Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Songs Sung Blue (and Red and White)


I’ve been reading song lyrics. Nothing like song lyrics to get people worked up.

 OK, I have been efforting creatively to avoid thinking about the pudgy guy who is threatening to impose cruel and unusual taxes on a motorcycle company for disobedience and who hogged the spotlight at a Medal of Honor ceremony to proclaim that the widow voted for him. I’ve been reading Pray Tell, the liturgists’ Web site. Deacon Jim turned up there today, by the way.

 What I’ve been looking at are a claim of inappropriateness for Marty Haugen’s "Gather Us In," and what today escalated into a charge of heresy against Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless the U.S.A." In both cases, the liturgical use of the songs was the starting point of the discussion, and in both cases the offense was given by the lyrics.

 Heresy first. The blogger recalled marching from her school to the church in 1991 for a lecture about the Gulf War. The ceremony started with the playing of a recording of “God Bless the U.S.A.” The author was proud to sing it then, in the aftermath of 9/11, but it sticks in her throat now in the presence of the policy/non-policy/Democrat law at the southern border.
 

 I have real problems with flags, including the yellow-and-white Vatican flag, in churches. We are not there to wave flags, nor to sing national anthems, official or unofficial. Everybody’s national anthem smacks of uberallishness, although you can’t really condemn the Germans’ anthem when it praises  “German song and German wine” in the second verse. “More song and wine and less marching on and standing on guard for thee,” says I.

 Anyhow, when one of the respondents accused the Greenwood song of being heretical, I looked up the lyrics. They are no worse than the usual run of patriotic songs. You can sing them and think of blood, race and killing foreign enemies, if you insist on being a moron. But you don’t have to. At least it thanks God for something. Not all do.  The song is a bit derivative of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” which has managed never to offend me. Greenwood’s fans would not sing Guthrie’s fourth verse if they knew it, and the People In Charge have all but suppressed it although it has a nice Franciscan thought to it. At least it’s not heretical.

 The club used on Haugen’s “Gather Us In” has more facets. The blogger suggests that the “here,” in the song’s repeated phrase “here in this place,” is anachronistic because of both what we know about the universe and of the multiplicity of “here’s” involved when we text or Skype or use What’s App. (When you are talking hands-free to someone in a different city while you drive down the highway, where’s the “here” you could talk about?)

 The second point is where Jim Pauwels contributed a thought that seems to be pro-virtual reality and pro more of it in church. If he wants to further explain himself, I hope he does. He can start with the datum that emojis had to be invented because of what’s lost in virtual reality. And if emojis are a huge step forward for humankind, it will take some explaining to convince me.

 In addition, the blogger had recently been to the Basilica of the Holy Cross at the Valle de los Caídos in Spain and did not feel -- in that combination of church, necropolis and monument to Franco’s ego – the feelings Haugen would have her singing about.

 A commentator mentioned that Haugen’s fourth verse is not sung in his church and is omitted in  the newer Catholic hymnals. Fourth verses are as rare as maniples where I come from, so I had to look it up. The offending lines seem to be:

Not in the dark of buildings confining,
not in some heaven, light years away,
but here in this place, the new light is shining;

Those words might ring hollow in one of the dark, old churches of previous centuries, like the Spanish basilica in the Valley of the Fallen, and it may strike some as being too smug about our bright modern church architecture. And the “some heaven, light years away” may remind some of Joe Hill’s “pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye,” but one commentator noted that Jesus Himself said the kingdom is within. Here, in other words, in this place.

 All in all, it’s nice to have music to think about. Where I come down is, Haugen is OK for liturgical purposes, and Greenwood is acceptable if you keep him away from the altar. But others may disagree. And have already done so.

7 comments:

  1. Tom, I'm with you completely on the Woody Guthrie - and I guess we can add the Irving Berlin, too, because God Bless America has the whole mountains, prairies, oceans white with foam thing. I don't think I know the fourth verse of This Land Is Your Land, though - hope you'll share it.

    Regarding "I'm Proud To Be An American": I live in a part of the country where country music Isn't Done (or at least one can easily ignore it), so while the song has sort of been soaring and swelling faintly out on the periphery of my consciousness for decades, I couldn't have recited back to you any of the lyrics except for the "hook line" that is the song's title.

    So your post prompted me to go find the lyrics. They're here: http://www.metrolyrics.com/proud-to-be-an-american-lyrics-lee-greenwood.html

    FWIW, in my judgment there is nothing heretical about the lyrics. The only religious element to it is the line "God bless the USA". If that's heretical, then so is "God Bless America".

    And I have better grounds than a certain fondness for Kate Smith's famous rendition for believing that one can love both God's kingdom and one's own country. This is from Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The love and service of one's country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity." http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a4.htm

    If y'all check out that link, btw, please be sure to check out all of the other paragraphs around it, which discuss the duties and responsibilities of citizens and their leaders to the common good.

    All of the above notwithstanding: I'm Proud To Be An American shouldn't be sung in worship. It's not a liturgical song. It's not appropriate. That the author got dragged into church as a little girl to be compelled to sing there with her little school-mates: to my mind, that sounds like the sort of thing Jean's notorious Church Ladies would do.

    To be sure, when I was in Catholic school in the 1960's and 70's, we were taught the standard patriotic songs (the Lee Greenwood recording wasn't around then, I'm happy to report, although we did learn the song that was the theme song for the John Wayne file "The Green Beret". "Back at home, a young wife waits ..."). We were taught the first verses of the Star Spangled Banner, My Country 'Tis Of Thee, America the Beautiful, and even the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But that wasn't in religion class. I don't clearly remember what class it was, but I suppose it was music class. In those days, schools were thought to have a civic duty to teach kids these songs. Judging by my own kids' education, I don't think they do anymore.

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    1. "In those days, schools were thought to have a civic duty to teach kids these songs. Judging by my own kids' education, I don't think they do anymore."

      No, it would take away time needed for preparing for tests so we can quantify "education."

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  2. A lot of people don't like "Gather Us In" for the same reasons people don't like any given song - they just don't like it. Of course Jesus's kingdom has already been inaugurated, and of course, as disciples of Jesus, we're participating in that kingdom, or we're supposed to be. If not, what is the point of working for a more just society?

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church #782, quoting from the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium #9, mentions "the Kingdom of God which has been begun by God himself on earth and which must be further extended until it has been brought to perfection by him at the end of time.". http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p2.htm

    As for why the 4th verse of Gather Us In is omitted from some hymnals: perhaps some hymnal editors or composers (both of whom absolutely lurk on the Pray Tell site) will weigh in. At our parish, we use the Gather hymnal from GIA Publications. The previous edition of that hymnal has all four verses; the current version, which we switched to a few years ago, has only three. I guess it's because of the reference in the fourth verse to "Not in some heaven, light years away" - "some heaven" makes the existence of heaven sound a little iffy, or at least inconsequential to us and our lives, perhaps?

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  3. "Gather Us In" is unsingable ( and I am not vocally challenged). "I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free" is an grammatical non sequitur.

    I refuse to sing either one.

    I will sing with Kate Smith any time, anywhere. Or Judy Garland in all her twitchy glory glory hallelujah: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Xz7WV_qJs

    Or Brother Ray: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTRRzSuWro

    Yes, the fact that Our Young People do not know the American songbook is sad. What do they burst into sing with en masse in times of trouble?

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  4. I like Sibelius' Finlandia. Also "God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand" makes a nice, stately entrance or exit hymn. Reminds me of one time in my hometown parish when I played it for an exit hymn. Said the pastor, "Never heard this one before. But the missalette says it's the national hymn. So I guess we better give it our best shot." Guess it wasn't part of the usual Catholic line-up.

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  5. When I think of Finlandia -- with the usual missal lyrics for which I think Sibelius was not responsible -- I think of an encounter between a group of Jesuits and a group of atheists that I covered. One of the atheists said, "Oh, we get together on Sunday mornings for discussion, and we usually sing Finlandia with some lyrics about love and peace. I guess no one can get too far from religion."

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    1. Many atheists will tell you, in a rather patronizing way, that they believe the effects of religion can be salubrious for the dumb and gullible. We had plenty of atheists in our Unitarian church, and most were raised in mainline Protestant sects. Many enjoyed the singing. I sometimes wonder if the Spirit, which has been known to enter through the ear, sometimes entered unawares. I have come to believe that many of those who think they are atheists are simply believers unable to accept how God is packaged by organized religion. God is with all of us all the time.

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