Lead Us Not Into Tintinnabulation

O.K., here’s a question for you boys: why is the music in the Catholic Church so AWFUL?

True, I should attend mass a lot more often than I do, if only because having to sit patiently through the insipid and ubiquitous “On Eagles’ Wings” surely must knock a hundred or two years off Purgatory.

Oh, for a priest who would replace that wretched ditty with, say, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Now, THAT’s a hymn. O.K., it’s the Sally Ann’s tune, but good music focuses the mind, and elevates the soul, so what difference its history? Meanwhile crabbed rhythm coupled with Elton John-esque keyboard sweeps maketh not the mind to contemplate the Spirit infused in the music, but rather the maple sausage which awaits in the freezer and yes I will microwave it I’m so hungry, and the forgotten wash souring in the dryer after two days untumbled.

Curious as what you lot would nominate for the Worst Hymn of All Time. “Drop-Kick Me Jesus, Through the Goal-Post of Life,” which I’m assured is real, would be too obscure to count. (The email link is at my name below this post.)

A priest at a different church many years ago adored the blindingly singsong “Blackbird is singing,” a selection I never heard but thought fondly of twenty-three of them in a pie, and this one hastening to join them. As we in the choir liked the good priest with the bad taste, we let ole Blackbird out of his nest pretty regularly. Occasionally, we were accompanied by a well meaning but rhythmically impaired accompanist who’d recently acquired both a tenor recorder and the Holy Spirit – a troublesome combination. There was always a friendly, unintentional horserace between the choir and la belle dame sans metronome, each jockeying to see who’d finish first. Our nervous accompanist usually won by more than a nose.

(And beside my name, Saint Peter just put a tick mark in the Charity, Lack of, column. These were not merely well intentioned people but well acting people, kind and charitable and good. But something about hippie instruments in Church, with or without the now-hoary hippie, extinguishes my small flame of virtue like a fire hose.)

How good it would be to hear more often “Onward Christian Soldiers” (when did you last hear THAT?). Or a rollicking round of “A Mighty Fortress.” (Bonus points for singing it in German, which makes it sound like you really MEAN it.)

Was about to start in on the tin-eared de-gendering of contemporary Bible editors, but it’s a quarter to three in the morning, and fresh woods & pastures new await tomorrow.