Hilarious!
BMP
Quite a talent! Deserves a worthy project. Care to join me in translating the Liber Hymnarius?
Generous comments, both of you. Thank you.
Kathy: what is the liber? I'm unfamiliar with it, but would be happy to help if I can.
Note to all: these were written in response to several years of pulling teeth with the sacropop crowd. Good, God-fearing Christians somehow couldn't see the (expletive deleted) they were using. I regret that these were the best effort I could put together by way of dialogue with such attitudes.
Philip: One small correction. I'm not the choirmaster at St. Martin's. That post belongs to Dr. Linda Morrison. The parish has webcams in both the body of the Church and the adoration chapel.
Chris,
I'm not Kathy, but I'll take the liberty of replying anyways 
The "Liber Hymnarius", Latin for "The Book of Hymnary" is exactly that - a book of hymns - in Latin, and in Gregorian Chant.
I'll bet there are a lot of "music ministers" that still ask the same question, and many that just don't care. For the latter, that's sad. For the former, at least there is hope.
Best of luck.
Peace,
BMP
My first experience of chant was singing O Radiant Light, O Sun Divine. Next, Of the Father's Love Begotten. I think it was an important bridge between my early experiences of singing "songs" in church and the views I have now. I don't think this would be everyone's bridge, but it could work for some people and I'd like to make it possible as one of the many ways we can begin moving forward into the ressourcement!
Brian is correct, except to say that this is THE hymnal of the Catholic Church. It was revised in 1983 to correct changes that were introduced over the centuries. The hymns are intended for the Liturgy of the Hours, but in our current situation they would work for Mass as well.
The best translations so far of many of these are John Neale's, but his diction is definitely from a different era. The whole book should be translated, into current English. That's the project I'm proposing.
Here's a translation I've come close to finishing:
Nunc tempus acceptabile
Fulget datum divinitus,
Ut sanet orbem languidum
Medela parsimoniae.
Christi decoro lumine
Dies salutis emicat,
Dum corda culpis saucia
Reformat abstinentia.
Hanc mente nos et corpore,
Deus, tenere perfice,
Ut appetamus prospero
Perenne pascha transitu.
Te rerum universitas,
Clemens, adoret, Trinitas,
Et nos novi per veniam
Novum canamus canticum. Amen.
*****
The saving rays of light divine
Upon the slumb’ring world now shine
To save and heal the penitent
In this accepted time of Lent.
The light of Christ will show the way
That leads to God’s salvation day.
The rigor of this fasting mends
The hearts that hateful sinning rends.
Keep all our minds and bodies true
In sacrifice, O God, to You,
That we may join, when Lents have ceased,
The everlasting Pascal Feast.
Let all your creatures join to raise
To You, kind Trinity, their praise.
And we, by pardon made anew,
May we sing new songs unto You.
High-dilly ho neighbors,
I don't want to be the goofy gussy at the garden party, but gol-diddley, I'm switched if I can figger out what you jolly-joe imps of Satan are finding so funny about these wonderful worship-ditties. I think Chris is a great writer and I'm happy to have the lyrics spell-diddleyed out at last, because with all the mumbley-mouths at Sunday service, I never understood what they were singing before.
All this average St Joe can say is, hal-diddley-alle-loodily-doodily-ooh-YAH!
PS - Chris, are you SURE the Eagles are a religious group?
Oh, we're not laughing at him, Flanders. We're laughing with him.
LOL
Homer Simpson
Flanders, you give me the perverse imagining of what it might be like if Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote while on crack cocaine. Love your style!
I thought Coleridge was Hopkins high.
OMG! Gerard Manley Hopkins meets Ned Flanders while translating Adoro Te:
Godhead here in hi-dly-i-ding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shaddly-a-dows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lordy, at thy service, low lies here a heart,
Lost all lost in wondly-un-der, at the God thou art.
OUCH!
Ah-diddly-ah-ah-men___
BMP
It isn't the honest hicks which concern me. Those who affect "folk" music while knowing nothing of it, and who proclaim that the Council did away with nasty things such as "O Filii et Filiae" frighten me, and so must be challenged on whatever sand they choose as their abode.
Chris, I divide up the people you mentioned into two groups: 1) the ideologues, and 2) those who have been indoctrinated by them. I have more sympathy than anger with the second group. The first group--I just don't know how they can think what they're doing is right.
Kathy hit the nail right on the head in her last comment.
BMP
This parodying of people's prayers is very irreverent. If I wrote parodies of the hymns of my childhood, you would all scream with Talibanic rage!
Destructive criticism is so easy, but how many of you have ever organized a liturgy?
Would you go back to the diet of 40 years ago? Here are the hymns used day in, day out, then: Soul of my Savior; Sweet Heart of Jesus; To Jesu' Heart all Burning; To Thee, o Heart of Jesus; Sweet Sacrament Divine; Holy God, we praise thy name; Hail, Queen of Heaven; Faith of our Fathers. All of these could be mocked and parodied, trampling on the faith of good people.
Since the Anglican Communion seems to have solved the problem of hymnody quite well, I again suggest that we humbly to and learn of them.
to an learn of them SHD BE go and learn of them
Kathy, the Latin hymn is beautiful, but impossible as the basis for a modern hymn.
Nunc tempus acceptabile
Fulget datum divinitus,
Ut sanet orbem languidum
Medela parsimoniae.
The saving rays of light divine [a flat poetic inversion]
Upon the slumb’ring world [languidis has a more negative connotation] now shine ["rays of light shine" is pleonastic -- very differet from the lovely Latin "tempus fulget"]
To save and heal the penitent [saving rays shine to save -- more pleonasm]
In this accepted time of Lent.
Christi decoro lumine
Dies salutis emicat,
Dum corda culpis saucia
Reformat abstinentia.
The light of Christ will show the way
That leads to God’s salvation day.
The rigor of this fasting mends
The hearts that hateful sinning rends. [Not too bad, but not exactly attuned to modern religious sentiment either -- and what the way leading to the salvation day is rather flat compared with the confident Latin]
Hanc mente nos et corpore,
Deus, tenere perfice,
Ut appetamus prospero
Perenne pascha transitu.
Keep all our minds and bodies true ["all" is ungraceful]
In sacrifice, O God, to You,
That we may join, when Lents have ceased, [not too bad, a bit over-romantic however]
The everlasting Pascal Feast. [PascHal is the correct spelling]
Te rerum universitas,
Clemens, adoret, Trinitas,
Et nos novi per veniam
Novum canamus canticum. Amen.
Let all your creatures join to raise
To You, kind Trinity [sounds awful in English], their praise.
And we, by pardon made anew, ["remade" or "made new": "made anew" is confusing]
May we sing new songs unto You. [repetition of "we" is confusing and feeble]
And we by your forgiveness new
Shall sing a new song unto you
is the kind of thing one could have, but then that sounds very much like one of our ugly modern hymns doesn't it?
The problem of hymnody is not easily solved. It must draw on the native resources of the LIVING language.
Faith of Our Fathers DID get a funny parody. Since the PC folks were screaming, GIA changed it in later hymnals to "A Living Faith" - totally altered text, except for the first verse.
Faith of Our Relatives, lightweight faith.
I think we'll beat this song to death.
(excerpt)
BMP
Faith of our Fathers breathing still
With fury, fire and sword
O how our hearts beat high with ire
Whene'er we hear that juicy word,
Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith,
For you we put our foes to death,
For you we put our foes to death.
Our fathers built those prisons dark
to keep the heart and mind unfree.
How sweet would be their childrens' fate
If they like them could kill for thee.
Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith,
We will be true to Thee, to Death,
We will be true to Thee, to Death!
Spirit of Vatican II, thanks for your critique. I don't receive enough good literary criticism of my work, so it would be easy to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Thanks for doing this with such care--it is generous and I am grateful.
The only places where I disagree with your critique are, as might be guessed, is where you invoke "modern religious sentiment." And would you please look over the last two lines again? I have been sure that the repetition of "we" is called for by the Latin original. No?
"This parodying of people's prayers is very irreverent. If I wrote parodies of the hymns of my childhood, you would all scream with Talibanic rage!"
Prayers to WHAT? To themselves! To their faith-communitarian greatness -- to their almost gnostic smugness! Such a Keystone Kops level of misdirection is a rich and fitting target for satire.
As for the traditional hymns, such attacks as you have been able to mount above are classic examples of backdraft.
Make that misdirectedness.
The problem of hymnody is not easily solved. It must draw on the native resources of the LIVING language.
"Spirit," you make some very good points in the comments immediately preceding this one, as well as the principle you state here. The problem, as I see it, anyway, is in the debased coinage of the "LIVING language" all around us. Good News For Modern Man was a paraphrase Bible written two or three decades ago to meet the 'needs' of 'modern man.' The problem with it is that it is written in 800-word vocabulary worthy of a young teen-ager; and most of your thirty-somethings today don't have a vocabulary much higher than 1200 words. And we haven't even begun discussing the quality of the vocabulary yet. Remember E.D. Hirsch's book, Cultural Literacy? The trouble is: there isn't any. Or, at least, not much. Or, the culture in which there is any literacy isn't worth a human being's time getting to know -- much less a Catholic's. Perhaps, then, JPII didn't misspeak when he referred to a "culture of death," implicitly calling for a new counter-culture of Catholic humanism and personalism. Perhaps that's why Fr. Fessio wrote in an essay some time ago comparing the new generations of Catholic homeschools to the monastic movement that preserved the literature and civility of erstwhile civilizations after the twilight of the dark ages had settled over Europe. I'm reminded, too, of the contrasts drawn by Thomas Merton, while traveling in Italy, between the "DEAD ROME" of classical antiquity and the "LIVING ROME" of the eternal Catholic Church -- "ever living, ever new." Who says a LIVING language can't be cultivated and preserved and passed down in a counter culture?
"Spirit," you also make a good point about the saccharine English-language hymns of 40 years ago, many if not most of which are maudlin to the point of being aesthetically unbearable. However, Thomas Day does a good job in his book, Why Catholics Can't Sing, of addressing the reason for this -- and it largely has to do with the uniquely Irish legacy in the history of English language hymnody in the United States. For generations, of course, the Irish Church could not sing at all, for fear of being discovered, since it could only gather in secret. Then, when it's voice was heard again, especially across the waters in the United States, there was the legacy of Irish sentimentality that infused Catholic hymnody. This has left it's particular imprint on American and English-language Catholicism, and we haven't fully recovered from it yet. Catholic hymnody in the German, Austrian, French, and Italian traditions have not suffered from this infirmity -- though what has happened in the recent decades is another matter. Most hymns translated from these other traditions tend to be substantial and solid. This isn't to say that there are not excellent Irish and English Catholic hymns. There are some -- notably by Newman, Faber, and several others. But read Thomas Day for a nice summary -- you'll see what I mean.
"Spirit," your parody of "Faith of Our Fathers" makes a mockery of generations of your blood ancestors who died by starvation and sword in Ireland for their Catholic Faith. I don't find that particularly funny. Why do you?
Make that "blowback". Jeez, what a day.
Spirit,
Thanks again for the critique. Not perfect yet, but possibly better:
vs. 1: Today is the accepted time.
Christ's healing light, the gift divine
Shines forth to save the penitent
To wake the world by means of Lent.
vs. 4: Let all creation join to raise
O gracious Trinity, Your praise.
And when Your love has made us new,
May we sing new songs, Lord, to You.
My favorite quote from Thomas Merton:
"Poems are naught but warmed up breeze;
DOLLARS are made by Trappist cheese."
Kathy, sounds much better! o gracious Trinity is exactly right
Pertinacious Papist, Faith of our Fathers is primarily a hymn of English Catholics. But of course you must remember that the persecutors were persecuting in the name of the Faith of their Fathers also. You would be quite mistaken to imagine that Catholic persecution of Protestants was any less fierce than Protestant persecution of Catholics, and you would be wrong also to think that your beloved Torquemada would not have heartily approved!
Last line of the Latin? "And we new through forgiveness, let us sing a new song" or "Let us, new through forgiveness, sing a new song" (canamus is subjunctive of canere, as adoret is of adorare).
Prayers to WHAT? To themselves! To their faith-communitarian greatness - SAME COULD BE SAID OF "FAITH OF OUR FATHERS"
Frankly, though I love the sentiment of the other hymns I referred to, I think Faith of our Fathers could not be sung today without incurring the reproaches of sectarianism and triumphalism. I deplore the disappearance of the Sacred Heart and I think Soul of my Savior is a very great hymn(thanks to Loyola and Faber).
I don't think any of the sentimental hymns I referred to are Irish compositions. Faber was a chief source. Holy God we praise thy name is German or Austrian I think (Max Reger has organ chorales based on it). Sentimental piety came in abundance from Italy and France, especially in their paintings and statues which flooded Irish churches (to the chagrin on negected local artists like the Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy). The sentimentalism was intimately conjoined with deep abandonment to the Christ, the Eucharist and Mary and was undoubtedly an instrument of grace for many, many people. I think that it is a phenomenon dating in Ireland only from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Older Gaelic Catholicism is often poetic but completely unsentimental.
Revised translation of Nunc Tempus Acceptabile. Feel free to print it out and give it to your friendly local choir director for use this year (only).
Today is the accepted time.
Christ's healing light, the gift divine
Shines forth to save the penitent
To wake the world by means of Lent.
The light of Christ will show the way
That leads to God’s salvation day.
The rigor of this fasting mends
The hearts that hateful sinning rends.
Keep all our minds and bodies true
In sacrifice, O God, to You,
That we may join, when Lents have ceased,
The everlasting Paschal Feast.
Let all creation join to raise
Most gracious Trinity, Your praise.
And when your love has made us new,
May we sing new songs, Lord, to You.
Trans. c. 2006 Kathleen Pluth
Is Father O'Leary contributing to the discussion, or merely dominating it?
The reason I decided to submit my work to CanticaNOVA Publications (www.canticanova.com) is their submission guideline page, which reads in part:
Music and Text
-should be traditional, i.e. well-written music in styles ranging from Gregorian chant to that of composers like John Rutter.
-Specifically excluded are the singer/songwriter pieces so common in American Catholic churches in the last 30 years as well as the sentimental devotional pieces that prospered in these churches in the 1940s and 50s.
-should have some point of reference to the musical and liturgical heritage of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.
Text
-should be God-centered, avoiding styles in which the congregation or choir are singing to themselves and/or about themselves.
-should be of high quality, avoiding trite and mundane phrasing and should not go to extreme or awkward lengths to avoid traditional English pronoun usage.
Music
-must follow all the principles of standard music theory, unless compositional style demands otherwise.
Spirit, "Faith of Our Fathers" was written by Fr. F. Faber, was it not -- and, yes, about the persecution of Catholics by the English. It goes without saying that there was persecution all around. But your parody suggested the typical Mel Brooks caricature of Catholic history, which makes the Church THE persecutor -- which is pretty much the Protestant textbook tradition that has become the English language textbook tradition. What is sad is that so many Catholics (even) are surprised today to discover that Catholics were martyred by the hundreds in Protestant England, and by the thousands in countries like France, Spain, and Mexico traditionally considered Catholic. William Cobbett notes in his history of the Reformation in England that a number of individuals in Foxe's Book of Martyrs came forward to protest the fact that they were included in his book and were still very much alive. Torquemada, a favorite whipping boy in the iconography of popular culture, often tarred with all sorts of falsehoods, was never a persecutor but an inquisitor. The animating purpose of his undertaking was altogether different and it is either ignorance or gross injustice to overlook this.
Back to the issue of the post: I personally find the weekly diet of "liturgical songs" imposed upon us at Mass a cruel punishment that requires a great deal of focus and effort to endure. I notice several things when Sundays come around: I notice a sense of dread that I must go now, in contrast to the quiet week-day Masses, to the Sunday Mass with all its hand-holding, clapping, bongo-drumming applauding narcissism. I notice that I have to FIGHT to cut my way through all these distractions to find my way to HIM whom I've come to worship. Rather than facilitate, these "liturgical songs" utterly detract. At best they may produce a bit of a warm fuzzy sense of momentary solidarity with others in the congregation, which is as temporary as it is artificial. I notice that I have to resist an impulse of disgust and anger that often wells up within me at the banality and shoddiness of what we offer up to our Lord. I notice that what lingers in the imaginal memory after Mass are residual impressions of personalities -- individuals in the choir, soloists, an individual member of the choir singing a descant, the incessant pounding of the piano, or the brassy blaring of the organ after Communion, vying for my attention. The drive home is a relief. The worst curse is one of those "liturgical songs" played as a recessional ("closing song") with a particularly catchy rhythm which sticks with you like a curse throughout your drive home and, if you're very unlucky, the rest of the afternoon. This can even happen with an "entrance song" such as "Gather Us In," when I was visiting Key West with a friend of mine, and we couldn't shake that stupid song -- yes, that STUPID SONG -- for several hours. It even came back to haunt us several times the next day, like bad chili.
Dr. Blosser, I'd bet you the beer of your choice that your Bishop doesn't know how you feel. Or if he does, he thinks you're in the minority (and he may well be right.) (BTW I don't have any particular bishop in mind.)
Other minorities include St. Athanasius, St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More ....
One's status as a member of a minority is irrelevant, at least as the world measures minority status.
Of course he's in the righteous minority. But a bishop has a lot of concerns, and one would be 1) not alienating the vast majority of his people, and 2) not depriving the people of the devotional life that they (erroneously) think is helpful.
I think that bishops should be told how distracting the liturgy is.
"I'd bet you the beer of your choice that your Bishop doesn't know how you feel."
Thanks for that thought, Kathy. It's almost enough to inspire a letter to the bishop, though -- as good a man as he seems to be -- the prospect fills me with the gloom of something close to resignation. Perhaps a an ADVANCE of beer would furnish the incentive needed though ...
I've got my own fish to fry, my own beer to buy. Besides, I won the bet!
Received this from a Catholic apologist/Church organist:
Please add me to your list of Catholics who are desperate to further the anti Haugen-Haas revolution. However, the list needs to be lengthened to include the whole cadre of liturgical leftists, including Michael Joncas, Dan Schutte, Bob Hurd, John Foley, and Gregory Norbert.
After twenty years as a working organist-- and in the prime of my ability-- I could endure this rubbish no longer. Now I am employed by two tiny country parishes with lousy missalettes and dreadful electronic spinet organs in poor condition. But, I am never asked to play the music of the concerned liturgical leftists. My objections are not only musical; much more, they are theological.
Haugen, Haas, and their conspiratorial friends are the musical mouthpieces of "Fem church." This is the denomination which has been constructed by two primary sources: feminist women and homosexual men. Truly a match made in hell. Both of these sources have a common enemy: the male: maleness, and everything associated with it. Thus, artistic liturgical expression must lack-- even be opposed to-- all male-like qualities. These would include courage, strength, conviction, firmness, heroism, objectivity, fidelity, and true devotion to a body of truths, regardless of the times and trends. In place of these male-like qualities one finds emotionalism, subjectivity, sensitivity, and an indifference to revealed truth. In other words, one finds an emasculated male icon accompanied by the gentle strokes of a guitar. Sort of a Miss Piggy in drag. Such is the homosexual influence.
The feminist influence actually achieves a similar effect, but from a different angle. The feminist hatred of maleness (as distinguished from the homosexual fear of maleness) is especially concerned with undermining all patriarchal elements in the Church. Thus, it attacks the clergy and all things related. It hates the papacy, the male priesthood, the Mass and its rubrics, the Latin language, Gregorian Chant, Christ as Son of God, God as Father, and Catholicism itself as an objectively revealed religion which cannot, therefore, be altered for subjective reasons.
The music of Haugen, Haas, et al. reflects these disordered dispositions. It avoids every trace of strength, conviction, and objectivity; it makes no references to truth, and is thus appropriately composed in the maudlin style of secular ballads; it fails to even hint of "the sacred" in any way, to the pride of its proponents. It is the new music of the new Fem church and deserves to live and die with her. Amen.
Timothy O'Keefe
The Fullness of Truth
What's wrong with "Faith of Our Fathers," anyway? Or the Irish for that matter? I think people mistakenly view the Irish as jolly, sentimental little beer-guzzling folk who twiddle on the fiddle in a pub, hail-fellow-well-met, etc. -- sort of Celtic Hobbits.
The REAL Irish (that is, the ones who actually do stick with the Faith of their fathers) are tough people. How else could Catholicism have ever survived there?
Don't talk to me about supposedly treacly Irish hymns when the Ch. is afflicted with post-Vatican II psycho/homo-trash like "Hosea" which, aside from its title, has NOTHING religious about it.
Anyway, if I were to be martyred (God forbid; I'm a wimp!), I would be more likely to go to my death wanting to sing "Faith of Our Fathers" for courage than "Here I Am, Lord." If nothing else, I wouldn't want my executioner to think I was whining.
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