Those '70s Hymns
I never thought I'd enjoy Neuhaus's Catholic Matters this much. I thought reading it would be an exercise in deja vu, old ground revisted. And yet it's a really fine read due in great part to his writing ability.
Neuhaus tells of a banner in one church that said "God is Other People" and how one theologian told him there should be a comma between "other" and "people". Funny and true. While the banner seems to promote pantheism, perhaps some of the '70s emphasis on our relations to other people was understandable given that the two great Commandments are love God and love others and it's easier to love a Perfect Being than imperfect beings. (Though Christ did say the one was like the other, suggesting there isn't much of a gulf and they can't be separated.)
Neuhaus mocks the hymns of the 70s, and rightly so. Kumbaya My Lord and James Taylor songs are not exactly rich in emphasizing the truths of the Faith. Many of the songs were also, musically-speaking, abysmal by artistic standards. But were they really so theologically suspect? Neuhaus refers to them as celebrations of self, songs where we pat ourselves on the back and reflect on our goodness. I never had that experience. I saw them more as challenges.
I went through the songs of my (mis)spent liturgical youth and tested them not for cloyness but the soundness of the lyrics. One that Neuhaus might consider a "patting ourselves on the back" song is They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love but I beg to differ. I thought it a haunting, challenging song because I wondered if I could be identified as a Christian by my love. I suspected not and I can't be the only one to have thought that song was less an exercise in self-congratulation than an exercise in "you'd better love because this it's supposed to be". Perhaps this song leads to Pelagian impulses by attempting to get to the end (our sanctification) by ignoring the means (Christ), though God has done his part with gifts of grace for the baptized Christian so if there's a gulf between our behavior and the gospel standard one can say it's not for a want of grace.
Certainly the old "To be alive / and feelin' free / and to have everyone in my family / to be alive"... is hard to defend given the generally content-free lyrics. But there were also songs like, "All that I am / all that I do / all that I ever have / I offer now to you. Take and sanctify these gifts / for your honor Lord. Knowing that I love and serve You / is enough reward..."
This seems relatively harmless to me. "Knowing that I love and serve you" could be seen as self-congratulatory but again I don't know how you could take it thus if you have any idea what God asks of us (i.e. death to self). It emphasizes what our true goal should be and how what is important is God's opinion, not man's.
Another song: "Take our bread, we ask you take our hearts, we love you take our lives, O Father we are yours, we are yours. Your holy people standing washed in your blood. Spirit-filled yet hungry we await your food / We are poor but we've brought ourselves the best we could / we are yours / we are yours."
This song is one of the more anti-Pelagian of the '70s songs. It recognizes our dependence on God and our own poverty. It refers to us being holy but only because we were washed in His Blood.
And another: "Sons of God, Hear his holy word / Gather round / the table of the Lord / Eat his body / drink his blood / and we'll sing a song of love / Allelu-Allelu-Allelu-Alleluia. Brothers, sisters, we are one / and our lives have just begun / in the Spirit we are one / we can live forever."
I see this as innocuous and theologically sound. Of course now it's terribly dated by the word sons. That song must've had a short shelf life given the eventual liturgical distaste for anything male!
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Update: Terrence Berres writes: "At the ceremony in the participatory improv period piece Tony n' Tina's Wedding a nun hands out a mimeographed "Sons of God" and starts it with her pitch pipe." Isn't there something inherently funny about the line "[she] starts it with her pitch pipe"?
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