Accurate Hymns

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops decided last month in their fall meeting that it is time for the hymns sung in mass to be doctrinally correct.^[1] This means that some of the excesses in the use of "inclusive" language should be curbed, and updating archaic language might be done more carefully. While it is certainly true that some use of inclusive language is possible without introducing heretical statements, the idea advanced by Boston College professor Lisa Sowle Cahill that "nothing radical" has been done to the songs used at mass since 1950 is certainly inaccurate. I have seen a few examples of abuses as I go through the song hymnal before each mass even here in the "conservative" Arlington Diocese.