by Fred Moleck

"Te Deum laudamus" to "Grosser Gott"

Should you be attending Mass on Thanksgiving Day, more than likely you will be singing “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name,” a hymn considered by many Catholics, if not millions, the national anthem of Roman Catholicism.

As a cradle Catholic, I was reared with it. If you are a cradle Catholics, you, too, have probably experienced it soaking into your little Catholic bones.

Not many of us escaped. It was ours. It was a Catholic hymn, and no one dared to take it from us.

When I first discovered it in a non–Roman Catholic hymnal, I was somewhat surprised that “they” had taken the Catholic hymn. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find anyone to give it back to us.

Yikes! We were ecumenical and didn’t know it.

A little musicological sleuthing shows that its text has ancient roots in the fourth century. Some authors see its author being Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana (modern-day Bela Palanka in Serbia). He replaces Ambrose, Augustine, and Hilary, who were the top contenders of authorship for centuries.

The text is Te Deum laudamus, the canticle that has been assigned as the hymn of thanksgiving at super solemn ceremonies, which usually last a good two hours. The consecration of a bishop is but one example.

My ninth grade confirmation is another.

In other words, the Te Deum laudamus has been around for a very long time. Most major composers have set it to music.

Many hymn text writers did their best in translating the Latin into some type of hymn.

I was surprised to see that the high poet of eighteenth-century England, John Dryden, tried his hand with this great hymn of praise.

It is super elegant, as this first stanza illustrates:

Thee, Sovereign god, our grateful accents praise;
We own thee, Lord, and bless thy wondrous ways;
To thee, Eternal Father, earth’s whole frame
With loudest trumpets sounds immortal fame.

The Latin is equally solemnly elegant:

Te Deum laudamus.
Te Dominum confitemur.
Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.

I must admit that when I was singing the chant during my juvenilia, I knew the first line translated is “We praise you, God.” After that I had not a clue.

The stretch from the Dryden text and the text of Nicetas to “Holy God, we praise thy name, / Lord of all, we bow before thee” is long.

If you ever looked at the bottom microprint two lines on the hymn page, you would see something like:

Text: Grosser Gott, wir loben dich ascribed to Ignaz Franz, 1719–1990,
translated by Clarence Walworth, 1820–1900
Tune: GROSSER GOTT 7 8 7 8 77; Katholisches Gesangbuch, Vienna,
ca. 1774

I mentioned earlier that “Holy God” is so Catholic. During the great hymn expansion for liturgical use right after the Second Vatican Council, every parish sang as the recessional “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name.” It was the supreme example of indigenous Catholic hymnody, which no Protestant hand could ever touch, let alone kidnap it.

Surprise! The translator, Clarence Alphonsus Walworth, wrote the 1858 translation, which we sang way before he became a Catholic.

Drop that at your super Catholic friend’s Thanksgiving Day table and see if anyone chokes.

Grosser Gott, wir loben dich . . .

Holy God, we praise the name . . .

Thee, Sovereign God . . .

—All are part of the church’s treasury of hymns that help us to give thanks to God.
Happy Thanksgiving Day.

You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net

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