July 5, 2004
They Were not Pilgrims!
This really gets me whenever I hear one of the Protestant Patriotic Hymns, especially when one is inserted into the Liturgy of the Catholic Church:
The Mayflower folks were not Pilgrims. They were dangerous, revolutionary heretics who were escaping duty, law and Truth, in order to establish a demented little utopia where they could be free to burn witches and hang priests (I have no objection to the burning of witches - as I have said before, I think the Pope should apologize to the world for dropping the ball on this and should thank our separated brethren for their work in stamping out witchcraft). Our nation and the world would have been better off if these rascals foundered on the rocks and drowned in the frigid Atlantic, or had been forced to land in New Spain where they would have been treated properly by the Holy Office.
The celebration of victory over the Protestant usurper in England should be completely distinct from the survival of these Puritan wretches. There is some beautiful writing on the Natural Law found in the Declaration of Independence. We should examine that and celebrate that.
There is nothing Catholic about the evil of Puritanism. We should no more call these people pilgrims than we would the damned souls being carried to their everlasting place of suffering.
Posted by erik at July 5, 2004 3:59 PM | TrackBackDittos to Elinor. And besides, as every Virginian knows, the first Thanksgiving Day observance was at Berkeley Plantation in
Charles City County, more than a year before the Pilgrims even landed at Plymouth. (Yeah, the Virginia settlers were heretics, too, but at least their heresy was only the pre-Gene Robinson Anglican variety, relatively free of the New England tendency to try to imminentize the eschaton).
(BTW, Berkeley Plantation is also the birthplace of Pres. William Henry Harrison, and the site of Harrison's Landing, where "Taps" was composed by Union General Daniel Butterfield during the Peninsular Campaign in 1862. And it's still owned by a private family who live in the upper stories of the house, so folks who live within convenient driving distance ought to drop in some Saturday and visit, and pay the admission fee so the owners can maintain the building and grounds as our own counter-Plymouth.)
Posted by: Seamus at July 8, 2004 8:23 AMSame to you, Oligarch.
I'm glad to find someone as annoyed as I am by Mayflower hagiography. They were a bunch of narrowminded wackos who decided to set up a little theocracy. That they worked hard and endured stoically is very interesting and admirable. Everything else about them is positively off-putting.
Posted by: Elinor at July 7, 2004 7:22 PMGO straight to the second verse for the real value of this song. see my post on the topic of that second verse.
Posted by: alicia at July 6, 2004 6:12 PMErik, I have to agree with Seamus. "Pilgrim" isn't capitalized in the text, nor should it be. It just implies people who wander, I believe. I've never thought (esp. since I became Cathlolic in 1985) that it referred specifically to Plymouth Pilgrims.
Now, if you want to name songs that REALLY should't be done in church, let's start with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Posted by: Jonathan at July 6, 2004 12:12 PMI don't think the mention of "the pilgrim thing" in America the Beautiful was a specific reference referring to the heretics at Plymouth. The context instead suggests that Katherine Bates meant to praise the pioneers who beat "a thoroughfare for freedom" across the North American continent. Admittedly, most of those were heretics too, but they didn't set out with the specific intention of establishing a theocratic utopia.
Posted by: Seamus at July 6, 2004 10:42 AMZorak thanks you in advance for when I show this link to her.
She emphatically closed and returned the hymnal to its place when "America the Beautiful" was played as the exit hymn of last Sunday's liturgy.
I also note that I show this to her contrary to self-interest, since I defended the singing of the song because of the imprecations of the last lines of each verse. But the pilgrim thing does get to me.
Unrelated from Dashwood's combox: I will have to remember the utility of turning beet-red and saying "Jetzt!"
Posted by: Old Oligarch at July 6, 2004 10:27 AM