25 July 2007

Cardinal Pell: Please Get a Grip

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The official hymn for World Youth Day has been released. You don't want to hear it (oh well, if you do it's here, but boy! do the organisers of WYD2008 have something to learn about bandwidth) as a look at the words should tell you all you need to know.

1. Every nation, every tribe,
come (sic) together to worship You.
In Your presence we delight,
we will follow (sic) to the ends of the earth.

Chorus

Alleluia! Alleluia!
Receive the Power, from the Holy Spirit!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Receive the Power to be a light unto (sic) the world!

2. As Your Spirit calls to rise (sic)
we will answer and do Your Will.
We’ll forever testify
of Your mercy and unfailing love.

Chorus

Bridge

Lamb of God, we worship You,
Holy One, we worship You,
Bread of Life, we worship You,
Emmanuel, we worship You.
Lamb of God, we worship You,
Holy One, we worship You,
Bread of Life, we worship You,
Emmanuel, we will sing forever.

Chorus

I feel, listening to it, like I feel when my daughter has the radio on in her room. The music and the singing are vacuous. But I feel offended when I think this is meant to be a hymn: the lyric is trite, the music is banal, and the totality is unsingable. It is a pop song, and the assembled Yoof will no doubt listen and applaud, but it has nothing to do with Divine Worship. It's not written in English, but then no pop song is.

And what a monstrosity to visit upon an elderly gentleman who likes music!

Cardinal Pell: while we appreciate all that you have been doing on the world stage recently, it's time to turn your gaze inward. Something involving boiling oil is called for.

6 comments:

JARay said...

I couldn't agree more Ttony.
Cardinal Pell has an excellent Master of Music in Fr. Tim Deeter, who hails from America (Chicago, in fact) and is on loan to him from Perth whilst our Cathedral is being re-built.
Unfortunately, too much of Australian church music is utter tripe and I fear that that is what our good Cardinal has been brought up on!

JARay

JARay said...

Further to what I said above, I think that the singer appointed to sing this tripe is Guy Sebastian who won the "Australian Idol" competition. If he has any pretensions towards Catholicism I think that they are precisely, "pretensions".

JARay

Ttony said...

I'm afraid the singing made it worse. Guy Sebastian wasn't even up to the banal level of the lyrics!

WhiteStoneNameSeeker said...

I was a bit taken aback that a Catholic couldn't be found to write some music for an international CATHOLIC gathering like this.
Tried to listen to the song but oh dear ---where's the insulin...

WhiteStoneNameSeeker said...

Two of my own 'yoofs' have just listened to some of this song-they couldn't stand it long enough to hear or watch the whole thing.
My 16yr old said it was like having his toe nails pulled with hot irons.
My 13 yr old said it was worse than the scout song-which is really bad apparently.
So the yoof in my house are not applauding.

Ttony said...

Good on your Yoof! Ask them to e-mail Cardinal Pell and start a "let's have a religious hymn for WYD" campaign! Be proud of them!