I am a Little Catholic (Just!)

This hymn is a statement of faith in the Roman Catholic church, and appears to be the basis for the more-widely-used 19th century hymn, I am a Faithful Catholic.

But the song is not widely used, in its original form at least.  And is there more cleverness than you think going on?

The original publication

The earliest-located instance of this song is in Easy Hymns and Sacred Songs for Young Children, Burns & Lambert, London England in 1853, credited to the semi-anonymous Sister M. B of the Sisters of Mercy convent in Charlville, County Cork, Ireland  (source).

In this book the words are given as:

1. I am a little Catholic, and Christian is my name;
And I believe the Holy Church in ev’ry age the same.

2. The holy ancient Roman Church, enduring firmly still;
Where Christ her King hath planted her, upon St. Peter's hill.

3 Jerusalem she is above, our city and our home;
But after that same pattern is the holy city, Rome.

4. Time writes no wrinkles on thy brow, for thou art ever young;
Hail! Rome, eternal citadel, from whence our faith hath sprung!

5. Once England was the fairest gem in all St. Peter's crown.
O may it soon there shine again, as once of yore it shone.

Look at these words with a critical eye:  

• An Irish person, even in the mid 1800s, did not write verse five.   Unless they were part of a wry comment about people who were "a little Catholic" - as in not particularly so, and not even named after a saint.
  
  
• This is published in a book of hymn and songs that are easy for young children to sing.   Does any part of verses 2-4 look even vaguely singable by young children?

Further publications

Only ten years later, the first verse and the ideal behind the hymn have crossed the Atlantic, and the hymn is printed - with a totally different set of words - in  The Complete Sodality Manual and Hymn Book, published by D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New York, USA in 1863.   

It's easy to see this version as a hymn easily sung by young children, and used in catechesis.

I am a little Catholic, and Christian is my name;
And I believe the Holy Church in ev’ry age the same.

I love her altars where I kneel, My Jesus to adore;
I love my Mother Mary dear O, may I love her more.

I love the saints of olden time, the places where they dwelt;
I love to pray where saints have prayed, and kneel where they have knelt.

I love the priests, my pastors dear, they have left all for me;
Next to my parents here on earth, I love them tenderly.

I love the Holy Sacraments, they bring me near to God;
The Church points out the way to heav’n. These help me on the road.

I am a little Catholic, I love my Holy Faith;
I will be true to Holy Church and steadfast until death.

What happened?

It's difficult to be sure, without looking at far more historical sources that I have.  

But one option is that the artful cleverness of an Irish religious sister totally pranked an English editor, and caused him to print a hymn totally unsuited to his purpose.   While sharing a totally different version with more friendly publishers elsewhere.

Another is that the editor attributed the work of an English writer to this sister, in an attempt to make his ideas more palatable.   (Imagine his disappointment when this totally backfired when the idea was used to create a charming song for children!)

Thoughts?

Different lectionaries in England and Ireland (not Eire!)

 A working church-musician, who has made a much-appreciated contribution to making simple, sing-able psalm settings available in the English-speaking world, recently had an article in the Tablet.

She'd just discovered that Catholic Mass-readings in England, Scotland and Wales will be from a different translation of the Bible, from the start of Advent 2024 - ie this December.    

From what I can see, Cathedral, "big-church" and professional musicians know about this change.  But maybe the English bishops haven't done a great job telling people smaller-church musicians, ie the ones found in must parishes.

It's a good article, getting to the point but not over simplifying.   But I had two big reactions to it.

1) You won’t be able to use the same settings for England and Wales and Ireland any more

The Irish bishops decided in 2021 to move to a lectionary based on the Revised New Jerusalem Bible (RNJB) – source:   https://www.irishcatholic.com/new-lectionary-translation-raises-practical-concerns/

There has been no public progress on this (that an ordinary-lay-person can see!)  or even approval from the Vatican yet.   But a July 2023 news article stated that the Irish bishops plan to work with Australia and New Zealand (https://www.irishcatholic.com/irish-bisho.ps-stick-to-their-guns-as-uk-gets-new-lectionary ).

That makes me think it’s very likely that England and Wales, and the island-of-Ireland will have different texts.

2) The “Eire” word raises people's ire

The article refers to “UK and Eire, the US, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand”.

Firstly, there’s a spelling issue.  It’s Éire, not Eire.    Small dash, big difference.

And a meaning issue:  Éire is the Irish-language word for a country commonly called Ireland, more-formally the Republic of Ireland.  But Catholic bishops aren’t organised on a country basis.  In particular, the Irish Catholic bishops includes have people leading dioceses that cover two different countries, viz Ireland and Northern Ireland.  Eire, or even Éire, just doesn’t describe them.

Secondly, the article is in English.  It’s very odd to have one sentence that use an Irish-language word for Ireland, but not the Welch language word for Wales () or the Māori language word (Aotearoa) for New Zealand.   And I’m certain that if the author was writing in English and referring to certain countries in Europe, they would not be called Espana, Italia, Deutschland, etc

Language is powerful, and extremely political.  Colonial thinking isn't a good fit with Catholicism.

Catholic hymns for Coronation Sunday

 No, not the 1952 coronation, this one, in 2023. 

In real life, I never choose music for public prayer based on political considerations:  a congregation will have people from all sorts of persuasions, eg tomorrow I will be worshiping alongside a Polish women who loves the English royal family. 

But this is a list of what I'd love to choose.   Of course it starts with the readings, influenced by events in the world.

Readings / Main ideas

Acts 6: 1-7  - The apostles asked the community to set up the first parish council!  

Psalm: 32 - May your love be upon us O Lord as we place all our hope in you 

I Peter 2: 4-9 -  the cornerstone - you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation - out of darkness into - light.

John 14: 1-12 -  "I am going now to prepare a place for you"  - whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself 

My summary for the day: 

Jesus the Way, the Truth and the Life - the call to a life of service.

Mass setting

Is there a Mass of Christ the King?  Yes here:   https://www.ilpmusic.org/category/SAHMassCTK.html

I don't know any of it, so might have to settle for the Schutte  Mass of Christ the Saviour.   People know, and it's almost as on-point.

Hymns

Entrance

Hail Redeemer King Divine

Because we have no king but Thee!  And it has a verses about service, even it didn't fit into most hymn-books, and "Feed us, lead us, keep us thine" - surely the Way, Truth and Life.

Offertory

Do Not be Afraid for I have Redeemed You - because following The Way comes with lots of challenges and failures

Communion

In Christ Alone - indeed he is the Way, Truth and Life, and no mention of kings.

Sending

Hail Queen of Heaven - because it's May, and because we only have one Queen too.

What makes a woman anyway?

An article I want to keep a link to: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html


Very brief summary

Different brains in men and women are because they have been shaped by a different experiences.

Many people who call themselves progressive ...— are buying into the idea that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us: the kind of nonsense that was used to repress women for centuries.

People who haven’t lived their whole lives as women shouldn’t get to define women - that’s something men have been doing for far too long,and it needs to stop. .... Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity. They haven’t traveled through the world as women and been shaped by all that this entails. They haven’t suffered through business meetings with men talking to their breasts or woken up after sex terrified they’d forgotten to take their birth control pills the day before. They haven’t had to cope with the onset of their periods in the middle of a crowded subway, the humiliation of discovering that their male work partners’ checks were far larger than theirs, or the fear of being too weak to ward off rapists.

....

The “I was born in the wrong body” rhetoric favored by some trans people .... is just as offensive, reducing us to our collective breasts and vaginas. Imagine the reaction if a young white man suddenly declared that he was trapped in the wrong body and, after using chemicals to change his skin pigmentation and crocheting his hair into twists, expected to be embraced by the black community.

Why I'd never work for the church - by the numbers

American figures, but I suspect the ratios are the same all over the world:

https://prounione.blog/2017/08/09/if-i-wanted-to-be-wealthy-i-should-have-been-a-priest/

Live as though money is no object?

Twittering-class poppycock strikes again.

I'm sure that it must be lovely to have enough money that you can spend your life doing what you desire.

But back in real-world-land, I really appreciate that there are rubbish-collectors, bus-drivers, shop-assistants, road maintenance staff etc etc who spend some of their lives doing very boring-ordinary-not-the-stuff of dreams things, so that all of us can spend a little of of lives doing what we dream of.

Hedonism = society failure.

Church rules and funeral music vs sound pastoral theology

A great piece of pastoral theology from
http://rorycooney.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-ipad-doesnt-lie-funeral-music.html


"because church "rules" about music can be bent for the rich and famous (for instance, when at the cathedral "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" was played at Harry Carey's funeral during the final procession), they can be bent for the not-so-rich and otherwise-unknown when grief enters their houses as well. I resist, I expect that the funeral liturgy will proclaim the resurrection. Since the resurrection is such a surprise, and I have no idea what that means as well, I've had to decide that
assuaging a family's grief by (rarely) playing a song "sacred" only to the memory of the deceased won't keep me or them out of heaven."

Amen to that - what more can I say.