"Let the Pipple Decide!"

I was doing a quick search to try to learn something about a fairly dreadful little song and came across this.
Now, this fellow agrees with me, that the sappy tune in questions is not something we ought to be singing or encouraging others to sing, but from this single point of agreement veers off into a complete fantasy land and draws some conclusions that border on idiocy if they are not the products of delusions.
But consider the source, as they say (not just the periodical in which the piece appears, but what his life's missions seems to be -- "church organizational consulting."
God save us from consultants!
They are in a ring of purgatory next to facilitators.)http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_37_40/ai_n6237219/pg_1
Is creativity in song enough? Eucharistic prayers need new attention
National Catholic Reporter, August 27, 2004 by George Wilson
How refreshing it was to .... hear a Vatican official say, "We must conserve, but we must also augment. Conservation of the antique musical repertory is a custodial duty, but this can't block the charism and the prophecy of inventing new forms" ...
We can only wish that the good monsignor has a sufficient supply of antacids to ward off the effects of the sour air his comments will evoke in some quarters. [Again with the charge that those musicians lobbying for at least SOME standards want a ritual preserved in amber, no new music! It is a lie! Make those White Lists, of CONTEMPORARY music, both for scholae/choirs and congregations]
I would suggest that we also take a good look at the words that are recited over and over at every liturgy ... We evidently have accepted an unexamined assumption: that the rest of the words in the liturgy are not open for exploration, that they are off the table. ....... I am talking about the expectation that a priest be able to breathe life and spirit into the same set of words over and over and over... the Eucharistic prayers ....
A comparison might help to make the point.
I have a secret hunch that poor presiding--mumbled delivery of mandatory words--drives more people out of the church than even impoverished preaching. Many times have I participated in liturgies where I was quite impressed at the solid, even quite moving, homily delivered by a modest priest in a very ordinary church, only to have the possibility of communal prayer implode as he says "Lift up your hearts," "let us give thanks to the Lord," "Lord you are holy indeed the fountain of all holiness."
As painful as such syllable rattling is, I feel a certain empathy for those parish priests who are expected to pray with three different congregations on a Sunday morning while constrained to use sets of words that inexorably drive toward formulaic repetition rather than genuine prayer before God. To engage genuinely and personally in prayer to the Lord in the midst of hundreds of people is not the easiest thing to do in any case; to burden the effort further by constraining it within the same few formulae is just too much. [And to constrain the priest to make it up as he goes along will take the pressure off?]
In any case, the evident result of our present limited set of phrases is that in many (most?) places priests do tiny vocal pirouettes by adjusting a phrase here or there. Instead of "from East to West" they might add "and North and South" or perhaps "around our globe." [Those who do demonstrate their ignorance of the meaning of the phrase -- it's not about reaching all corners of the earth, it is about Christ symbolically rising in the east when he comes in His glory.... is "ab" orientem a phrase?] .....
Many of these presiders are merely trying to keep their congregation (or themselves?) awake. The homily is now over and the good music may not come until the Communion meditation. If you look out at the congregation from the presider's place, you can sometimes almost feel the communication shutdown: Nothing new to attend to for a while. It's time for woolgathering.
[For pagans or heretics or other non-believers, perhaps.... but if you were a Catholic, you might understand that gee, golly-gosh, Almighty, you are about to be present across space and time at the Sacrifice on Calvary; and that the Lord and Master of the Universe, the Savior of all humanity, the Risen Christ is about to become actually and fully Present.
'Dthat wake ya up?]
...The bottom line is that we need greater creativity in the Eucharistic prayers if they are to engage the faith community week in and week out. Yet it seems that what we are soon to undergo is precisely the opposite: an attempt to purge any and all deviation from prescribed texts. ... But wouldn't having greater flexibility for local Eucharistic prayers give rise to--heresy? [And here we get to the evidence that this man is writing from la-la land, when he is not simply demonstrating his ignorance.]
I would guess that the risk enjoys a very low if not zero probability. [Because the understanding of people right now of the fullness of Truth is so.... well, full?]
...Think of the great hymns that are rightly held up now as rich gems of our tradition. Surely hymns like "Victimae paschali laudes" or "Ave regina coelorum" were not first subjected to some centralized judicial scrutiny before being accepted as prayer for the universal church. .... [Actually, I believe they were... isn't that the reason for the purging of some when nearly ALL the sequences were suppressed?].....Why not trust a far more theologically astute contemporary communion of the faithful [the ones who don't know of the Real Presence? the ones who don't feel any obligation to make themselves present? the ones who are defecting, either to a different religious practice or no religious practice, in ever greater numbers from the Church, for golf/music/fellowship/nicer leaders/acceptance of the Gospel of Death/sleeping in on Sunday mornings , whatever it is that THEY have made idols of, and placed before Him and His established Church? THOSE more theologically astute faithful? ] to engage in a similar process of testing creative texts against the movements of the Spirit within their community?
The second reflection surfaces an irony: As careful as centralized church authority has been to insure that the recited words remain within the bounds of accepted teaching, it is amazing what kinds of theological mush have been allowed to warp the spiritual development of our people over the years in the form of the song-texts perpetrated. The sappy sentimentality of "Good Night, Sweet Jesus" may not have been formally heresy, but the distortion it helped to propagate for decades may have been more harmful to the spiritual health of our people in the long run. When we decry the individualistic theology of many of our people; when we shudder at their lack of awareness of the social dimension of Jesus' mission, we needn't go looking for some promoter of heresy to pummel. Check out the songs on which they were fed.
A further irony: It wasn't imprimatur-granting Vatican agencies that eventually drove things like "Good Night, Sweet Jesus" from the field. It was the growing theological sophistication of the people, assisted by liturgical musicians formed in the church's rich biblical and social consciousness.
Why not trust a similar dynamic with the Eucharistic prayer of the people?
[And this pie-in-the-sky lunacy is the kicker... GNSJ has NOT given way to something better... in an ever- growing number of places it has given way to Lord of the Dance and Gather Us In and This Little Light of Mine and Let Us Be Bread, and "Jesus Is My Boyfriend" CCM.And for "sappy sentimentality," I'll see your "Good Night Sweet Jesus," and raise you "I Will Be With You," and "Hail Mary Gentle Woman." Can he possibly be so naive as to be unaware of the commercial component to the dominance of the songs on which we are now being fed? And can he be so blind as to not see that whatever GNSJ's faults (and I will not defend it,) the theology it implanted gave rise to a spirituality kept them active members of the Body of Christ (not to mention, the people who ran the local St Vincent de Paul societies, to give just one example.... If the article didn't have a 2004 copyright, I'd think the poor guy was writing at the same time as that poignant AGO article from the early '60s that gushed about how wonderful it was that, thanks to VCII, there would now be some standards in liturgical music. I should check, maybe it was written by the same author, this one is certainly old enough to have been writing them.... but I'd like to think an AGO correspondent would be musically and verbally sophisticated enough not to think that the texts and tunes that currently reign in Catholic worship in America are anything of which to be proud, or the path of whose insinuation into our liturgical life is anything to be held up as a model.