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Saturday, December 5, 2009

I Love Go Fish!

The Arian heresy was promoted through song. Modern songs (I can't call them hymns) do the same thing today. They promote modernism by focusing on self worship and often introduce ideas that cast doubt on Church doctrine. Just like the wreckovation of the churches that turn them into theatre in the round where parishioners gaze at each other instead of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, bad music often focuses worship on the people instead of God.

But songs can also be used to teach the faith and I really enjoy these guys who share their faith in Jesus Christ and love for the Bible through song. Their Christmas song remind me of the wags who write delightful parodies of that awful Marty Haugen song, Gather Us In. I've posted just one set of substitute lyrics for it below the videos, but there are lots of others.

The best way to deal with bad theology is to poke fun at it. One question though, Do we have nay Catholics comparable to Go Fish? They're better than The Wiggles and the kids must love 'em! What a way to teach about Jesus Christ! They even have a vacation bible school program and it's really inexpensive to run.





Gather Us In

Here in this place, our comfortable parish,
All of the statues carried away,
See in each face a vacuous visage,
Brought here by guilt or by R.C.I.A.

Gather us in, by Bimmer or Hummer,
Gather us in, so we can feel good,
Come to us now in this barren Zen temple,
With only a shrub and an altar of wood.

We are the young, our morals a mystery,
We are the old, who couldn't care less,
We have been warned throughout all of history,
But we enjoy this liturgical mess.

Gather us in, our radical pastor,
Gather us in, our unveiled nun,
Call to us now, with guitars and bongos,
Hang up your cellphones and join in the fun!

Here we will take some wine and some water,
Whether it changes, we really don't care.
But when the Sign of Peace comes, our pastor,
Jumps from the altar and hugs like a bear.

Gather us in, the privileged and snobby,
Gather us in, the liberal elite,
Help us to form our personal Credo,
Give us a choice between white bread and wheat.

For more delightful parodies go here.

1 comment:

  1. Mary Ann,

    I just love the ditty, "The Lord of the Dance" - don't you, Mary Ann?

    For an excellent article on the topic of your post, see Fr. Paul Scalia's "Why Do We Sing Ourselves and Celebrate Ourselves?"

    (of course, since he is from up your way you probably already know of this article)

    Kevin L

    http://www.adoremus.org/399Scalia.html

    ReplyDelete