A Few More Principles

I've been putting together a few "principles of discernment" that I think are useful tools for choosing among the many hymn texts that we have at our disposal. I use these myself when choosing songs for the Liturgy, and when I write my own texts. I would imagine that preachers have a similar list of do's and don't's for when they prepare homilies: some things that they would always be sure to say, and some things that they would never ever say in a million years.

Right now I'm working out "the negative judgment"--some of the features of hymn or song texts that I believe make them misleading or harmful for the people to sing. Things I think we should never ever sing in a million years. Two of them follow:

• Hymns that speak of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, the City of God, or the Heavenly Jerusalem must always be clear that this kingdom "is not of this world," but is fulfilled in heaven.
• No hymn should speak of the Eucharist as "bread" and "wine" without some clear, immediate qualification that indicates that bread and wine have been changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Examples of acceptable usages include: Bread of angels, living Bread, Bread of life, the One Cup. Examples of unacceptable usages include broken bread, bread broken for us, wine poured out for us, bread (simply), wine (simply).
  
  (This last leaves out one of my favorite hymns, Father We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted, whose expression "broken bread" is (arguably, and imho) not sufficiently clear regarding the Real Presence. It's misleading on this one point alone. I know, I know, it's from the Didache. But, it's from the Eucharistic prayer of the Didache, and in an early point of the Eucharistic prayer at that. First of all, what are we doing singing a Eucharistic prayer as a hymn? Secondly, when would we sing it? It's neither pre-consecrational, nor post-consecrational. It's neither fish nor fowl for us; it doesn't "go" with our current rite. )
  
  To my thinking, a single corrupt or potentially misleading expression makes a corrupt hymn. If it can be fixed or reworked, why not? But then again, with all the music at large, why bother? Rare is the hymn that would be such a great loss to humanity, that we cannot simply let it disappear. And most of those are so consonant with Catholic sensibilities that they contain no errors anyhow.
  
  In some cases, just one verse might be problematic, but perhaps not the entire hymn. For example, another principle might be:
  
• No hymn should use the word "sacrament" for any activity other than the seven sacraments of the Church, unless it refers instead to the Sacrament that is the Church itself.(LG 9, 4)
  
  This leaves out the third verse of Draw Us in the Spirit's Tether--but then it was already pretty well farfetched in its Eucharistic theology in the verse two. Catholics don't "break the bread and bless the cup," exactly. "We" don't do anything, first of all; Christ does, in the action and words of the priest. Secondly, what happens is the bread and wine are offered in sacrifice; they are consecrated. The first verse of this hymn is quite pretty and good, and the tune, with its "alleluias" is so lovely, that its subsequent inadequacy (even poetic inadequacy) is often overlooked, even for its use in Catholic hymnals and churches. But it is because of theological inadequacy that it should not be sung at Mass.