A bit more on liturgical music

The comboxes have been humming on the liturgical music entry below. Various people have noted the bizarre phenomenon of the dogged deployment of the Pronoun Formerly Known as He by our Improvers of Language.

That, for me, is Exhibit A in the articles in evidence for the failure of the Half-Assed Revolution. Where reactionaries see creeping evil, I see bumbling failure. Some nuns with iron grey hair and sensible shoes, along with some passive-aggressive boy-men with guitars, turtlenecks, and “I recycle” bumper stickers decided they were going to sanitize the liturgy of what they regarded as sexism. The furthest they ever got was inane stuff like eradicating he, him, and his from some crappy songs, changing a few older songs to sound ridiculous (“born to raise the *ones* of earth, born to give them second birth!”) and… that’s about it. I endured one excruciately stupid liturgy where some guest homilist informed us we should all pray to God our Father/Mother (duly followed by a blessing in the name of the Father/Mother, Son (but not Daughter), and Holy Spirit from the deacon who, truth to tell, seemed to feel pretty awkward and never did it again. I think he was caving to the pressure of the moment. (This was not, I needn’t add, at my beloved Blessed Sacrament, but at a previous parish.) Oh, and I sat through a sanitized for your protection reading of Ephesian 5 once that I wrote about here.

But beyond these sort of tepid little assaults from petite bourgeois bureaucrats at OCP and various DRE and Music Ministers with a mission to reshape the liturgy in their image and likeness, what is remarkable to me is how badly the Half-Assed Revolution failed. All over the world, right after we finish the tepid, castrated music, we launch into a liturgy that is robustly full of “Lords”, “Fathers” “hims” “hises” and “Hes”. It’s like the 70s never happened. I like that.

Meanwhile, as the commenters on the thread are remarking on sundry denatured versions of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, I offer for your delectation to specimens that amuse me. The first comes from a reader:

I can imagine a “Battle Hymn of the Combox Warriors”:

mine i’s are in small case because i went to public school
and i punctuate like this … because my self-esteem must rule
over grammar and coherence and I spell things wrong like “kewl”,
my lols are typing on…

…L…OL you are a loo-ser!
and…your ad hominem too sir…
…S…TFU your like hit…ler,
my lols are typing on…

The second from a genius name Fr. Paul Mankowski, who has captured the tuneless, tone-deaf, metrically challenged patois of the Professional Liberal Catholic Bureaucrat with exquisite precision:

I see God’s approach; it is good.
God makes wine with God’s feet, from
non-union grapes. Brightness flashes
from the decision-making apparatus.
God’s worldview is currently earning
widespread respect

Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.

A musical instrument is summoning
many people, including women of
color, into God’s presence for ongoing
evaluation. I must walk quickly
and say yes to this invitation.
God’s worldview, after all, is earning
widespread respect.

Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.

Our Faith Leader had a non-Western
agrarian background. His talents and
abilities changed our lives for the
better. We should make great efforts
for civil rights because he did for
world peace. God’s worldview, we
recall, is earning widespread
respect.

Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.