am glad. one of your readers has raised this question of hymns. The apparent apathy and indifference regarding the congregational rendering of the Liturgy is had enough, but 1 sometimes think that our use and singing of hymns is worse still.
Although }here are over 500 hymns in the Westminster Hymnal I doubt if more than 20 are known to the average Catholic, whilst thc appalling lack of variety of hymns sung at the.evening service is no encouragement towards inducing our people to attend the evening devotions, and strangely enough, the majority of our priests seem quitecontent at the very small proportion of people who do so.
Many of our beautiful old sequences and hymns are sung in the vernacular by our Protestant friends at the appropriate times, one of the most popular being All Glory, Laud and Honour on Palm Sunday, but I have never heard it sung congregationally al any evening service, or of course, at the Palm Sunday Mass, in our own churches.
Might it not be possible for the Bishop of each diocese to appoint an expert director of music and singing, or a small committee, whose special job would be to tour the churches and train congregations in the right way to render the Liturgy and hymns? What an enormous amount of good might be done if only we had such men as Sir Wa!ford Davies to help us. It is a sheer delight to listen to his broadcasts of church music and singing. And what a blessing it would be to those of our parish priests who find themselves unable to undertake the arduous task of teaching the congregation to sing!
I believe the statement made in the Catholic; Press some time ago to be quite true, namely that, " The day that sees the proper rendering of the Liturgy by the people, will also see the conversion of England.
MARY ANDERSON.
29, Maidstone Avenue, Romford, Essex.