Today, I helped my wonderful pastor go through pew-by-pew and switch out our old OCP hymnals for the new Vatican II Hymnal at St. Patrick Parish in Cottage Grove. I am ecstatic! I am really looking forward to this Sunday when we will use them for the first weekend.
Ok, actually, we’ll use them tomorrow, but there’s no hymns on Friday mornings, just propers 
The parish is really starting to look and sound like a Catholic parish! new tabernacle coming in (soon), new hymnals, gregorian chant, and in the long term: a real choir loft, organ, altar rail, BOTH forms of the Roman Rite, etc, etc…
Below is a quick overview of the type of music found in each hymnal. Now in OCP’s defense, there is some good stuff in there, but not much, which means we’ve been using a lot of the same hymns while we were waiting for the new hymnals.
When listening to the music below, keep the following in mind:
The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savor the Gregorian form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple.
- Tra le Sollecitudini, no 3.
OCP (outgoing):
Vatican II Hymnal (incoming)
Out with the old…
Can’t wait to see this go!
More junk heading out the door from the music area
Piles of OCP tripe from the pews heading to the dumpster
…and in with the new!
The shipment eagerly waiting to be unpacked
The new Vatican II hymnal, created by Jeff Ostrowski at Corpus Christi Watershed
This was a great blog post, Ben!! Love the photos of “tripe.”
After reviewing the new hymnals I was disappointed that although the TLM/EF Ordinary is there, the Propers are not. It wouldn’t have taken up that much more space because they repeat themselves every year! There are no Cycles A, B, C like there are for the Novus Ordo.
I was also wondering the same thing. I guess there wasn’t space. I wonder how many pages it would have been…still an awesome hymnal though.
This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. I wish my parish were like yours.
Deo gratias!