in a heartbeat the new American rite sucks

[Claud]

And of course the old Mass had hymns as well. The Sequence is just a Latin hymn—and they used to be much more prevalent before Trent.

What Paul VI did in allowing hymnody was not out of left field. It was recognizing a trend that had already begun.

Hundreds of years before Vatican II, the American Indian missions were singing vernacular hymns in place of most of the propers. They’d have an introit and sometimes a Gradual/Alleluia, but generally hymns for Offertory and Communion. And when I used to sing for the traditional Low Mass, we did the “hymn sandwich” that the cognoscenti seem to deride nowadays, but which I personally found very edifying.

Call me a musical Philistine or a closet Anglo-Catholic, but I am genuinely disappointed to go through Advent without hearing the complete “O Come O Come Emmanuel” at Mass.

[ansel12]

The vote is more important than the songs. Just get them to quit voting democrat.

[MinuteGal]

Thanks for posting one of my favorite hymns. Both the words and music are extremely powerful.

I've always joked that I'm a Missour Synod Lutheran because they have the best hymns of any denomination...and there's more than a grain of truth in that, lol.

[Jvette]

LOL, well I wouldn’t exactly call it war.

That is the beauty of the Catholic Church in that I merely moved to a later Mass where the music was more to my liking.

I remember loving the new music in the seventies when I was a kid, it seemed hip and cool to me.

Now, I want the hymns and the chants.

[CTrent1564]

Salvation:

That is one that I refuse to sing as well. The Term wretched has definite calvinist double predestination implications and thus, as I said before, I also refuse to sing it as well.

[CTrent1564]

Campion:

Well, Marty Haugen [his music mind you, not him as a person, as I don’t know him] and the Oregon Catholic Press Hymal and the music that it has in it [i.e. Haugen, St. Louis Jesuits] and the music in it makes me puke, if that is what you are implying.

[CTrent1564]

PanzerKardinal:

Te Deum and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Eucharistic hyms are incredible. Lets add Allegri’s Misere, and Palestrina’s music and all is Masses including the Victory Alleluia that is and the tune for the Strife is Over [one of my favorites] and O Magnum Mysterium. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus is another one. Let all Mortal Flesh keep silence [Picardy] is another one.

But Yes, The Catholic Musical Tradition is unsurpassed, unfortunately many in the Church tried to throw it away after Vatican II but it is the “Return of the Jedi [i.e. Great Catholic Liturgical Musical tradition] to stamp out the Empire of the nebulous Spirit of Vatican II

[kearnyirish2]

“There are some hymns that I absolutely will NOT sing, because they do not reflect Catholic doctrine. For example, “Amazing Grace” “

It is disgusting that this is allowed in Catholic Churches; it has become widespread. If the Church allows people to sing a song in which they indicate they are already saved, they shouldn’t be surprised when those same parishioners don’t even bother going to Mass anymore. They don’t have to; they’re “saved”.

[polkajello]

Interesting thread.