So your favorite "Protestant hymn" was written by a die-hard Catholic?

This is a scenario that's not only fun to imagine, but one that is all-too-often borne out in experience. A Protestant from a devoutly evangelical background will recall a favorite hymn, say, "Faith of Our Fathers," which he remembers being taught at an evangelical boarding school, where he and his classmates were all taught to sing the hymn in four-part harmony, picturing in their minds their Protestant ancestors, as recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, dragged to the scaffold at Tyburn to be hanged, disemboweled, drawn and quartered by the demonic ministers of Satan under the Catholic reign of Bloody Mary.

Not only will such a Protestant soul be stunned to discover, if he reads William Cobbett's The Protestant Reformation in England (1824-26), for example, that not a few of the subjects of John Foxe's book were surprised to find themselves described as martyrs at all (!), but that the words of the hymn, "Faith of our Fathers," were composed by Fr. Frederick William Faber, shortly after his conversion to Catholicism under the influence of the Oxford Movement in 1845, and that the martyrs he had in mind were neither the Protestants killed under Good Queen Mary, nor the ancient Christians martyrs in Rome during the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian, but the Catholic martyrs in England who were beheaded, burned at the stake, crushed to death, or dragged to Tyburn and hanged, disemboweled, drawn and quartered under the reign of Henry VIII and his good Protestant successor regents, particularly "Good Queen Bess" and her minister of mercy, William Cecil (Baron Burghley); and, furthermore, that Fr. Faber was also the author of other hymns widely used in traditional Protestant collections.

Oh, my! It's time to re-think some things here! The Anglo-Protestant textbook tradition of Reformation history has led a vast number of unsuspecting English-speakers into accepting mind-numbing distortions concerning the events of the 16th Century. In any case, my interest at the moment is confined to hymns.

It goes without saying that the Protestant tradition has yielded a goodly number of outstanding hymns. Some of these compositions (words as well as music) are well-known to Catholics, whether they are acquainted with their composers or not. If you are a Catholic, the next time you are at Mass, thumb through the index of composers in the back of your hymnal or misallette, if it has one, and check for Reginald Heber ("Holy, Holy, Holy"), Isaac Watts ("Joy to the World") or Charles Wesley ("Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "Rejoice, the Lord is King") for example -- heavens, you'll even find Martin Luther there ("A Mighty Fortress" has practically become a standby among those Catholic missalette publishers bent on bending over backward to prove they are more Protestant than Luther)! Everybody will be familiar with the musical compositions of the Lutheran maistro, J.S. Bach.

What comes as more of a surprise is the number of hymns from Catholic tradition that have made their way into traditional Protestant hymnals. Die-hard Protestants who are aware of this fact either feel "compromised" by it and take umbrage, or take it upon themselves to devise elaborate justifications for including hymns by God-foresaken Papists in their saved-by-faith-alone hymn collections (see, for example, this delightful little hand-wringing undertaking by Alan Pibworth, entitled simply: "Does it matter who the author is?"). For the most part, however, those Protestants who have been singing these hymns for generations are blissfully unaware of that the authors of many of their favorite hymns were members of the Synagogue of Satan, patrons of the Whore of Babylon, subjects of the Roman (Antichrist) Pontiff.

While hymns are not a part of the traditional Roman liturgy, hymns are nevertheless part of the Roman Catholic musical tradition. Moreover, around this time of year, during Advent and Christmastide, the number of traditional Catholic hymns one hears among the hymns and carols is particularly notable. Here are just a few:

• Angels We Have Heard on High (traditional French Catholic carol, Les Anges dans nos Campagnes);
• Good Christian Men Rejoice (attributed to the German Catholic mystic, Heinrich Seuse, ca. AD 1328)
• The First Nowell (Noel) (a traditional English carol, probably dating from as early as the 13th Century);
• O Come, All Ye Faithful (melody composed by a Catholic layman, John Francis Wade, in 1743; the Latin text, "Adeste Fidelis," probably dating from as early as the 13th Century);
• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (from a traditional Catholic plainchant, "Veni, Veni Emmanuel," from the 12th Century, possibly as early as the 8th Century);
• Of the Father's Love Begotten (original Latin text by Catholic Roman poet, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, AD 348 - ca. 413);
• Silent Night (original German text composed by an Austrian Catholic priest, Fr. Josef Mohr, in 1816; music by his collaborator, an Austrian headmaster, Franz Xaver Gruber, two years later, in 1818).

I wonder whether anyone has considered what value Catholic hymns have just in terms of the New Evangelization alone. I should think that the recognition that a dearly beloved Advent hymn or Christmas carol, with all of its beloved sentiments and pious associations, was authored by a Roman Catholic, would give pause to some of the more deep-seated anti-Catholic prejudices engrained over the generations in the Anglo-Protestant textbook traditions. Such pause, as I know very well, can serve to jump-start a search for truth that can land one in the hithertofore unexpected precincts of the Vatican.

Outside the Advent and Christmas seasons, there are many other hymns with which Protestants are familiar as well. Here are only a very few:

• Crown Him with Many Crowns (text composed in 1851 by Matthew Bridges, three years after he converted to Catholicism under the influence of the Oxford Movement in 1848);
• Faith of Our Fathers (text by Fr. Frederick William Faber, after his conversion to Catholicism under the influence of the Oxford Movement, in 1845);
• Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (from an ancient Latin Catholic hymn attributed to several 4th-century authors, including St. Augustine and Nicetas of Remesiana; also known as the Ambrosian Hymn and attributed to St. Ambrose, first bishop of Milan in 4th Century; but better known as the Te Deum, based on the outline of the Apostles' Creed);
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (from the "Prayer of the Cherubic Hymn" from the Catholic Litany of St. James, written during the 4th century);
• O Sacred Head Now Wounded (Latin text, Salve caput cruentantum, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, ca. AD 1153).

Not only is reality, as Ripley repeated, stranger than fiction; it is also so much more fun.