PROTESTANT SUSCEPTIBILITIES

New Zealand Tablet, 5 March 1914, Page 53

PROTESTANT SUSCEPTIBILITIES

There-seems (says a writer in the London Tablet) some meed of public protest against the, manner in which some of our Catholic compositions are not only appropriated by outsiders, but adapted to their own views, and their words wrenched from their original construction, or bowdlerised to meet the susceptibilities of , a Protestant audience. We note an objectionable sample of this malpractice which is reported to' have taken r place in the Anglican Cathedral in Southwark. A service- was held at Christmastide, of which a prominent feature was the singing of carols. Amongst the carols selected was the following (the italics are ours): ‘ The Ox he openeth. wide the Doore And from the snowe he calls her inne, And he hath seen her smile therefor Our Lady of David’s Kin Now words of this exceedingly beautiful carol are the composition of a Catholic lady, Miss L. I. Guiney, and in the original the fourth line, there is no mention of ‘ David’s Kin,’ but instead : ‘ Our Ladye ivithoute sinned To Catholics, one of the chief prerogatives of the Mother of God is her sinlessness., and they feel tfiat it is a matter of the honor of her Son, that sin ’ should never be associated with her name. (St. Augustine, in his treatise on Nature, and. Grace says that all men have sinned ‘ except the Virgin Mary.’ of whom, for the honor of the Lord, he will move no question where sin is concerned.) . However, when the carol was sung in the Anglican Cathedral, this note of sinlessness, which entered essentially into the Catholic authoress’s concept of the honor due to our Lady, was thrown overboard so as to trim the carol to the Protestant milieu, and the words ‘ of David’s Kin ’ made to do duty as a substitute ! No one expects conscientious Protestants to accept or sing what they do not believe,'but surely they might very well, in that case, leave our Catholic compositions to those who can use them in the sense and entirety in which they were written and intended.