Eh, I don't know.

I see what you're saying. Then there's also "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation."

But I don't think that the idea of Christ being the foundation of the Church is wrong either.

I never have a good hymn for when that "Tu-es Petrus" reading comes up; OCP has a text, "Upon the Rock of Peter," but we don't own an OCP license.

Our Ritual Song hymnal has different words, "O Christ the Great Foundation," "You Walk Along Our Shoreline," and "For All the Faithful Women," following in the GIA tradition of using multiple sets of words to a hymn tune, instead of using one and including other hymns. Go figure, but it doesn't have the original text to the Wesley tune.

No, I don't.

We all accept and believe Catholic teaching and belief about the Petrine supremacy. It seems to me, though, that taking note of He Who Is Above All, Including Peter's Successors, should be the cause, not for alarm, but for joy by all Christians, including Catholics. Christ, whom alone we worship, is the head of the Church, its sure foundation. Peter is his venerable vicar.

Fr. Krisman,

Of course, there is a healthy Catholic way to understand "Word" in this hymn. However, do you think this is what "Word" was intended to mean in the hymn's original Protestant context. And the followup question would be - IF the hymn was meant as an affirmation of Sola Scriptura, does that matter to us now?

I was born and raised evangelical Protestant by the way, and became Catholic in my teens. Thus perhaps I am oversensitive to phrases that have often been used by Protestant friends over the years to convince me of the error of my ways :)

Kirchenmusik,

Perhaps.

As a final clarification:

As a Catholic, I believe that Christ is the ultimate foundation of the Church, and that this fact does not contradict the Church being founded in its earthly sense on Peter. HOWEVER, the idea of Christ as the sole foundation of the church is commonly used by Protestants as an argument against the establishment of the Papacy. So commonly used I would almost call it an anti-papal catchphrase worthy of bumper stickers and t-shirts (or their 19th century equivalents). Thus my original question - is there any indication that "The Church's One Foundation" (a Protestant hymn) was or is intended in this polemical sense. The answer seems to be 'NO'.

Similarly, the phrase "what more can he say than to you he has said [in his excellent Word]" is a neat summing up of the Protestant idea of Sola Scriptura. Cause for concern? Or is it ok because we can understand "Word" to mean the person of Jesus Christ, not merely the scriptures?

Just questions, folks. It's funny how ruffled some people get when you suggest that a hymn might not be good...

EDIT: The alternate text (Timothy T'ingfang Lew) O Christ the Great Foundation seems more Catholic to me.
O Christ the great foundation on which your people stand
vs
The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord

@kirchenmusik: It is never wrong to study the texts of hymns very carefully, and to ask the appropriate questions when something seems not to be quite right. That's what you did. I don't think you ruffled any feathers.

BTW, if anyone wants to blame me for something, I was one of the editors of Worship IV who fought (successfully) to replace the text of "O Christ the Great Foundation" with "The Church's One Foundation." A comparison of those two texts on the Forum might be more fun than singing happy-clappy music.

Not to derail a thread, but, I just wanted to say how happy I am that two major presences from GIA (Fr. Krisman and Fr. Chipponis) are on the Forum. Even though we might not agree on everything, I find their knowledge, especially in matters hymnological, and opinions valuable. Thank you.

Yes. I suppose this is a bit of irrationality on my part, but I just can't bring myself to use the rallying hymn of the reformation at mass.

Yes, I know that it's not heretical; I could make good, valid arguments for why it's not wrong to use it.

For some reason, I still just can't bring myself to do it.

The mention of AMFIOG reminds me of my father, who turned 90 this past weekend. Raised in a German national parish in Bridgeport CT; his five significantly older siblings learned their prayers in German, but my father was born after WW1 and did not. He was an altar boy for years. He had four grandparents from southwestern Germany, who all left by the time of the Kulturkampf. Anyway, he was raised in a devout, Bible-reading, hymn-singing German Catholic family. He modeled singing hymns for his children. I can vividly remember the nearly beatific expression he had when powers that be in our parish in central Long Island allowed AMFIOG to be sung at Mass around 1970. He loved and loves that hymn, fully aware of its history in Lutheran-Catholic polemic. For him, that history was not at all dispositive. Rather, for him the perfectly matched, powerful text and tune were resonant and evocative of spiritual struggle he experienced yet hopeful of eventual triumph. I can remember his explanation of his joy while we were returning home after that Mass.

He wants it sung at his funeral, and I expect it will be. I don't know if I would be able to hold back tears singing it.

Well, I guess my problem, which I fully admit, is that I'm a bit schizophrenic in this regard. Other hymns don't make me hesitate as much as this one, for some reason.

Also me.

I remember a hymn festival where EfBiuG (AMFIOG too much of a head-scratscher for me) was sung from the Catholic Community Hymnal. In the interests of time, only one verse was used: how Catholic can you get? Any other verse would have worked better than the first...

Well, that was a back-handed Catholic insult to the hymn.

kirchenmusik:

From my recollection as a member of the Worship IV committee, our rationale for including "The Church's One Foundation" rather than "O Christ, the Great Foundation" was that the latter had not been chosen for inclusion in other non-GIA hymnals (Catholic as well as other denominations) since the hymn's appearance in Worship III in 1986.

The previous comment does not take into account the industry-standard procedures for the payment of royalties. (I don't know what some new publishers who appear to be avoiding copyrighted materials like the plague do, but this is what GIA, Hope, WLP, OCP, and other publishers of hymnals do.)

All copyrighted texts and music together (that is, as an aggregate) receive a 10 percent royalty on the sales price of the book. I have explained this before. If the book costs $20.00, $2.00 is paid out in royalties to the copyright owners.

Look in the acknowledgment section of any GIA hymnal. There are hundreds of folks listed who will receive a pro-rata share of that $2.00 royalty on each hymnal sold. Neither Samuel Stone nor Samuel Wesley will have a pro-rate share in this royalty for "The Church's One Foundation," since both the text and tune are in the public domain.

Whether "O Christ, the Great Foundation" is included in the hymnal or not makes absolutely no difference to the publisher if the hymnal still sells for $20.00. The royalty paid will still be $2.00. The author of that text - if it is included in the hymnal - will receive a pro-rata share of the royalty; all other copyright holders will have their pro-rata shares reduced ever so slightly.

True. It wasn't very generous. But it was generous.

Just for the sake of making administration practical, small publishers might need to insist on using that pro-rata system, even if they ended up paying a higher percentage of sales: e.g., 12 per cent on sales.

See new topic "Custom or boutique hymnal"

Let me go a bit further to clarify:

The owner of the copyright has the ability to ask for advance payment against royalties, royalties that may never ever materialize. The owners of a popular tune or text can ask whatever they want - there is no restriction of this by law.

It is interesting, I am told by people who do this within their business - it's like an auction, making an offer, getting turned down, then getting a counter offer or being flat out rejected.

Some of this came from a person who did copyrights with EMI.

Some of those names you mention are ones that do this with what they have copyright on themselves.

This 10% standard royalty contract sheds some interesting light on the propensity of major publishers to claim copyright on Public Domain texts, or to write new accompaniments which can be copyrighted, or to alter texts in a way that can be copyrighted.

Let's pretend I'm a publisher of hymnals. I'll call my imaginary company BIG3.

I'm putting together a hymnal that includes a dozen OCP songs, ten more from GIA, and so forth. There's also a lot of Public Domain music.

The book sells for $20, which means I have to pay $2 per book sold in royalties, smeared out to a bunch of other companies.

But what if, for every piece of copyrighted music from another company, I claim copyright on 3 others as belonging to BIG3 Publishing.

Does that mean, now, that for every $2 in royalty fees, $1.50 of it is being moved form my right pocket to my left pocket?

Moreover....

Let's say BEN YANKE is a composer whose work is published by BIG3. But, like all publishing companies, I sent him a contract early in his career which specifies that BIG3 owns the copyright to his (now very popular) hymntune CROOKED BOWTIE (8787D with Alleluias).

So does the following follow....?

Of the royalties paid to myself, BEN YANKE'S share will be smaller and smaller as more and more pieces of music in the hymnal include a copyright attribution to BIG3 Publishing.

AND

BEN YANKE's share of the BIG3 royalty check will also not be exactly in proportion to the total number of BIG3-copyright pieces. That is to say - if his is one out of 150 pieces, he will not be getting $0.01 for each hymnal sold - because his deal with BIG3 specifies that he will get some specific percentage (less than 100% for sure) of the royalties earned through the distribution and use of his hymn tune.

Meanwhile, text alterations, shoddy accompaniments, and whatever else that might be deemed copyrightable can be accomplished by salaried staff, committees, etc (myself, or people I would have had to employ anyway)- so that (in theory) the royalties due for those pieces don't even have to be split with the likes of BEN YANKE.

Which all means that despite the protests to the contrary, and explanations which until recently I found convincing, it really is the case that it is in the publisher's best interest to find a way to claim copyright on as many public domain hymns as possible, or otherwise fill their hymnals with their own material - at the expense of the composers, text writers, other publishing companies, and the general public.

Of course I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Could someone with more knowledge on this topic (Fr. K?) shed some light here? Am I on the right track?

A few responses, Adam:

The book sells for $20, which means I have to pay $2 per book sold in royalties, smeared out to a bunch of other companies.

Actually a bunch of companies and individuals. Look at any hymnal's acknowledgments and you'll find quite a number of items whose copyrights have not been assigned to a publishing company.

Does that mean, now, that for every $2 in royalty fees, $1.50 of it is being moved form my right pocket to my left pocket?

Actually it's being paid to the authors and composers who have licensed their creations to BIG3 Publications, Inc. It does not stay in BIG3's left pocket. BIG3 makes its money from the profits (total sales minus production costs and royalties).

But, like all publishing companies, I sent him a contract early in his career which specifies that BIG3 owns the copyright to his (now very popular) hymntune CROOKED BOWTIE (8787D with Alleluias).

I've never heard of such a contract and Ben Yanke is the biggest fool in America if he signed such a one. A publisher sends a contract for EACH piece it decides to publish.

Of the royalties paid to myself, BEN YANKE'S share will be smaller and smaller as more and more pieces of music in the hymnal include a copyright attribution to BIG3 Publishing.

Again, "royalties paid to myself" is incorrect. And yes, Ben Yanke's share (and everyone else's share) will decrease as more and more copyrighted materials are added to the hymnal. But one would expect that the size of the hymnal would eventually increase, as well as the price.

Meanwhile, text alterations, shoddy accompaniments, and whatever else that might be deemed copyrightable can be accomplished by salaried staff...

Text alterations of PD texts should not be copyrighted (and GIA does not copyright them). Royalties for new harmonizations of PD tunes are paid to the harmonizers, not to the publisher.

IN FACT....

Clearly, SOME portion of money paid in royalties goes to publishing companies, not individual artists, as explained in THIS THREAD which contained the following exchange...

FR K: some hymnal publishers are wanting the industry standard royalty to be raised from 10% to 12.5%.

ADAM WOOD: Why would some publishers want to pay more for their content?

FR K: Adam, you overlooked one species of publisher that would benefit from a higher royalty percentage paid to hymnal contributors, namely, a publisher that, by and large, does not itself publish hymnals but which publishes new collections of hymns (either new texts, new tunes, or both).

ADAM WOOD: So when you said "publishers" in that case - you meant copyright holders of materials published in hymnals, not publishers of hymnals.

FR. K: Yes, but as you yourself wrote, there is some overlap. For instance, OCP, WLP, and GIA all publish collections of new music or new texts besides publishing hymnals.

[ . . . ]

This thread was also notable, as I revealed my plan for circumventing GIA's draconian policy regarding photo copying of sheet music...

ADAM WOOD:
New plan.

1. Build invisibility machine.
2. Find out where Ron Krisman lives
3. STEAL ALL THE ACCOMPANIMENT BOOKS FOR MYSELF!!

When I see an edition of CROOKED BOWTIE with copyright held by BIG3, I assume that BIG3 bought the rights from the composer at some time in the past. Whether this is a good deal for him depends on how much he was paid in that deal, and how much in royalties those rights generate now.