Thoughts on Weekly hymn list forum?
  • musicman923
    Posts: 239
    Hi Everyone,

    I want to ask people's thoughts on the following: I've been at my current parish 5 years (starting on Nov 8th-9th). One of the customs of that parish with the responsorial psalm was (ie. psalm 27-the lord is my light and my salvation). When the psalm refrain was I believe I shall see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living, the music director chose to use the refrain the Lord Is My Light..... The previous music director (a choir member who doesn't read music, not musically trained and took over the music selections since the organist wasn't Catholic) said well it's psalm 27 which is the Lord is my Light and my Salvation so we'll use that in place of the other text "I believe I shall see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living". It's not just Psalm 27 it's with all the psalms that have been paraphrased and contemporized over the years. Since I've been music director at the parish I've been really liturgically correct with using new psalms and using the text that is appropriate for whatever the psalm is on that weekend. What are your thoughts???

    I guess it goes back to should I use The Lord Is My Shepherd There Is Nothing I Shall Want or should I use the paraphrased Shepherd Me O God.

    What should I do?? This weekend I'm using God Has Gone Great Things For Us, Filled Us With Laughter and Music by Haugen. The psalm for the weekend is God Has Done Great Things For Us, We Are Filled With Joy (according to Cantica Nova) Am I shooting myself in the foot by stepping over my own rules that I've set by not using paraphrasing psalms and then going back and saying next week we will use the correct text based psalm and make them learn a new setting?

    Thanks!
    Thanked by 1Jani
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    I think so.
    It's a good principle to use the texts the Church has prescribed. What is your reasoning for not doing so -- that "the people like it"?

    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
    Thanked by 3Jani noel jones, aago CHGiffen
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,159
    In the case of the psalms, using a paraphrase or alternate version or "song based on", is about as liturgically correct as using another translation (Good News Bible?) for the epistle reading, or a Bible Story for the first reading.

    If you are in the United States, you have now lovely, simple, textually correct psalm settings for free, from Chabanel. (If you are in Canada, the situation is more complicated.)
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    MM923,
    I believe that what is troubling you is tension between a former status quo, what you called a "custom" of substituting paraphrased, or allusion texts of psalms, without a real rationale and what has been licit or correct practice for nearly five decades. You can find likely hundreds of discussions on forums over the years that have overstated the obvious to which my good friend G points out: each Sunday, Holy Day and week day has appointed texts that are universally acknowledged. The translations from those texts from Latin to each vernacular are also legislated and mandated as the only proper texts.
    So, it definitely is not in anyone's best interest to revert back to an errant "custom."
    Thanked by 1Spriggo
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