On another post, Laura Cameron confirmed what I wrote about how the heterodox left hijacked the New Mass of Pope Paul VI and disfigured it, causing irreparable liturgical polarization in the Church and ignited the liturgy wars of the 1970’s.
She mentioned a song that was sung in her parish, that frankly I had never heard, “Who Is the Alien?” Thanks be to FRMJK he printed the lyrics to that song making clear, even if inadvertently, how wrong that song is for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It has nothing to do with praising and worshipping God, its lyrics are a didactical homily or a morality play, or at least a screen writer could turn it into a TV show or movie.
The folk group in my parish in the late 60’s and early 70’s, St. Joseph Church, Augusta, Georgia, dragged secular hymns into the Mass too. Why? Because they were so relevant, especially those that protested the Vietnam war.
This is one of the songs that they seem to sing every Sunday, along with “Day by Day” which seem to be sung every Sunday.
Keep in mind my parish was where active and retired Army families and individuals, connected with Fort Gordon in Augusta, attended. We had many families who had lost their sons in the war to boot.
Catholics began to think that Pope Paul VI, because he allowed horrible experimentations with the New Mass, supported this kind of nonsense being sung at Mass. This led to the eventual backlash against Sacrosanctum Concilium, because the heterodox left insisted that this kind of thing is what Vatican II wanted.
One Tin Soldier (What a great liturgical ditty!)
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there."
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
12 comments:
Father, your posts the past few days are spot on to what I remember of the 1970s! Songs I recall:
Day by Day
Morning has Broken
My Sweet Lord, with the Hindu god references removed, and
Our Father as arranged by Sister Janet Meade
Our organist quit in protest in 1975 over the music. The folk band was formed in 1968 and all the parish "cool kids" belonged. It faded out in 1983 as it became too exclusive to survive, as well as being totally out of fashion. My fellow teens in the 80s and I used to mock the music and make up our own lyrics. After all, none of it inspired any sense of the sacred.
In the 1990s when boomer priests pushed these folk bands as lay participation, the songs changed to, for example,
City of God,
King of Glory, and
Gather us in.
It struck me at the time as nothing but 70's retreads. My wife made up the following lyrics after mass one at St Michael 's in Silver Spring, Maryland:
"The king of glory comes delivering pizza,
Open the doors before him ,
give him a good tip."
Father McDonald,
I will share with you why I personally began to become disgusted with the alleged "reform" of the Mass. When in High School, I attended a high school event for my class at a local swimming club. Father "Hipster" showed up to celebrate "Mass" there in his street clothes on a cocktail table. I was horrified and walked out. I promptly notified our worthless bishop of this travesty and NOTHING happened.
Nonetheless I remained in the Church and dedicated 40 plus years as a member of music ministry as an organist, soloist, choir member and cantor. I did my bit because I always managed to slip in music from our treasury of sacred music. One Sunday, I sang the Pange Lingua during Holy Communion time. After Mass, a ten-year-old boy came up to me and asked what I had sung and I told him. He said that was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard sung in Church and asked why he had never heard anything like that before. I told him about the "reform" and he said, "why would anyone want to get rid of something that beautiful?" Ex ore infantium! And that is just another example of why I have come to have an almost visceral loathing for liturgists and the "reform" I was supremely happy when Pope Benedict came along and threw open the windows and allowed the fresh air in. I am cautiously optimistic Pope Leo will do the same.
I can gladly say I had never heard the song, One Tine Soldier. Having read the words I wish had had remained in blissful ignorance.
I thank James for jarring my memory as the other songs, all of them, were sung in my parish beginning with: Day by Day
Morning has Broken
My Sweet Lord, with the Hindu god references removed, and
Our Father as arranged by Sister Janet Meade
In my seminarian summer assignment at St. Joseph Church in Macon, GA, 1978, where in 2004 I became pastor, the folk group there also sung popular songs from the top 50 of that time that had what they thought had a Kumbaya feeling to it. AND YES, LESS I FORGET, KUMBAYA WAS SUNG ALMOST EVERY WEEK! UGH!
Sorry!
The sound of the song as something just for radio listening wasn’t bad.
I've mulled over the below comment since it was posted.
I seems the ethos of the West and East diverge on such matters.
All I'll say is to us, innovation is not a virtue and should be approached with caution given that to which it can lead (e.g. altering foundational practices, heresy, schism, worldliness, among other things). This post is emblematic of this.
https://www.blogger.com/comment/fullpage/post/7846189835239594160/7067655700756773727
Fr. Michael J. Kavanaugh
Jerome - The design of the building is entirely contemporary, as you note. And while it looks nothing like churches built in the 1940's - and there's no reason churches built today SHOULD look like churches built in the 1940's - it had a great unity of design. Also, it functioned very well for the celebration of the liturgies. Alas, it was built with almost ZEO storage space. (I was assigned there when the construction had just begun. The slab had been poured, but that was it.)
Yes, the design reflects the ecclesiology of the modern era which is, in my opinion, more biblical and, necessarily, more inclusive. That is, in the modern era, a good thing. Pretending we live in another time and/or place and building for that foreign time/place is an error.
You forgot to mention the all-too-appropriate name of the group that recorded the song: Coven.
A favorite at the Georgia Tech Catholic Center in the 1970s was Sons of God.
Thanks be to God I never heard One Tin Soldier at Holy Mass in the 1970s. However it is forever seared in my mind as the theme song of the “classic” 1971/1973 film Billy Jack.
Here's one that's more fun. It could be taken as a warning about the occult, which is (seriously) a topic that needs to be confronted these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wandkZSmpE
“Creepy, crawly, slimy things that stick onto your skin!
Horrid things, with tentacles, that want to pull you in!
Squirmy worms, slugs and snails that lie there in a goo!
They'll wait down there forever, ‘til they get their hands on you!”
“Don't you open that trap door!
You're a fool if you dare!
Stay away from that trap door!
‘Cos there's something down there!”
“Big bad ghosts that scream all night,
And ghosts that moan all day!
Don't try to look for a scary spook,
It'll blow your mind away!
Take my word, I speak the truth,
And leave all behind that door!
You take that plunge into that gunge,
We won't see you no more!”
“Don't you open that trap door!
You're a fool if you try!
Stay away from that trap door!
You'll be saying bye bye!”
“Frightening things, with sixteen legs,
They'll wait, with open jaws!
They’ll pass the time,
While they sit just sharpening their claws!
"Who will be the first?", they say,
"To stop our bellies rumbling?!"
"Who will open up that door,
And down that hole come tumbling?!"”
“Don't you open that trap door!
You're a fool if you dare!
Stay away from that trap door!
I know there's something down there!”
...
Hey, it's no worse than "patriotic" songs that are, for some reason, in many hymnals, including the Unitarian "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Sheesh, I'm surprised people haven't tried putting college fight songs in the hymnal. There may be a time and a place for such songs, but the Mass is not a baseball game, and Communion is not the 7th-inning stretch, so let's leave off "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "Sweet Caroline" as the Communion hymn.
The woman and band that did this song was/were (is), literally, Satanists. I was a rock and even heavy metal music journalist. I know of what I write here.
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