Category: Kathleen Pluth

There are some preachers so intent on finding a text to suit the day that this very concern for appropriateness makes them overlook the criterion of usefulness, so that they take texts which contain little or nothing that is of any use to their audience. People like this should be called church cantors rather than preachers of Christ. It is the job of the church’s cantors to chant the texts which are proper to the season or the feast, without regard to whether the sense of what they are singing is useful to those who listen or not.

Blessed Humbert of Romans

Like many parishes this first Eastertide Sunday in May, the choirs at my parish will be singing several versions of the Regina Caeli. I wonder how many folks have stopped to consider the paradox of this text. We, with our limited vision and holiness, are exhorting Our Lady, with all her privileges of knowledge and love, to rejoice. Mary, whose mere voice sounding in her cousin’s ears made John the Baptist leap for joy in the womb, already rejoices exceedingly. And yet we, the Church militant, as yet on the path to redemption, exhort her, who is full of grace, to rejoice. And then we explain to her the reason why she should do so.

I take this verbal construction to be a kind of literary license, not to be taken at face value. Somehow, by saying to Mary “rejoice,” we are not helping her but helping ourselves. We are not cheering her on, like fans in the stadium during the race, but entering into her exultation, like fans during the victory lap. Or rather, we are the runners, and are cheering on ourselves, by praising the Lord for her victory, her salvation, and her joy.

From Religion and Imagination ‘in aid of a grammar of assent’ by John Coulson.

When the vital connection between religion and imagination is either overlooked or denied, it is not merely theology or the theologian that suffers. The very life of religion ebbs and becomes infertile. (p. 3)

To what extent can a belief be said to be established as true, if it has failed to convince or to be successfully brought alive and made real? (p. 4)

It is literature which shows us that we cannot rest in a purely negative conception of imagination. It does more than suspend our disbelief. It predisposes us to believe in what it has realized. (p. 7)

When we “use imagination,” we begin to see our world differently. Our standpoint or focus changes, but this act of imagination remains incomplete until spontaneously and creatively we gain an enlarged sense of reality. But our powers of perception are more than merely enlarged. They are reordered. (p. 8)

From Jason McFarland’s book:

Watch full video here. The organ is featured at 11 minutes through the end of chapter 2.

If your parish is considering using the proper texts of the Mass, and if you are not sure how to make the transition from hymns to propers, Hymn Tune Propers might be the solution you are seeking for the upcoming liturgical new year. Charles Giffen and I have worked together to produce this booklet of Advent propers. The texts are my adaptations of the daily and Sunday Entrance Antiphons, rhymed and metered in 8.8.8.8. iambic (Long Meter) verses. Charles has set these verses to familiar Long Meter tunes: Conditor Alme Siderum (Creator of the Stars of Night), Winchester New (On Jordan’s Bank), and, for December 17-24, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel). Optional Psalm verses are provided, in traditional Anglican chant, except for the days of the O Antiphons, and Dec. 24, when the antiphon is followed by the refrain: Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

The Hymn Tune Propers project is envisioned as a “first step” in parish music renewal. It offers an easy and accessible way for parishes accustomed to singing hymns–a majority of parishes–to sing in their familiar musical style, but using the Church’s universal texts. Parishioners on a wide scale can have access to the liturgical texts that are often hidden from them by the custom of singing hymns in place of the processional chants.

In my opinion, this is not a long-term solution for any parish, for both musical and textual reasons. The musical style of hymnody is not flexible enough to foster true cantillation of the liturgical text. In my versifications I have made small compromises in meaning and imagery in order to accommodate meter and rhyme. But it is a useful, easy, non-confrontational first step in helping parishioners become familiar with the existence of propers, to know and love the liturgical bounty they represent, and to have a chance to become more deeply immersed in “the mystery of the liturgical season or festivity” (GIRM para. 47).