I think there was a very long discussion of this piece last year on this very forum.

That is all I will say at this time.

I love it, played a setting of it at communion (which I premiered back in '06) and couldn't live without it every Good Friday. Why? I don't know, I just like it...

I like it, as long as it's sober and thoughtful. Our congregation sings along softly. It's nice. Once a year, it's fine with me.

With the right soloist, this song can be very soulful and deep. With the wrong soloist, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble...

Mandee

there is an amazing setting of these words (to original melody) by raymond haan
scored for soprano soloist organ and cello obligato. an intensly emotional piece (some might say too much) it goes over big when i do it for palm sunday. guarenteed to make them swoon.

One aspect of the song is its obvious resonance with the Afro-American community. Very seldom during the Church year do I feel the urge to sing anything in liturgy that might sound like what the Holy Father calls "the exaltation of groups." At Christmas, tho, I like to sing something Polish, and on Good Friday, Were You There.

Michael,

In my neck of the woods, there are many Black Catholics, including the smooth baritone who soloed this song for my choir yesterday.

I think African-Americans, as a group, were there. They bore the cross in a special way that isn't over yet.

I don't advocate either world music or liberation theology, but I think this song is fine.

I can stand it once a year, although I agree it is Protestant to the core. We have maybe 10 black members in the parish out of 1500 to 2000 who attend every week, so there is no cultural case to be made for it. I wonder if there has been, over time, any group in the world that hasn't suffered and borne a cross at the hands of some other group? That seems to be the history of humanity, doesn't it?

I'd hesitate to say that the desire for emotional identification is strictly a Protestant impulse--what about the Stabat Mater and the Dies Irae? The late medieval wave of piety focused on personal identification and individual emotional response never went away, and Were You There stands firmly in that shared tradition.

Charles, my California friend, are you really a Mason? Haha.

this year, I had it programmed as the last song at the Veneration of the cross, and we didn't actually need it...so we just didn't do it! and so far no one has complained (or noticed? although, I confess that I haven't actually SEEN anyone since Good Friday liturgy...) :-)

G, we conpmbined the refrain of Gilligan's island, which isn't bad, with a Psalm tone setting of the Palm Sunday responsorial Psalm.

Who's talking about the theme song from Gilligan's island? Is this an inside joke?

Liturgically we are present for the crucifixion, but the way the song asks its question just makes me answer "no" in my head.

kathy, but in the final analysis, is it about what he wants, or what the church recommends? fr. zuhlsdorf has talked about this at length. i don't like when they sing that piece where i am, because the style is all wrong.

Behold the Cross... can't say I've heard it before. Does it actually sound like the Gilligan's island theme song or is it just equally silly or something?

BachLover2, my gut instinct agrees with you.

Note, friends, that I grew up in the CoC and was raised singing a lot of silly songs in church (anyone know Sing and be Happy?) without batting an eyelash. Now that I am Eastern Orthodox and have experienced the solemnity and grandeur of their liturgical texts and hymns, hearing anything in church that we sung in my childhood in church makes me flinch. When I go to Mass with friends and hear any protestant songs, I flinch. There are a few exceptions, though--good hymns like "Holy, Holy, Holy," or hymns that were originally Catholic but commandeered and edited by Protestants later on. (Usually the wonderful theological content, often Eucharistic or Marian, was the first thing to go.)

Off topic alert.

Jam, the verse melody of Dufford is the plagaristic issue. Don't matter, it won't last the century.
Kathy, y'know you have to figure if we subscribe to Fr. Zed's motto, we have to come to terms with "masonry," not "Masons." And I do know you were joshing.
I am my grandfather's namesake. I have joyfully assumed his grandfather "nickname." I presided, as a lay person, frosh college, over his funeral that was essentially full of Masonic gobbledygook as he was 33rd degree, and naively trusted that my being RC would not spoil the party. (Not much of a party anyway, mostly WWI era folk except for family.)
Regarding Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, the Jesus Conspiracies, Dan Brown, Roslyn, Illuminati, the Holy Grail, Opus Dei, Gnostics and Know-nothings, I could give a rodent's derriere freely in exchange and come out the better. My grandfather was my hero. (He kind of subscribed to Norman Vincent Peale and Science of Mind toward his later years.)
Main thing, he made bacon for breakfast to die for.
I'll brick by brick for him as for us all, knowing that as of 1970, he has a better bead on redemption, one way or the other, than any of us posting here.

thank you, Gavin. That is what I'm looking for--concrete arguments for and against. My arguments against are mainly its lack of theological depth, and its sentimentality. But I actually do agree with you that songs and hymns that are American in origin belong in American churches. The unfortunate aspect of this is that American = Puritan for much of our history. It is hard to decide where to draw the lines. And again, another part of my dislike of this song is just a gut reaction stemming from my rejection of my childhood Protestantism. Of course there was much good in my childhood that it does me good to meditate on. But there was also much heresy.

I heartily recommend Gary Penalka's English setting of the Reproaches to replace the song usually used for the adoration of the cross. I think this brings home the message of our complicity much better than "Were Your There?"

Don Roy, I second you on that Raymond Haan setting. It's absolutely gorgeous. Every year I mean to order it and every year I forget. Perhaps now is the time and save it up for next year.
Are you familiar with his setting of "Unto Thy word" by the British poet(?) last name Austin? One of my choir's favs. Another one we like is titled 'Cause me to hear'

Donna

Above we see people aligning themselves to one of two groups: On one side, those who feel that "Were You There" appropriate for singing on Good Friday and the other side has two parts: Vatican II Form and Extraordinary Form/Novus Ordo Form, would not sing it.

In a discussion at school this week, we covered the main Jewish congregations: Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed as a parallel to the present Latin Rite: Extraordinary Form, Vatican II, Novus Ordo. This was after my meeting my first observant Jew in Chattanooga, TN...if you think Catholics are few and far between in the US South....the Jews are much, much fewer.

And I complimented him that his mother would be pleased that he attends Shul. This elderly man told me that he can tell what kind of Jew he is talking with by whether they say they go to Temple, Synagogue or Shul.

I knew that the Conservative Temple may have an organ, the Orthodox Shul and Reformed Synagogue will not. He said, "We hate it to walk into a Temple and see an organ."

Shul's came first, then Conservative Temples and eventually those that rejected the liberal approach of the Conservative but unwilling to go all the way back to the Orthodox practices formed Reformed Congregations.

We have three forms of the Mass, all the Mass, all different. While the Vatican II Mass welcomes music that talks all about ME, hence the great number of songs that start with "I", the Novus Ordo Mass text remains the same and can be in the vernacular...so one difference between these three Mass forms is the text of the music that is sung and played.

The "Peace" at the EF is dignified, at a Vatican II Mass it can be a family reunion of hugging and kissing...at a Reformed Novus Ordo Mass it can once again be dignified.

But can a musical composition that affects the emotions as strongly as "Were You There", have a place at the Novus Ordo or the Extraordinary? Yes. But only if it has a scriptural text.

We will have the Vatican II form with us forever, but the Reformed Novus Ordo Mass could and should continue to grow. People deserve a choice.

CharlesW, it is "Behold the Wood of the Cross". The first cops the opening line of Gilligan's Island.

Frankly, I don't know what people are complaining about. "Were You There?", done reverently and with economy, has the potential to be very moving. The experience of religious music can be far, far worse: I encountered "The Mass of Creation" for the first time on Saturday evening, and I'm still in shock.

Don Roy,

It was a nasty business; all the more so for the sublimity it followed. MacMillan on Good Friday, Victoria Tenebrae late Holy Saturday afternoon, after which I made a hasty exit - telling my Anglican friends I had to go to church - and dashed down to St. T's for the Vigil Mass, still on a musical high. The musicians there are a wonderful bunch, but I wish they hadn't thought it necessary to inflict that emotional laxative on the congregation.

I'd read about it here, but that didn't nearly prepare me. The horror, the horror!

American Protestant religion is hardly all Puritanism. Far from it. Even within New England - while, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, one finds deep roots of Puritanism, Rhode Island was freethinking, and northern New England was fractious mix of things (Puritanism dominating, but not everywhere). Outside of New England and points west settled by migrating New Englanders, while you see Dutch Reformed and Presbyterianism, you also see Quakerism and other peace sects, but also Lutheranism, Anglicanism/Episcopalianism, and, by far most importantly for American hymnody, Methodism.