Weigel On Williams: For All The Saints

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Vaughan Williams c. 1920
Photo: E. O. Hoppé, in The Songs of Ralph Vaughan Williams by R. Bennett.
[Wikipedia]

At Denver Catholic: https://denvercatholic.org/the-well-fought-fight/
The incorporation of Anglican hymnody into English-language Catholic worship is one of the great blessings of the past 50 years. And within that noble musical patrimony, Ralph Vaughan Williams surely holds pride of place among modern composers.
And...
Alas, like many other hymns, “For All the Saints” is an endangered species today, gutted by parish music directors and pastors who commit the grave sin of not singing a hymn in its entirety — or worse, who bowdlerize the lyrics to coddle the sensibilities of the Church of Nice. Such butchery is especially problematic with “For All the Saints,” which has a robustly martial character. Indeed, the entire text is a meditation on the struggles, and ultimate joys, of spiritual warfare: that “well-fought fight,” undertaken beneath the captaincy of the Lord who is, for the baptized, “their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might,” the conquering “King of glory” who is, “in the darkness drear, their one true Light.”
Maestro Vaughan Williams' masterpiece is still appreciated, unaltered, in the Personal Ordinariates, where artists and their work are given due respect.

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