I use Soul of my Savior instead of Anima Christi because it's new and the people are very reluctant to anything Latin. I was saying that this particular hymn is a good Catholic one that the people do NOT sing, whereas they sing other hymns with gusto.

This reminds me that I've got to ask someone at my church to reprogram the electronic carillon so as to exclude "A Mighty Fortress" from its repertoire…

I can see why congregations don't sing some traditional Catholic hymns - they are awful. I saw some hymns from the 1900s time period that were written for Irish immigrants. They mostly sounded like saloon songs. The Anglicans wrote some of the best hymns. Some German Catholic hymns are also very good, and easily sung by most congregations. I have found that anything written by a nun is likely to be schmaltzy and yucky.

Gavin, what gives? I thought you were one of the "don't generalize" cohort? You got great weather in Houston and you're grumpy?
Now if you were to specify the differences of aesthetic between NON DIGNUS SUM and LASST UNS ERFREUEN, that would be more like Gavin. Just saying.

Simple factory worker or not, Catholic music has a tradition of wretchedness in the U.S. When I hear complaints about how bad it is now, I generally ask when was it ever really good? Generalities, yes. But there's a huge divide between St. Patricks and the average parish church.

An absolute MUST READ book is Paul Hume's "Catholic Church Music" that was published in 1956. Hume was the famous music critic who panned Margaret Truman's singing in the Washington Post in the early 50s. Music was very bad in most churches in the 50s. The section on hymns is frightening. Things, before the Council, weren't all that good, either.

I'd wager that there most of the hymns in the traditional Mennonite hymnal are more "catholic" and orthodox than what one would find in GATHER. In a side by side comparison, the hymns on communion would show (to the uninformed) that the Mennonites have a better grasp of Eucharist than do the Catholics (of the GATHER persuasion).

‘Holy God, we praise Thy name’: In traditionalist Germany the priest intones Te Deum laudamus and what follows is 99% of the time ‘Großer Gott, wir loben Dich’, As it is practically the same melody - the English version has a few appoggiature - I sing it in English as a protest.

There's that horrible word 'elitist' again! Goodness, how awful those old elitist Protestant hymns are; why, they aren't Catholic. It seems to me that the assessments of Catholic 'hymnody' which are shared here seem to be, generally, apt. But, um, I'm not at all sure why the word 'elitist' would have anything to do with (the better examples of) Protestant hymnody. How is this apt? What on earth does it mean?
Actually, there IS a body of outstanding Catholic hymnody. It is found in the historic divine office. There are numerous masterful and singable vernacular versions of it prepared by (mostly) Anglicans such as John Mason Neale, et al. There are, also, some done by Catholic scholars, but more often Catholics provide translations that cannot be sung because, for some bizarre reason, they have translated poetry into prose.
Unfortunately, most Catholics are not versed (pun intended) in this body of hymnody... which, I suppose, someone would have the subjective myopia to call 'elitist'.

Is it not a great signum that we have come so far as to be singing each other's hymnody? The best of Protestant hymnody contains no heresy and therefore IS ipso facto Catholic. This means that we have a laudable tally of Catholic Protestant Hymns. There is nothing to fear in this. This is no invasion of Protestant heretical theology. We are enriched by anything good from any Christian body or non-Christian body that expresses Catholic Truth and contains no heresy and is thus, voila!, Catholic. We are, I repeat, enriched, just as we are enriched by Maronites, Ruthenians, Byzantines, Copts, and Anglican Use. When the Church turns a blind eye to paganisms that creep into the devotional practices and religious expressions of those on the southern continents, where Guadaloupe really is worshipped as a godess, it seems rather shallow of understanding to become ruffled at something like Now Thank We all our God, or even Ein Feste Burg : they're Catholic; they just weren't written by a Catholic... at least not a whole one. There are, in fact, times when I would think that we NEED to sing A MIghty Fortress, and make it OUR song. We may be another few hundred years getting over the Reformation, but, oh!, Deo gratias! we have come so far and we mustn't let any ultramontanists or puerile zealots drag us back. No! Not Ever!

My earliest hymn memories growing up in our new suburban Roman Catholic parish prominently featured A Mighty Fortress, sung from our brown St Joseph Sunday Missal and Hymnal (1965 rite, which I'd love to see a video of sometime...it's my earliest recollection of attending Mass).

Thank you, Ian, and, yes, the call and response does work well, although we are still reluctant to anything Latin, BUT.....it's a start and I appreciate it. God bless.

A good examination of all these questions can be found in a book "American Catholics in the Protestant Imagination" by Michael Carroll. Carroll writes about the consciousness of American Catholics in a land dominated by Protestants. Not an easy read but worth it.