Vernacular hymns

The singing of hymns in the vernacular was also a feature of most people’s experience of the “New Mass”. This, too, was promoted by liturgists before the Council. In some European countries, especially in German-speaking ones, hymns had been sung at Mass for centuries and some ethnic parishes in the US retained the custom. Though it was not the general practice, some liturgists — especially those who worked for more use of the vernacular —began to encourage hymn-singing at Mass.

In 1956 there was a presentation called “Making Active Participation Come to Life” at the Liturgical Week sponsored by the Liturgical Conference. In it Father Eugene Walsh, SS, a professor at Baltimore’s St. Mary Seminary, introduced what he claimed was “the most all round useful means for making active participation come to life, a program that is to be used at low Mass”. (“Making Active Participation Come to Life” People’s Participation and Holy Week: 17th North American Liturgical Week. Elsberry, MO: The Liturgical Conference, 1957, pp. 47-48.)

The program consisted of a “dialogue Mass” at which the people spoke their responses in Latin and also sang hymns in English at the Entrance, Offertory, Communion, and at the end of Mass. Father Walsh clearly thought this method of participation was superior to the singing of the actual Mass texts in Gregorian chant.

During the discussion after Father Walsh’s presentation, two priests in the audience, both from rural parishes, explained how they were able to instruct their parishioners in the basic Gregorian chants so that they could regularly participate in the sung high Mass. But Father Walsh defended the superiority of his “Low Mass Program”.

I think we must always distinguish between participating, and participating with an insistence on learning.… I come from a large urban area, and I feel that we have to reach all of these people, and I do not think that we can do it just by the sung Mass. This is one of the beginning programs which lends itself to more simplicity and perhaps is catechetically better because it is more in the language of the people…. (p. 48)

In 1958 the Sacred Congregation for Rites issued the “Instruction on Sacred Music and the Sacred Liturgy”, which explicitly allowed such vernacular singing, but did not consider it “direct participation” because it did not involve the actual liturgical texts prescribed for those parts of the Mass.

At low Mass the faithful who participate directly in the liturgical ceremonies with the celebrant by reciting aloud the parts of the Mass which belong to them must, along with the priest and his server, use Latin exclusively.

But if, in addition to this direct participation in the liturgy, the faithful wish to add some prayers or popular hymns, according to local custom, these may be recited or sung in the vernacular. (§14b)

The practices that were introduced on November 29, 1964 — use of the vernacular language, the priest celebrating Mass facing the people, singing vernacular hymns, standing to receive Communion and the removal of altar rails — were almost universally understood to be part of the “New Mass”. As we see, none of these were required by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, but all had a significant “pre-conciliar” history.

"If we sing hymns because we are copying Lutherans, that is bad."

Why, Adam?

is our paradigm for choosing hymns at Mass, and then our paradigm for what makes a Catholic hymnal, based on the Low Mass idea of the '50's; and if so, should we not be striving for something higher?

So many of the hymns were written for devotions, not Mass use.

devotions -- and there were many.

It's a giggle for our community of singers (Catholic and mostly otherwise) that one hears more of that kind of Catholic music in that context than in most Catholic parishes.

Yup. The "Missa Cantata" or the real Solemn High Mass (defined above) is the ideal, complete with congregation singing all the responses and Ordinary in Chant, maybe even the antiphons of Introit, Offertory, and Communion propers.

This answers the original question quite succinctly and accurately, from all my own research.