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A facebook friend (he can feel free to name himself) has been asking about a passage in the USCCB-sponsored document Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship. The passage concerns the writing of new hymns.

 Sing to the Lord #83 (quoting the USCCB’s 2006 Directory on Music and the Liturgy):
“to be suitable for use in the Liturgy, a sung text must not only be doctrinally correct, but must in itself be an expression of the Catholic faith.”

I take it the passage means that not only should hymns be error-free (which one would think should go without saying, but actually needs to be said), but also that it should express the faith.

Let’s say that there is a text free from doctrinal error. Does it express the faith in any one of the many possible ways that this can be done? Does it say something true about Christian salvation, or about the person of Jesus, or the responsibilities of discipleship, or the love of God?

Without this positive criterion of expressing the Catholic faith, it is possible to write hymns that promote a watered-down version of Catholicism, a worldview that is little more than deistic, very vague, and, I would add, very boring.

I have written before about this worldview. It is widespread and, I believe, the biggest threat to Catholicism, often institutionalized and rewarded. While perhaps not strictly speaking heretical, hymns that support this worldview do not express the Catholic faith in a positive way. They may or may not express some humanistic substitute doctrine, such as psychological well-being in place of salvation, or a philosophical doctrine, such as a Hegelian understanding of death and rising.

In any case, vague and not-clearly-Christian hymns dilute the faith life of Catholics. With so many excellent texts in circulation, there is no good reason to use them. They ought to be avoided.

I know he has been mentioned before, if not here, then on the MusicaSacra fora, and if you’re anything like I, items that should be of interest don’t always register if they are not immediately useful for whatever pressing need one feels as a musician, but….

As it happens, having no duties, or responsibility, or work as a musician, m musical needs are rather limited right now.
It being that time of year, some Crusaders for Life sang Phillip Stopford’s heartbreakingly appropriate lullaby for the Holy Innocents at the state capitol building in Illinois.
And it being that time of year, (I don’t know about you, but my creche and tree have another week to go….) it remains appropriate. It was a joy to discover this composer, like receiving one last Christmass present, because…

St John XXIII announces Vatican II: Gaudet mater ecclesia!

In our first installment of our series of talks on Vatican II, we talk about why this council is so important to the life of the Church, and why it is crucial that we understand how interpretive questions really influence everything in the life of the Church.

Remember to check back next Monday after 6p EST for our next installment!

Last night the Pray Tell blog posted an egregiously spiteful hit-obit on a monk, scholar, and Churchman who had died that very same day.

This morning it was removed, and a slightly milder but still preposterously inappropriate version has replaced it.

The author, Paul Inwood, is considered such an expert on mercy that cathedrals around the globe were required to sing a hymn he wrote on the subject. But there was no mercy here for his professional enemy.

It’s a tactic of the left to act in a “who, me?” fashion regarding conflict, to call for an end to this war or that war, the culture war, the liturgy war, the translation war. As though the left is an innocent bystanding pacifist rather than the agenda-pushing, angry aggressor.

The liturgist has no clothes.

A full retraction, with apology, to the monk’s religious and natural families is in order.

Many of the debates which are going on in the Catholic Church today have as their root the interpretation of Vatican II, the last ecumenical council.  Yet, how many people have really delved into Vatican II, into the texts themselves, the theological and historical context of the Council, and the thorny questions of its interpretation.  At my parish, Prince of Peace in Taylors, SC, we just finished a series on Vatican II.  Often church musicians need resources to learn more, not just about the liturgical and musical questions which effect their daily life, but also the theological background around which some of those questions must be considered.

For the next seven Mondays, each week we offer a link to a talk given by me about Vatican II on the following topics, along with the discussion afterwards: