Our church is becoming OCP-free!!!

They are buying St. Michael Hymnals... and asking donations of parishioners to help defray the cost.

I confess that I know nothing of the St. Michael Hymnal. The only hymnal with which I'm very familiar is the Adoremus Hymnal... which I like very much.

Now, our particular church is large and has a talented choir, our Mass is going to be sung all the way through and hymns will be reduced quite a bit. We've been singing the new responses since early October and it sounds great!

So I'm leaning toward the idea that these new hymnals are good ones; our music director is a music snob (in a good, traditional way) and our priest is very orthodox. But before donating the money, I wanted to get an idea of what to expect. How does it compare to the Adoremus Hymnal?

I don't think I have set them side by side, but the St. Michael hymnal is certainly a step up from the usual OCP fare. More traditional hymns, fewer Haugen-Haasy ones, although there are some. N.b. I'm also not sure how (or even if) the St. Michael has been adapted since the new translation.

It'll be good. There is supposed to be a post-translation revision.

I may suggest to my parish to look into this.

Vas ist der OCP???

www.ocp.org

If you ever go into a Latin Rite parish and see missalettes, for instance, that's often an OCP product.

Why do I get the feeling that they are not all that popular?

I suppose it depends on how you define popular. They are extremely popular in the sense that their products are in countless parishes across the United States. But for those of us who think liturgical music in America in Latin Rite parishes is a shambles badly in need of restoration, OCP is often viewed as part of the problem. For the record, I think they, like most everyone else, are going to be getting better in light of the new translation, and musically I think the selection you get in an OCP missalette is probably superior to what you get in a Gather hymnal.

Oregan Catholic Press. It also provides hymnals in Spanish and in Vietnamese. Non-English hymnals don't need to be changed due to the Third Edition of the Roman Missal. Just English version.

Good to know! A sales rep from the company is related to someone in our parish, he has called to talk to our pastor a few times, I am ing.

OCP and GIA both seem to have realized that they have come close to saturating the market for bad music and are now working on reviving the better portions of their catalogs.

That's what I'm seeing too, which is good for all concerned, I think.

There are quite extensive previews of the revised St Michael Hymnal available online:

http://www.stmichaelhymnal.com/NewEditi ... Pages.aspx

Two of the US provinces of the Order of Preachers, St Joseph and the Holy Name, (Eastern and Western Dominican provinces) have selected the revised St Michael Hymnal.

Had my hands on one today!!!!

I have been hoping that our parish adopts the Saint Michael Hymnal soon but I doubt that it happens.

Brother Michael Dominic O'Connor, of the Eastern Province, wrote one of the Mass settings included in that edition. He is from the Diocese of Peoria.

Has anyone seen the Vatican Hymnal...a parish I went to had that. It had the ordinary, with the new translation on one side, and Latin on the other...and it had all of the readings, Responsorial Psalms AND Graduals for each year, and all the SUNG propers (with their music) for all Sundays and major feasts...it used the Chabanel psalms

http://www.ccwatershed.org/vatican/

That is what I saw. I didn't see it, but it also (apparently) has the Ordinary for the EF as well

I have a St. Gregory hymnal.

I don't think there is any hope of a change in music at my parish church. Our organist quit due to health problems. We have someone who leads the music, if singing out above everybody else counts as leading. (She was classically trained, which is not a help to the rest of us.) A parishioner strums his guitar to help us along a bit, but nobody but me seems to know how to sing along with a guitar. Forget staying in time, or on pitch with those folks. They aren't going to give up the only songs they know.

I've seen it briefly, in someone else's hands.

Your description is accurate, I think, except I didn't know about the Graduals. The sung propers are a new project of setting the English translations to plainchant. I haven't looked at them super closely, but I had a favorable quick first impression, as I recall.

The main knock on it is that it doesn't have a very wide selection of hymns, so parishes that are not ready to move seriously toward using the propers on a very regular basis might be disappointed. But it seems like a very good project.