Can you elaborate? Perhaps it's because I'm not a theologian, but nothing about that line strikes me as anything other than a little poetic license.

Do you hate "Baby, It's Cold Outside" too?

Babies vary, some are very placid. It is fruitless to try to enter the mind of the Christ Child, but it seems not unreasonable to suppose that he had confidence in his mother.

The person who pointed it out to me thought that the song was saying Jesus wasn't a real human baby because he didn't cry. It does seem to be a bit of a stretch, come to think of it.

Do you hate "Baby, It's Cold Outside" too?

I do, and it has nothing to do with any controversies over the song. It's just sung so casually that it's incredibly dull to me.

Yes, I agree it's a bit wrong: Jesus was fully human and human babies cry.

I have less problems with the theology of it than with "Lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb" from O Come / Adeste ...

And I choose not to get any more bothered by it than by Amazing Grace. Life is too short, and I don't see that it will destroy anyone's faith.

The lyric doesn't imply that he never cried. It it simply painting a picture of a peaceful moment when all was still and even the baby wasn't crying, which if anything would seem to imply that he did cry at other times more than the other conjecture.

I have less problems with the theology of it than with "Lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb"

Not sure what's wrong with this one. Though not a literal translation of the Latin of the carol ("gestant puellae viscera" is closer to "the virgin bears him in her womb"), the thought comes from the Te Deum, "Tu ad liberándum susceptúrus hóminem, non horruísti Vírginis úterum" - "When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb."

M. Jackson Osborn wrote: I have ever thought 'lo, he abhors not the virgin's womb' to be a sublimely poetic expression. Only an Anglican could have conceived of so artful an English locution.

Is this “tongue in cheek” or are you being serious?

You do realize those lines were written by a man who converted to the Catholic Church (from Anglicanism) and was later ordained a Catholic priest, correct?

Serious question:

Are you saying that in 1842 he could write nicely, but not after he converted three years later? Or are you suggesting that only those who subscribe to certain heresies can compose elegant English?

For myself, I find both assertions absurd.

Saint Thomas More, for example, wrote quite elegantly.

You intimate that those lines were penned by Newman. I believe that that is not correct. The Old Church English translation of Te Deum dates to Cranmer's time and may be, like much in the BCP, the work of Coverdale.

I made no such statement!

Unless I am very much mistaken, they were written by Frederick Oakeley (who wrote the line in 1842 and converted three years later). I am certainly not infallible, but I just checked with Google, and as far as I know, I'm correct in what I said.

So many Anglicans followed Cardinal Newman into the True Faith—and if memory serves, Oakeley was one of them.

Your chastisement for my hubristical syntax in praise of Anglican liturgical language is unkind. Seeing as how that same language is now indisputably Catholic, as any Ordinarian will tell you, it is small and thoughtless of you to pillory it. We all may be forgiven some degree of satisfaction with the finer things of our respective cultures.

You misunderstood; correcting someone who makes a false statement has absolutely nothing to do with "being unkind" or "smallness." Full stop.

More importantly, Anglicanism is not a “culture.”

My post speaks for itself. If someone corrects me Re: Oakeley, I will gladly admit I was wrong.

As for Thomas More, being an educated XVIth century Englishman, he very well did write elegantly - in English. Modern-day Catholics, whether American or British, do not write elegantly - nor, it would seem, do they intend to!

I'm not even sure how to respond to such assertions, so let's just stick with the facts. Thomas More was not Anglican, yet wrote very well—as did many other English Catholics.

What is the meaning of this Yellow Square? (I believe I asked the same question years ago, but never got an answer.)

St. Ephrem and St. Augustine both loved to talk about the Christ Child as the silent infant, the silent Word, the singer of praise in all languages without using any utterance, and so on. Ephrem says that "His hidden silence roared" in the mind of the prophetess Anna.

There's a fair amount of tradition that Jesus was an unusually wise and considerate baby, which makes sense for an unfallen human baby Who was also God. (And took after His mom.)

I think the heresy in question would be docetism, and I agree that the carol hints at an absence of suffering in the Infant.

Much better for my taste the words of St. John of the Cross: "In man, joy, in God, tears: things to one and the other usually so strange."

But I don't abhor the carol for the hint of docetism but because it's silly. It's Silent Night without "Virgin" or O Magnum without anything left but the animals. It's not so much bad theology as no theology.

Also, Luther wrote it.

There's a fair amount of tradition that Jesus was an unusually wise and considerate baby,

...

.....which usually led to the joke about the Dad who returns from work to his wife and 6 chilluns. She looks distraught and quite frazzled, there is the odor of burnt food lingering in the home, a couple of the kids are screeching....and she snaps at him at length about her situation. Whereupon he suggests that she should act more like the Mother of God, and she retorts that "Mother Mary only had ONE kid, and HE WAS PERFECT!"

Not as funny in pixels as in real voice, eh?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_in_a_Manger#Spurious_attribution_to_Luther

Would you say the same of Once in royal David's city?

Also, if you use CRADLE SONG instead of MUELLER, it's a much better song.

…the poor baby wakes…

You mean I've only escaped the Spanish Inquisition so far because when I sing "Sleep in heavenly peace!" it's assumed I actually mean "[sleep on] in heavenly peace"?

Whatever, heresy or not, docetism or monophysitism, it's a children's lullaby and not appropriate for Mass. Leave it to the little children's Nativity pageants, if you must have it, but could we please have some grown-up hymns for Mass?

I actually like hymns that viscerally and verbally identify the singer with a child. Helps me to remember to be like one.

"Stay by my cradle till morning is nigh" can be taken literally, of course, and then it is a lullaby. But this life is a dark night, we are frightened, helpless children, and our Father is standing over us and keeping us safe until Heaven's morning breaks.

Which is how I've always heard it. But I guess my personal experience of the faith has always had that kiddish quality to it. Not that it's simplistic, exactly... I've read deeply into all kinds of theology and philosophy, and am enriched by them. But that the texts that impact me most deeply are those that resonate in this simple way.

I'll never forget the ten-year-old girl in my children's choir at my last parish, who said the lines:

"What may I say?
Heaven was his home,
But mine the tomb wherein He lay."

made her cry. They have the same effect on me. Campbell is wonderful, and "Ad Cenam Agni Providi" is magnificent, but the text of similar meaning:

"Mighty Victim from the sky,
pow'rs of hell beneath Thee lie;
death is conquered in the fight,
Thou hast brought us life and light;"

never manages that.

I certainly would never advocate the primacy of the emotional over the rational, but where they are not opposed, it seems no sin to reinforce the rational with the emotional. "Worship", as Msgr. Wadsworth reflected at a retreat I attended last summer, can be an elusive value, and can often arrive unexpectedly in a humble vehicle.

The painlessness of the ever-virginal birth is related directly to a curse in Genesis from which our blessed Lady was exempt, thanks be to God. But this exemption is not some sort of blanket release from suffering of her and her divine Son.

When cows wake up babies, babies often cry. That's not a sin, I think.

.

NihilNominis,

You would put Abide with me in the Four Last Things section, I gather?

The original question has the unmistakable savour of scrupulosity.

The baby is sleeping! That is all.

Surely the Church requires that any text, including hymns, should be carefully scrutinised and if theologically satisfactory authorised by your Ordinary (or by some superior authority), before use at Mass?