Letters: Change the words

Sydney
25 August 2002

Stem cells: Cancer risk warning

Stem cell debate: the issues

Will John Paul II see Poland again?

Protesters meet on brothel plan

Song offers to ‘carry the flame within’ for John Paul

Here is the news Live on Radio 2

Sisters renew vows after 390 years ...

Canada Bay raises $50,000 for Burmese aid project

Catholic Press – ‘duty to report truth’

Religious reporting ‘important to ABC’

Editorial: The good priest

Letters: Change the words

Conversation: No bullies allowed in his oasis of harmony - Br Nicholas Harsas, primary school principal

Reflections: Priests can be youthful at any age

Would a war against Iraq be just?

‘Lost for words’ in moment with Pope

Toronto and the witness of youth

Battle to help ‘dual diagnosis’ victims

Inspirations: ‘Courage and strength’

Letters: Change the words

A good step towards bringing the young people back to Mass would be to eradicate some of the woolly words of songs that cannot be dignified with the name ‘hymns’.

An example is Take our bread. A catchy tune, but its words can hardly be said to flow from a deep Eucharistic faith. It calls the Bread of Heaven, the very Body of Christ, nothing more than “the bread our hearts can’t forget”.

And what does his bread do to us? “Spirit-filled yet hungry, we await your food”, it says. A non-Catholic observer might ask: “If their spirits are already filled, what hunger is satisfied by this bread they sing about?” It could only be a physical hunger since their spirits are already filled. Is that the bread for which they “stand at the table” which is “set” by God?

Another song bringing Christ’s revelation into question is Glory and Praise to our God. In it we find the statement “though the power of sin prevails our God is there to save”. Surely the whole point of the coming of Christ and his dying for us is that the power of sin does not prevail. Yes, God is there to save but he is not a willing but helpless observer. We are not sinking in the mire of double predestination and holding that sin is, in the end, the winner.

So why do we sing it? Because it has a catchy tune and we hope no one takes notice of the words? We also have to contend with that overthrow of the pop psychology of a few decades ago, Come as you are.

Its message is that we are to approach the Holy Banquet regardless of what sins, envy, discord, uncharity, blasphemies we may have upon our souls. It urges us to stay within our comfort zone, not to be challenged, least of all by the pangs of conscience. It may make us feel nice but it is hardly the blast of a trumpet, urging us to die rather than sin.

What can we say about the come-as-you-are approach? Doesn’t God love us as we are? Undoubtedly, anything good we have is from God. God’s love has caused whatever good we have in us. But God loves us so much that he doesn’t want to leave us as we are. The “feel-quite-at-home” mentality which would turn every Church into a middle-class living room is foreign to the Gospel challenge to repent and believe.

We ought to think about what we are singing and whether it really does give glory to God or merely massages our own fuzzy egoism.

Anthony English
Denistone East, NSW

VATICAN PRISONERS?

Despite the vigour with which he repeats it, Dr Joe Morley really cannot sustain the proposition that all the popes from Pius IX to Paul VI were ‘prisoners of the Vatican’ (Papal Prisoners, CW 4/8).

He says John XXIII was the first to go outside the Vatican, but his visits were confined to hospitals and prisons in Rome. This is clearly wrong.

First, Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII all spent much time at Castel Gandolfo, the Papal residence in the Alban Hills outside Rome. Pius XII died there.

Second, John XXIII travelled to Assisi and Loreto on pilgrimage in October 1962. This was the first time a pope had ventured out of Rome (or Castel Gandolfo) since 1870.

Third, Pius XII and John XXIII made frequent visits around Rome and outside the Vatican. Most famously, Pius XII went to the Quirinale Palace on December 28, 1939 to meet King Victor Emmanuel III. John XXIII’s visits to his Roman parishes were legendary. (And John Paul II has visited nearly all of Rome’s 330 current parishes!) The conventional wisdom is that the pope ceased to be ‘prisoner of the Vatican’ with the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty in 1929.

Stephen Brown
Forrest, ACT

WITHOUT FEAR

Cardinal Edward Cassidy’s golden advice to Catholic newspapers is worth pondering even by the secular press (‘Push on’, despite unpopularity, CW 18/8). The Catholic Weekly rightly deserves the Gutenberg Award for its ‘information and inspiration’, a virtue that the secular press sadly lacks.

At a time when Christian values are battered and often distorted, The Catholic Weekly has held its own without fear or favour.

A bouquet to editor Johanna Bennett and her staff for bringing it to the high standards that justified its award.

Noel Crusz
Concord, NSW

FRONT PAGE

I felt sad to see the caption under your lovely front page picture of the Swiss Guards (Changing face of Pope’s soldiers, CW 21/7) refer to the first “non-white” member.

He was also the first brown-eyed, black-haired, maybe, but by “non white” you divide people by white face, black face – so simplistic.

How sad for a social justice-based journal to point it out.

Difference by creed, ethnicity, country or birth, yes, but not black and white divisions.

Susan Macleod
Newcastle, NSW

MASS APPEAL

I agree with Dr Lance Eccles (Dance party or Mass? CW 2/6) that young Catholics should be well informed to enable them to know and love their Faith. The lives of Saints – particularly outstanding ones like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Thomas More – make beautiful reading, and to these can be added the history, the traditions, the beautiful liturgy, the sacraments, priestly power, beautiful prayers.

Young people should be proud and feel privileged to participate with other parishioners at weekly Mass. As Dr Eccles points out, Catholic activity in the Church vineyard depends on the degree to which we are informed.

And at the magnificently celebrated Mass in Latin and the Gregorian Chant at the Maternal Heart of Mary Chapel in Lewisham on Sunday it is impossible not to feel spiritually and in every way close to God. The Latin Mass has ecclesiastical approval.

Jack O’Regan
Ashfield, NSW