Future Priests of the Third Millennium

A little insight into the life of seminarians from various dioceses preparing for ministry as Roman Catholic priests, including daily activities, personal interests, special events, the spiritual life, news from the seminary, and almost whatever comes to our minds!



Thursday, January 11, 2007

Don't bother reading this, I'm just venting

Allow me to vent a moment:

I am reaching my threshold for the music of Bernadette Farrell, David Haas, Bob Hurd, Marty Haugen, and their ilk. They have a stranglehold on the music that is used in parishes around this nation, and as a result, on any given Sunday, one can expect to hear “Christ be our Light,” “Gather Us In,” “We are Called,” or some other banal melody with saccharine lyrics. I am perfectly aware that I have my own tastes and preferences, and that some people do, indeed, like these hymns. In fact, there was a time when I liked them. There are moments when I still like them. However, these hymns utterly fail to capture even a tiny portion of the majesty of God or the great mystery that shrouds all that we do. And, because everyone in the pews knows these songs, we settle for them. It is more important to use music that we know (mediocre though it may be) than to sing inspiring or transcendent songs. I understand the argument. I follow the logic. But how are we ever going to learn anything new? This is not a criticism of the people who play this music. I think that they do a fine job of it. I also think they would do a fine job with some other music too.

3 comments:

Cathy_of_Alex said...

Tyler: You are not alone. I think it's more important that we know the lyrics to Holy God, We Praise Thy Name, then Bread of Life-a song that absolutely amazes me because I did not realize that I was the Bread of Life. Hey, how about that?

I have a problem with many of the hymns in our Catholic churches today because they substitute US for the Lord. Plus, many of them were written by Protestants.

My all time least favorite hymn is: Lord of the Dance. If I have to hear that in a Catholic church ever again....argh.

KennaJo said...

Tyler: While I agree that sometimes it's healthy to step out of our common church hymn "bubble," I also enjoy when the entire congregation joins in a hymn and the entire church rings with their participation. In contrast, when an unfamiliar hymn is played at my church, it results in just the choir members singing--and many churchgoers are lost. Personally, I dislike the feeling I get when I walk away from Mass after a closing hymn bombed.

Adoro said...

Amen!

I like some Haugen/Haas stuff, but it's so overdone that it just goes overboard. My parish is using a lot of it lately, because I think the priest is choosing the music and they are spread very thin (No Liturgical Director currently), so he's picking what's easy and what will cause the least problems. He's actually not a fan of the H-H brothers.

He loves good music, too, we all do.

I think there are plenty of good hyms which are known by the general population, and more widespread use of them would be highly recommended. And some of them can even be used as closing songs, NOT written by the people you cited.

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