Heretical Hymns?

by George Weigel
Sacred songs that contradict Church teachings — or have congregants take on the voice of Christ — should be laid to rest.

Amen to that - and the sooner, the better!

Most Catholics don't [take their hymns seriously]. Instead, we settle for hymns musically indistinguishable from "Les Mis" and hymns of saccharine textual sentimentality. Moreover, some hymn texts in today's Catholic "worship resources" are, to put it bluntly, heretical. Yet Catholics once knew how to write great hymns; and there are great hymns to be borrowed, with gratitude, from Anglican, Lutheran, and other Christian sources. There being a finite amount of material that can fit into a hymnal, however, the first thing to do is clean the stables of today's hymnals.

Let the purging begin....please!

Thus, with tongue only half in cheek, I propose the Index Canticorum Prohibitorum, the "Index of Forbidden Hymns." Herewith, some examples.

Weigel's examples are at the link below...I immediately thought of the "Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas".