And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why serious hymn writers should study serious theology.

I feel like I'm pretty savvy in these matters, and all I was going to say was:
-This seems like good poetry but bad hymnody.

Fr. Krisman,

Sorry, you'll have to be more specific. Was there something I added?

I, Kathy, will declare that he was.

No, I did not. I said that whether that section was heretical or not, it can easily be taken that way, and a text so easily misleading ought not to be included in a hymnal.

Herman makes no mention or even allusion to the two wills of Christ. This entire paragraph has no basis in the text.

Fr. Krisman, surely you are aware that in Christian spiritual theology, charity is the movement of the will to love.

If you believe Stuempfle meant something else besides love when he spoke of "the heart of God, the heart of Christ," then you are right: I am reading into the text. Do you think he meant something besides love?

If you sing it fast enough to the tune of ELLACOMBE (I've never heard RESIGNATION), you could gloss over any theological content of whatever sort.

Fr. Krisman, I just don't know how to help you to understand that the heart of Christ is not solely human.

I understand, Kathy, how tough it is for you. I am so hopelessly stupid, and you so want to help me to understand. But I'm still back at my comment at 4:33 PM: "Are you reading 'the heart of God' as a reference to God the Father?" because I am not. I understand it to refer to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, the divine Logos, possessing both a divine nature and a divine will. And if you want to anthropomorphize, a divine "heart" as well.

But that is not the problem.

The problem is that Stuempfle says that God's heart, the divine heart, rhymes with Christ's heart. But Christ's heart doesn't rhyme with God's heart, any more than a word can rhyme with itself. Just as it would be equally wrong to say that Christ's heart rhymes with Christ's human nature's heart.

Sorry I did not see your 6:59 comment until after I had sent my 7:13 comment.

I'll just make a few brief comments here. First is that I don't think reading poetic texts as though they were intended to be glosses on Aquinas is generally appropriate or fruitful. In this case, the criticisms do not seem very well aimed. "Its beating was the pulse of God," yes, because Jesus was himself not just very man but very God. "Its breath, God’s vast domain," right, because the breath or wind of God was key in the act of creation (God's domain; see Gen. 1:2), and we know that "through [Christ] all things were made."

All in all, while the hymn contains some things I like (e.g., "create new hearts in us," shades of Ps. 51:10), I find it meandering and unfocused. It exhibits clear poetic flaws, perhaps none greater than "perfect rhyme" -- which could hardly be better calculated to call attention to the fact that rhythm is the right word for what two hearts in sync share, though of course nothing rhymes with rhythm. (Naturally, later in the hymn we get the correct image: "new hearts ... / That beat in time with yours.") There are inscrutable mixed metaphors, of which the worst offender is probably "joined by faith with your great heart, / Become Love’s open doors." You could write an interesting hymn, or at least a stanza, about "doors," but here it is an image completely unmoored from anything else in the entire work.

I also have a grammatical problem with "Lord, join our hearts with those who weep." As written, this asks for a cross-genus joining of hearts with people. What the hymn conceptually demands is for our hearts to be joined with the hearts of people who weep. Unfortunately, this would have to be written "Join our hearts with those of those who weep."

As to the last line, the "sacrifice of praise," again it is very poorly connected to what has gone before. The last stanza is all about service, not praise. I imagine one could argue that service to others is ipso facto a kind of praise of God -- "imitation is the highest form of flattery," you see, so to imitate Christ is itself to praise him -- but this needs to be spelled out, not passed over tacitly. Once more, you could write an interesting stanza to expand upon this idea, but Dr. Stuempfle has not done so. Nor is it really the theme of the hymn, if indeed there is one.

But the most important concrete suggested change I can offer would be this minor revision of the beginning of the last stanza:

O Love that made the distant stars
And prized the widow's penny,
Whose arms, stretched wide upon a cross,
Embrace and bear us many.

Overreaction doesn't been to describe it. Only in your mind is every disagreement a "dismissal." As to your points:

1. Although you did not comment directly on "Its beating was the pulse of God," you said that the text "attributes only one, presumably human heart (since it is distinguished from God's heart) to Christ." I disagree: this very third line of the hymn, as I take it, makes it clear that Jesus' heart is God's heart. The beating of his heart was the pulse of God.

2. I just don't think your reading is very natural or very likely. Sorry to "dismiss" you like that.

3. But a hymn is not a liturgical text. Nor does poetry deserve to be parsed and examined in exactly the same way that a dogmatic manual would be -- that is my underlying point. Parsed and examined, yes, but poetic images and metaphors can be allowed to work in ways that might not stand up as factual prose.

Let me just spell this out. Ordinarily when we're talking about something (a text or tune or whatever), everyone says what they think about the text or tune or whatever. I don't mind that. At least, I don't think I've ever said, "Don't be mean to this text or tune or whatever. And don't disagree with me about it." But I don't really remember a lot of times when people have said to others, "Your approach to thinking about this text or tune is not appropriate or fruitful."

1. Mark's first paragraph misrepresents my position. I do not think hymn texts should be

dogmatic declarations or paragraphs from the catechism.

My interpretation of texts is not

excessively literalistic.

I love imagery, as the hymn I posted last night, and the one I will post today, demonstrate.
My only requirement is that texts in a Catholic hymnal, intended for use at the Mass, the "source and summit of the Christian life," conform to doctrine, that they do not step outside of the Catholic faith, and that they in fact promote it. The Mass of St. John Chrysostom contains beautiful hymns that we might learn from. They express and explain the faith. They are exuberant, and they are theological. The "genre" of hymns is not poetry, simply. As presented in a hymnal they are intended to be liturgical texts, "other suitable songs," sung at Mass. It actually sets an incredibly low bar to demand that hymns sung at Mass be free from heresy of the kind we as a Church defined in our early centuries in Council.

2 Mark's second paragraph inaccurately says,

you can only support the position that the hymn "suggests" something that is "presumably" heretical.

The hymn, in its 5th and 6th lines, explicitly represents the heresy of monothelitism. Line 3, like line 4, can be taken in many ways. Lines 5 and 6 cannot be. As I wrote above,

[According to lines 5 and 6,] God's heart, the divine heart, rhymes with Christ's heart. But Christ's heart doesn't rhyme with God's heart, any more than a word can rhyme with itself. Just as it would be equally wrong to say that Christ's heart rhymes with Christ's human nature's heart.

The text not only fails to account for the Church's understanding of the union of the two natures, it contradicts it. I made two arguments from the beginning: line 4 can be misleading; lines 5 and 6 are explicitly heretical. Neither of these belongs in a hymnal.


3. Mark's third paragraph caricatures me as an interlocutor. I do not have a

practice of turning everything into an ad hominem:

Fr. Krisman is a public figure who produced a public document that contains Christological errors. I've erased the remark Mark quotes above, but the question remains: Why did that happen?


Mark, you seem like a smart guy, and I usually don't like to ignore smart people--especially when they disagree with me. Sheesh, ask Adam Wood or Jeffrey Tucker or most everyone on this forum. Come to think of it, I've probably even disagreed with Chuck Giffen, though I can't remember him ever being wrong. But since you aren't able to take my arguments for what they are, I'll be tuning you out for the time being.

@MHI

If your heart is breathing, then you have a problem.

Now that is funny, I burst out laughing in the universy computer labs. Thank you for this little bit of humour, needed it on a Monday! :D

Fr. Chepponis, I'm doing fine making my way through and around Kathy's mine fields. I've already concluded that it's best not to offer a critique of any of the hymn texts that she posts, even if I detect some glaring flaws, like in the two most recent postings on Saturday and Sunday.

IMO, the Forum is not yet a forum for serious criticism of hymn texts. The quick descent into parody is often a childish effort to hide the fact that the commenter does not possess the knowledge of what goes into making a good hymn text.

Stay happy, my friend. Drink XX, not the poisonous water.

Oh, and about Kathy's statement:

Fr. Krisman is a public figure who produced a public document that contains Christological errors.

I take it that she is referring to the Worship-fourth edition hymnal and service book of GIA Publications and not to the USA's Book of Blessings. If so, here is some information about my contribution to the hymnal. (I do not relish blowing my own horn.)

I was one of five persons who made up the core committee that chose all the hymns in the book. We all had an equal vote (except when it was a matter of one's own text or tune, in which case the creator had no vote).

I was the chair and a member of the five-person English Text Review Committee. Again, my vote was equal to that of the other four members.

I was one of three members of the core committee that scrutinized all the responsorial psalm refrains in the lectionary section of Worship III and decided which ones needed new compositions. (It ended up being 27 in total.)

I spent a number of months preparing the indexes and proofreading every word in them. The liturgical and topical indexes were prepared by the hymnal's general editor and myself. For the index of "Scripture Passages Related to Hymns" I had to study each hymn which was not contained in Worship III and determine the related scriptural passages; it took several weeks.

I had some limited input into matters of musical editing.

Despite my contributions, I think it is the height of hyperbole to say that I "produced" Worship IV.

Fr. Chepponis,

I appreciate your thoughts, your civility, and your ongoing efforts at dialogue. I hope we can continue in that spirit, and at the same time be frank with one another.

Regarding lines 5 and 6 of verse 1, the text does not talk about the Father and Christ. If it did, that would be fine. It talks about God and Christ, as though Christ's will were something separate from God's will. The text clearly individuates God and Christ relative to one another. But we know that according to the early Councils, Christ is both God and man, and the union is such that the Blessed Mother is the Theotokos, the bearer of God. Therefore, Christ's heart does not "rhyme" with God's heart. Christ's heart, according to His divine nature, is God's heart.

If the hymn said that Christ's heart rhymes with the Father's heart, you are right, that would be fine. But it doesn't say that.

Please recall that I did not choose this hymn out of the hundreds in Worship IV in order to find fault with it. Fr. Krisman, the head of the text review committee for this hymnal, offered it for our consideration.

I hope you realize what is at stake in these discussions. Worship is a respected Catholic brandname, and with good reason. I have worked with both the second and third editions: with the third extensively. Although it is not absolutely 100% doctrinally error-free, it comes awfully close. It is worthy of trust.

Worship IV is different. The steep decline in textual quality--the subject of many, but not all, of the forum's parodies--is an artistic problem. It matters. But it is not important in the same way as the loss of doctrinal trustworthiness.

While I understand that the good work of many dedicated people went into this hymnal, surely we all agree that we cannot in good conscience ask pastors to ask their congregations to sing doctrinal error at Mass.

I wish to God that this type of "calling out" of error were not necessary. I don't go into people's private homes or journals and try to find out if they hold doctrinal errors. We can each be mistaken, on our path of salvation. But this is a public document, intended for worship at Mass.

Regarding textual criticism:

The problem here is there's no room to budge. The hymnal has been published and won't be revised for another 20 years. Besides that, the authors aren't participating. So there is no room for anyone to say "this doesn't work" and be met with "oh, you're right- let me work on that." The only response can be a sort of defensiveness.

Contrast that to threads where unpublished or in-progress work are under discussion. It's a whole other thing.

Sadly, mainstream publishers (all of them), have no serious attempt at public comment and engagement. The time for figuring out whether one or another texts in Worship IV is good or bad is long since over.

Regarding parody:

All of us who participate in this forum regularly do so in our spare time, largely because we enjoy it. I don't think you can fault anyone for writing a silly verse or two. Particularly when it seems that the fruit of a conversation has run out.

All excellent points, Adam.

Thank you.

The text clearly individuates God and Christ relative to one another.

"I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, ..."

Christ's heart, according to His divine nature, is God's heart.

"Its beating was the pulse of God; ..."

Adam, to two of your points let me offer
Sadly, mainstream publishers (all of them), have no serious attempt at public comment and engagement.
This appears to be the case, and I agree it's sad.

The time for figuring out whether one or another texts in Worship IV is good or bad is long since over.
I vigorously disagree.
The merit in discussing these things lies in demonstrating whether published hymnals should be purchased, renewed, and/or used in Catholic sacred liturgy. It's empowering for musicians to come in contact with more than glowing reviews by peers and promotional/commercial materials. It's further encouraging and freeing for musicians to be able to present those they serve with open-source options of sacred music and devotional hymnody they deem to be suited to their parish life.
Pastors, committee members, musicians, and other faithful are realizing they have diverse ways of building and updating their music program. And that's a good thing.

MACW:
I agree with you. My point was just that it can do nothing to help Worship IV itself.

I hope you'll be at Colloquium?

Sadly, no. See the last few verses of my Colloquium Scholarship Application.