At Mass today, we heard the Gospel where Our Lord healed the blind man Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). Because of that I feel, the song "Amazing Grace" was chosen to be sung during the Procession of Gifts. One of the lines from that song is " was blind but now I see", so one can see the connection between the Gospel reading and that hymn.
There is some controversy over whether this hymn should be sung at Catholic Masses, for several reasons. For one thing, it is a Protestant hymn, written by a Protestant minister. One line reads "that saved a wretch like me". This is not a Catholic understanding of the human person. Humans are good because they are created by God, we are not wretches! Yes, we have been tainted by Original Sin, and because of that, we are prone to what is called "concupiscence ", which means our lower appetites are overriding our sense of reason. This, however, does not make us wretches; humans are still good, despite being subject to sin, and in need of redemption by Christ.
Another line reads " how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed." However, grace is a free, unmerited gift of God, it does not come as a result of our action, which this line seems to indicate it does. Often you will hear our Protestant brothers and sisters talking about how they received salvation after accepting Christ as their Savior. Unfortunately, often when this gets discussed, the focus is as much on the action of the person as it is the grace of God as if the two are connected, and one is conditional on the other. It is not.
Those are some of the traditional arguments against this song being sung in a Catholic church. For some reason, today, I felt uncomfortable singing the song, but not for those reasons. Instead, here is what I realized today.
Number of times the following words are used in the hymn:
I 5
Me 3
My 4
Mine 1
God 1
Lord 1
He 1
His 1
(Jesus or Christ) 0
Total words relating to "me" 13
Total words relating to God 4
The fact that the song seemed to dwell so much on me and not as much on God is what bothered me the most, I think. I have sung that song many times before and it never occurred to me how human-centered that song is. One could say that "grace" refers to God, and the song mentions that several times. OK, but if that is the case, why is it not capitalized? Why is that name used for God when it is not in the Bible? It is a gift from God, but it is not God.
There a lot of hymns that are sung at Mass, like this one, that probably should not be. We need to pay attention to what we are doing at Mass, and singing the hymns is no exception. If what we are singing is not rooted in sound Catholic doctrine, then the hymn should be replaced with another hymn, or better yet (in my opinion), sacred silence, or an instrumental rooted in the great Classical tradition, which is rooted in Catholic culture.
One of the lines in the litany to Saint Joseph is "solace of the wretched." One might say, "Hey, that word is in the Litany, why should it not be in a hymn as well?" I would propose that there is an important distinction between being "wretched" and being a "wretch". The word "wretched" implies something that describes us, but does not identify us. The word "wretch", on the other hand, seems to identify us. This is a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Distinctions are important in Catholic theology. We distinguish between person and act (i.e. we love the person who is considered by himself and/or others as a homosexual, but we do not approve homosexual acts.) We distinguish between mortal and venial sin. We distinguish between sanctifying and actual grace (a topic for another post). There are other examples, but you get the drift. Sometimes this what seems like minor distinguishing, or nitpicking, drives non-Catholics crazy, and they give up trying to understand the teachings of the Church, or make generalizations without really studying the issue (i.e. they say there is no difference between divorces and annulments, and that an annulment is just a Catholic divorce).
Back to our main point for this post, it might seem we are like nitpicking. However, words mean things, and as it is said sometimes, "God is in the details.", and we have to study the details of things if we are to come to a proper understanding of them. Doing this will allow us to shine the light on things like this hymn, and discover their truth or falsehood.
I hope one will consider this all the next time one hears Amazing Grace sung at Mass, and will develop a keen ear when listening to other hymns, as well.
Saint Joseph, light of Patriarchs, and solace of the wretched, pray for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment