Let the Seventies Die

Among the six articles a week my wife Debra and I publish at Word and Song (our attempt to bring, without any politics at all, good and true and beautiful things back into the public square), is our Hymn of the Week, every Tuesday. That sends me to one or another of the many hymnals we have collected. And because my son David plays the organ at the Mass we attend, we also keep the latest edition of Worship on hand, in case it includes a hymn we need and cannot get from the church’s principal hymnal.

That means I sometimes have occasion to compare the texts; that is, to compare what a poet actually wrote with what the editors of Worship have done to it. I grant that Worship is by no means the only liturgical vandal on the block, Catholic or Protestant. Our latest Hymn of the Week was “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” by the notable poet, professor, statesman, and minister Henry van Dyke.

But before I show you that, I would like you to consider the church vandalism in general that went wild in the 1970s and that has, in most places, still not been repaired. 

Many readers will remember what was done at their own parishes. I have often mentioned what was done at mine: The communion rail, Italian marble with mosaic inlays of Eucharistic symbols, was dismantled. So was the glorious high altar in the sanctuary. The decorative architectural painting on the walls and pilasters, serving to unite paintings of Old Testament figures between the stained-glass windows with paintings of ten apostles above the windows and then with the ceiling, covered in paintings, was obliterated, covered with stark white. Two large medallion paintings high in the sanctuary, of Sts. Peter and Paul, were removed, leaving the church with the anomaly of ten rather than twelve apostles. Ceramic tiles of white and green laid in cruciform patterns were covered over with red carpet, which quickly became worn and dingy.

Now then, what was done in that feature of Catholic life has also been done in every other feature, too. That’s only the one that is easiest to spot. After all, anybody attending my boyhood church could assume that there must have been a time when the apostles were twelve and not ten. But we had vandalism also in the ways the parochial schools were run, in the curricula, in the elimination or suppression of popular devotions and prayers, in the intellectual training of priests, and in the hymnals.  we had vandalism also in the ways the parochial schools were run, in the curricula, in the elimination or suppression of popular devotions and prayers, in the intellectual training of priests, and in the hymnals. Tweet This

With those, I can name three objectionable things: the inclusion of hymns not fit for congregational singing, often dubious in theology but almost always of very poor poetic or artistic quality; the elimination of hymns that once covered large and important areas of the Christian life; and the mutilation of hymns written before 1965, to fit a political agenda.

That mutilation usually takes three forms. The editors will mangle a hymn, if they think they can get away with it, to get rid of the archaic pronoun thou and its poetically important forms thee and thine; they will mangle a hymn to get rid of the word man to refer to mankind, or brother in the all-inclusive sense; they will mangle a hymn to expunge whatever they feel is too martial, such as “Captain” to refer to Christ in “Lift High the Cross.” Whether they bring epinephrine with them whenever the readings include Paul’s several injunctions to put on the armor of God, I don’t know.

Now to the vandalism I spotted this week. Here is how van Dyke began his first stanza:

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before thee,
Praising thee, their sun above.

All right, they couldn’t abide thee, though everybody immediately understands it, and though its bright front vowel is far more euphonious than is the rounded back vowel in you. So they turned two of them to you, and then, for a reason I can’t guess, they expunged the personal appeal of the fourth line, making it sound as if we’re only talking about the sun in the sky:         

Joyful, joyful, we adore you,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before you,
Opening to the sun above.

The metaphor has been blunted. The human heart unfolds before God as flowers unfold to the sun, and it unfolds in praising God. That’s gone.

The mischief grows worse in the second half of the next stanza. Here is what van Dyke wrote:

Field and forest, vale and mountain,
Blooming meadow, flashing sea,
Chanting bird and flowing fountain
Call us to rejoice in thee.

The idea is that the works of God call us to join them in their praise and their joy. But the editors had to get rid of thee, and here it means they had to rewrite the whole final line:

Sound their praise eternally.

“Eternally” is one of a handful of words the editors turn to in desperation, only for the sake of the rhyme. Here it makes no sense at all. Birds, fountains, meadows, and so on are not eternal. This world will come to an end. Van Dyke’s point, as we’ll see, was to ascend from what is not eternal to what is.

In the third stanza, the editors did their usual number on thou, but the wreckage piles up when they again had to rewrite a whole line, this time because it ended on thine. Van Dyke, again:

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother—
All who live in love are thine;
Teach us how to love each other,
Lift us to the joy divine.

The second line above is magnificent. It clinches the image of the family and of belonging to God in brotherly love. It is preparing for the climactic final stanza. But the editors expunged it. Here is their red carpet: Let your light upon us shine. 

In another poem, that would be all right, but here it is only piety-gabble.

Van Dyke was gearing up for the climax, which is precisely about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man:

Mortals join the mighty chorus,
Which the morning stars began;
Father-love is reigning o’er us,
Brother-love binds man to man.
Ever singing march we onward,
Victors in the midst of strife;
Joyful music lifts us sunward
In the triumph song of life.

The balance between Father-love and Brother-love is perfect, particularly because we have just sung about the Father and our Brother, Christ. Brother-love binds man to man—it cannot be said better than that. The word man is singular, personal, concrete, and all-inclusive. It refers to all men; but it also refers to each man, singly, as representing in personal form the whole race. 

But the editors, motivated by feminist ideology, or perhaps simply not aware of what makes for a powerful poem, got rid of the line entirely, botched the rhyme, blunted the direct personal appeal, and made syrupy goo of the implicit military imagery of the stanza:

Mortals, join the mighty chorus
Which the morning stars began;
God’s own love is reigning o’er us,
Joining people hand in hand.
Ever singing, march we onward,
Victors in the midst of strife;
Joyful music leads us sunward
In the triumph song of life.

“Joining people hand in hand?” The word hand is there only to supply a poor attempt to rhyme with began. But people? The word is merely plural, not universal. It is not personal. It is colloquial and banal, suggesting “some people or other.” The image we get is of some people holding hands. It is emphatically not the strong image of binding man to man, and the Brother-love that completes the thought of the previous stanza is lost entirely. Because they knew they were going to get rid of Brother-love, they also got rid of Father-love, replacing it with God’s own love, with the word own adding nothing; it is there only to fill up a syllable in the meter.

Now hear this. Outside of Christmas carols, and sometimes not even then, almost all the traditional hymns in these Catholic hymnals have been so vandalized. It is as if everyone were to remain stuck in the neutral of the 1970s. Think of each bit of ruination your church suffered during that decade, and then think that such “renewal” was not limited to communion rails and altars. It is everywhere. 

Let that decade go; and let its errors be remembered with mercy and pity. But let them also go and not be heard from again.