HE AUTHORS of this blog are faced each day with two choices. On one hand, there are innumerable scandals in the Church. Social media gives Catholics “global access” to scandals. One could easily spend each day documenting liturgical abuses in Charlotte, Mississippi, Chicago, South Africa, Italy, the Philippines, Germany, and so forth. The majority of “Catholic influencers” spend hours on Twitter doing precisely that. They share as many scandals as they possibly can. But another choice is possible. One can instead promote good things; holy things; positive things; inspiring things; true things; beautiful things. That’s the path our authors have chosen—and our readership seems to appreciate this.
(1 of 2) Lyrics • This daily choice came to my mind when I was looking over the lyrics for “Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above.” That song is actually a translation of Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae. If you look in the Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal and read through the verses in their totality, you can see for yourself. But the way this text has been mangled by the big publishing companies is scandalous.
(2 of 2) Lyrics • I thought about publishing an article discussing the vile things certain publishers do with traditional hymn texts. For ideological reasons, they often replace the traditional words, doing tremendous violence to the poetry. But then I realized that a better path is to simply promote what is good. Traditional publications like the Brébeuf Hymnal preserve the authentic lyrics.
Here is a beautiful soprano descant:
You can download the PDF score
free of charge by following the
directions provided on the video.
