Why, this kind of pretentious censorship makes me want to almost vomit - or at least sound I’m almost vomiting. Right on the edge there, y’know? Sort of making warning sounds that vomiting may be imminent?
I’m still pissed they changed the Apostle’s Creed.
Catholic school from grades 1-12. We sang “That saved and set me free.” When I first heard the “wretch” version, I was appalled at the thought of calling myself that.
Joe
And you can sing ever song ever written to the tune of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Now all available recorded on K-Tell records.
Same here. As I learned it, it was “wretch,” and at a friend’s mother’s funeral some years ago, the “wretch” version was the one that everybody sang. Every time since, in church and elsewhere, it has been “wretch.” I have not heard (or heard of) the other versions until this thread.
Sounds like they watered down your doctrine, too. The idea that we are wretched scum without God is the entire point of salvation. If we weren’t horrible, God wouldn’t have needed to send his Son to save us.
Personally, I think it’s aesthetically displeasing. Holding out “me” that long sounds weird. Since it almost melisma anyway, nowadays, I’d suggest adding another syllable. “That saved and set my soul free!”
I am not religious (any longer), but singing that you are a wretch SHOULD make you feel bad and guilty. You are admitting that before you were a terrible, horrible thing without the grace of god that saved you. So if you are going to sanitize the song by removing that word, you are getting rid of the whole purpose of the song.
The above is supposed to be “almost always melisma.” I don’t know if the original has eight notes or a single quarter note.
But as an atheist, the grace of god hasn’t saved me . . . but to refer to myself as a “terrible, horrible thing” is against my belief system. So obviously this means that I should never sing this song.
I’ve heard it with “man” and “child,” depending on who’s singing. Either is superior to “wretch.”
I have heard covers of Folsom Prison Blues where “They say I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” was changed to, “They say I shot a man in Reno, that was just a lie”. And I imagine Johhny Cash gritting his teeth in his grave.
It’s on the tip of my tongue.
I’ve only heard it sung as “wretch.”
I do, however, hate how the Church has replaced “he” in a lot of our hymns to something gender neutral.
For instance, in “Be Not Afraid,” which is my favorite hymn, they’ve replaced the bolded words:
You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst.
You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way.
You shall speak your words to foreign men, and they will understand.
You shall see the face of God and live.
with:
“You should shall speak your words in foreign lands, and all will understand.”
You know, it’s jarring enough to have to now read prayers that I used to know by heart because of the recent changes to the Mass. But now I can’t even belt out hymns because I’m on the lookout for wussified lyrics.
Well “wretch” or no “wretch” the whole song is a hymn and so against your belief system. So if that one word stops you from singing it, shouldn’t the rest of it as well?
From my Catholic childhood in the '80s and '90s it was always the “speak your words in foreign lands” line. When did the change happen??
There’s a whole mess of songs that you can do this with, as these tunes are written in ballad meter (or common meter), which is quatrains consisting of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. You can also sing these tunes to “The House of the Rising Sun,” “America the Beautiful,” “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” etc.
“Wretch” is an artifact of Calvinist theology, specifically the doctrine of “Total Depravity” - the idea that apart from the grace of God, we are completely incapable of refraining from evil or choosing to follow God; i.e. we are miserable wretches until God saves us by His grace.
I can only speculate that the Catholic re-wording of the hymn is due to this allusion to a Protestant doctine, but I can’t be certain. I’ve never heard it sung any other way but with “wretch.”
The 1982 Episcopal Hymnal (often still called the “new” hymnal) took a lot of Anglican and conteporary hymns and gender-neutralized them. Sometimes it’s jarring but probably in another generation no one will notice anymore.
I should add, the only variation to “wretch” in “Amazing Grace” that I’ve encountered is the “saved a soul like me” version.
I think you’re right. OR, I was just oblivious and not paying attention to my religious instruction. When I left Trenton, NJ and went down south to Atlanta for college, I was shocked at the brutality, for lack of a better word, of Catholicism and religions in general - not brutal in the Crusades sense, but brutal in how believers are made to see themselves. I was never taught how wretched humans are before god. We were taught that god loves us all. And yet I still became an atheist.
Of course, the author of the song, before his conversion, was pretty damned wretched. Everyone’s heard that story, right?
No. Explain if you will. Or not, if I want to know badly enough, I’ll look it up.
Some hymnals have duly rechristened the Christmas carol “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” (an underrated fave of mine) to “Good Christian Friends, Rejoice.” No skin off my nose either way.
Don’t know what they’d do with “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (another fave).