"drive it, as fast and as far as you can, on its secondary meaning"

(from Rex Olandi Rex Cledendi)

Misleading Hymn Lyrics

Father Jeffrey Keyes notes, with dismay, how Catholic hymns with inappropriate lyrics are leading people to believe things that are foreign to the traditional teaching of the Church. That seems to me to be the modus operandi of the typical modernist: pick out a teaching with sufficient richness or ambiguity; then drive it, as fast and as far as you can, on its secondary meaning.

Of course, literally speaking, it's all correct and beyond reproach. Yet, there is always the sense that something is not quite above-board, since it is rare to hear modern hymns where the primary meaning is thus emphasized. For example, consider Church teaching on the Body of Christ: is it (1) the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, or (2) the spiritual presence of Jesus among the worshiping community? Of course it's both, but you get the picture. How could you ever have the second without the first?

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Father Keyes was speaking of I Myself Am the Bread of Life, the worst song in a hymnal with many bad songs. It was comforting to finally find a priest unwilling to insult Our Lord at Mass with heresy set to music. For all his virtues, Fr. Keyes is not himself the Bread of Life. And neither are you. And neither am I. God forgive us for singing such things in His Presence.